People survived the crash and were taken to hospital. Now on bbc news, ros atkins on the week. The village of manston is a short drive from the kent coast. Down the road as the port of ramsgate. In the village itself there was a church and thejolly farmer pub, and next door is the airfield and, because of that, manston has been welcoming new arrivals for years. In the 20s, students arrived for pilot training, in the 50s, it was used as a base to carry out drills. Now manston airfield is hosting new arrivals again. Thousands are coming across the channel by small boat. Many are taking to this facility. You have an Asylum System completely gridlocked. As more people arrived, the government has condemned an invasion. The system is broken. Illegal migration is out of control. And so the small village in kent finds itself as part of a story that raises fundamental questions about how the uk responds to those who arrive on our shores. Hello, welcome. Now, this is the plan this week. We will talk about migration in a moment. I will also look at why joe biden thinks republicans� relationship with the truth risks the path to chaos. And these are workers in china fleeing their factory, we will explore the reasons why theyve done this and how they connect to all of us. And the war in ukraine of course goes on but establishing what is happening there remains hard. They try to control what we do and ourjob is to not be controlled, they try to get their message over and we try to get the truth over. We will hear from jeremy bowen in a moment but this is where we are going to start. The Asylum System is in crisis. Dont call it an invasion, but hey, it is a 40,000 people this year. That is a lot of people. This country, we cannot afford them. A few thousand people can be accommodated humanely in this country, we are perfectly capable of doing it. You should not be sleeping on the floor of a tent for months on end. The majority of people dont want them. Send them back. Mgration has dominated the politics of this week and there are any number of questions about how it is being talked about and what is being done. Lets begin with how the Home Secretary described the situation. The british people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coasts. These are the details of what Suella Braverman calls an invasion. The number of people arriving by small boat has greatly increased in recent years. Nearly 40,000 have already landed this year. But next, look at the overall number of Asylum Claims. It is up, but the increase is nowhere near as sharp as with boat arrivals. We have seen higher numbers of people claiming asylum than this. It is the method of arrival, this very unsafe way of arriving that has increased significantly this year. Numbers alone dont explain the pressures on the system. This is the Migrant Processing Facility in manston, kent. Its 20 miles from dover, it opened in february specifically to process arrivals from small boats but its struggling to cope. Children are among the 4000 or so crammed into the facility designed to hold just 1600 people. You cannot eat or sleep, it was like a zoo. There are cases of. Diphtheria and mrsa. If they decide to break out because they have got nothing left to live for, god knows what could happen. These problems connect to broader ones with how long it takes to process Asylum Claims. This year, the backlog of cases passed 100,000, and the government is legally obliged to find somewhere for people to stay while they await a decision. For its part, the home office says it is tackling the backlog by increasing staffing and improving technology. It also says issues like safeguarding Vulnerable People and modern slavery can cause delays, and there is another factor also, because, when an asylum claim is rejected, in theory, they are deported, but last year, 806 Asylum Claimants were returned. That is down from over 10,000 in 2010. And listen to one more statistic on this. The government says that right now there are 17,000 people it wants to send it back to europe, but it has only sent 21. My colleague dominic explains why. We have no proper agreements with these countries, that is something we chose not to do when brexit happened. There are any number of aspects to the Asylum System and the stories around it, but there has been one issue this week that has been getting a lot of attention. On tuesday, immigration minister robertjenrick spoke to the bbc. There are some new challenges that have come up for example very large numbers of albanians coming to the uk. It is correct that the number of albanians has shifted. Two years ago, 50 albanians arrived in the uk on small boats. Last year, it was 800, and this year, so far, it has been 12,000. Of which about 10,000 are single adult men. Which begs the question, why . Albania is in southern europe, has a population of 2. 8 million, the uk government describes it as safe and prosperous. But prosperity is relative. The albanian median hourly wage in 2018 was 1. 70 euros, lowest in europe, and in the uk it was nine times higher. There is another reason why numbers are going up right now. We contacted an albanian journalist who has been investigating. The numbers have been increasing right now because it is cheaper but before for an albanian that wanted to go to the uk illegally, they had to go on the back of a lorry and this was costly and this would cost like 20 25,000 of pounds, but when now £30004000. And to drive up demand, adverts like this on tiktok are being aimed at albanians. This one offers dinghy to the uk with safe passage. And for those who do come and claim asylum, come and claim asylum, the home office says many show no interest in seeing their claim through. We will typically put them in a hotel for a couple of days and then they disappear, they can work in the uk, send money home and then go back to albania. And of those who do not abscond, recent data shows that 40 of Asylum Claims from albanian men are successful so the vast majority of albanian men either never see their claim through or are rejected. To address this the government wants to find a way to have a fast track for albanians so that claims are held in days not months. It is a different story for albanian women and children. 90 of their Asylum Claims are granted. Most of the albanians getting a positive decision are female and its believed many of them are victims of trafficking who have not been able, the albanian state has not been able to protect them and that is why they qualify for asylum. This week, matters became ever more political as the albanian Prime Minister responded to uk government claims that this is an invasion. Is nothing but fuelling xenophobia and targeting, singling out a community and practically going totally against the Great British tradition of integrating minorities. Whilst politicians Exchange Opinions it remains true that the number of albanian men coming to the uk has changed. So has the way that the uk and albania deal with this. The home office notes that since signing a written since signing a Return Agreement with albania in 2021 we have removed more than 1000 albanians. This means that more albanians are being removed from the uk than any other nationality, but that figure is notjust people who have arrived by boat, but as the boats keep coming, the issue remains both a practical and political challenge, as well as an ordeal for those who need safe haven. To understand how immigration works in the uk, we need to understand the Government Department that oversees it. The home office. Sir David Normanton was the most senior Civil Servant there for six years, working with five home secretaries. Im glad im not there any more because i can imagine the pressures and tensions they will be feeling. I showed him some clips from this week. We need to be straight with the public. The system is broken. The trouble with that phrase as it implies theres nothing to be done about it but there are things to be done, and effectively the system has to be repaired, but there is not some magic bullet. It is about managing this system effectively and, at the moment, that is not happening. The british people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast. Its a misjudgment to use that phrase, really. As Home Secretary, you have to be careful in your language. This was in the aftermath of a firebombing of one of the Reception Centres in dover, and you need to keep calm, to usejudgment, not to stir things up. Its 4 of people in. Small boats last year that is the bit that is so seriously broken. Only 4 of last years people coming over in boats have actually been decided. 4 of those people have actually had their Application Claim is decided. That is a collapse of decision taking, and every time you dont decide on an application, that is somebody stuck in a hotel or stuck in private accommodation. Is that because not enough money is being spent on the Decision Making system . I dont think it is a lack of resource. It is very distressing to see children there. That is the first thing. The absolute priority is to protect children. They should not be in those conditions, so one needs to get those families out of there. You can be tough on immigration and asylum, and you should be, but that doesnt mean to say that you have to be inhumane you said that it took several years for you to work with others in the home office to regain control of the situation you inherited. Does this problem look on a similar scale . It does. The backlogs are growing again. We have a backlog of 100,000, not 450,000, but100,000, that Backlog Looks like it is going to grow and it is not going to be sorted out quickly. Now, sometimes there is a single moment in the news that is urgent and important in its own right, but also offers us a window into something much bigger. And that happened this week when some video clips from a road in china started to appear online. Earlier this week, workers fled a foxconn facility in central china. Its known as iphone city because they make hundreds of thousands of them every day. And this facility has been under a variety of Covid Restrictions for months. Fearing those restrictions could get tighter, some workers decided to get out. Some of them were met by officials in hazmat suits, and this desire to get out reveals a great deal about chinas Zero Covid Policy and also about how president xis leadership is impacting all of us. Heres how. Zero covid is very much still in place. This week, disneyland in shanghai closed its doors after a single case. No one could leave until they had tested negative. This is elsewhere in shanghai this week and across china, local lockdowns are common. Everyone in china knows this and some are keen to avoid them. This is footage from ikea in shanghai in august as people try to evade quarantine, and this footage on a train injune gives you an idea of how the approach works. This puts china out of sync with the rest of the worlds covid strategies, but with underperforming vaccines and concerns about its health service, zero covid remains, as does the pressure it creates. This was a rare anti lockdown protest last week in tibet. But president xi talks about the peoples war to stop the spread of the virus and argues. Translation peoples lives come first. We will not waver in. Our Zero Covid Policy. And that commitment connects to something fundamental about president xis leadership. Xijinping has consistently prioritised policies and politics ahead of economics. Hes not afraid to take risks that the economy will suffer and his Covid Zero Strategy is a prime example of that. This can be seen in the elevation of this man, who is to become chinas premier, second to president xi. Its a huge promotion and this is a man who has been responsible for enforcing lockdowns in shanghai. That promotion sends the clearest of messages on zero covid. But while the politics of this makes sense to president xi, zero covid comes at a cost. In the words of this leading economist, zero covid has slowed the countrys economy and exacerbated supply chain disruptions. 0ne us analyst called zero covid a driver of global recession. Of course, China Remains the starting point of the Global Supply chain. It makes 29 of the worlds goods. But zero covid has made it a less reliable supplier and that shift is a symptom of a broader decision by president xi. Xijinping inherited a china that, for decades, emphasised Economic Growth and the building of ties to the outside world, even sometimes putting that ahead of the supremacy of Communist Party rule. But in the past ten years he has flipped that around, putting himself and his Party Policies at the very top of the agenda. That is why the plight of workers escaping a foxconn facility this week is one aspect of a far bigger story that extends to president xis consolidation of power and to the high streets where chinese made goods are sold. President xis decisions affect those foxconn workers directly but they also affect us all. As you will know, there are great challenges in knowing what is happening in china. The government there severely restricts what journalists and everyone else can do. And in a very different way, there are also challenges in telling you whats happening in ukraine. Ukraines Southern Offensive is a crucial part of this war. Its main focus is the region of kherson, the areas controlled by russia here in red. And the big prize is the regional capital, also called kherson. It is strategically and symbolically important, but despite how much this matters, finding out what is happening there is hard. Ukraines imposed reporting restrictions. Most of the front line remains off limits to journalists. But some do get limited access and the bbc� s jeremy bowen is one of them. Earlier in the week, i messaged jeremy and asked if he would record his thoughts on where the battle has got to. Lets take some time to see what he sent. My conclusion about the kherson offensive, which has been ballyhooed now four months, is that it has moved either very slowly after some earlier successes, but the main thrust of it is stalled. So how do i assess that . Well, here is an example. If an army is attacking, there is a build up of men, machines and ammo, and i havent seen any of that. I have seen a bit of military activity, but we have heard that they are not as well supplied as they would like to be, and you need that preponderance of Offensive Power to break a well prepared position. So a lot of it is second guessing and trying to work things out. It is difficult. Asjeremy says, it is difficult. Whats happening inside the city of kherson is unclear. But we do know that in the wider region, ukraine has regained some territory. But reporting on those gains poses challenges. The ukrainians are quite controlling about what they let us film. Yesterday, after these raids, and this was part of it, we went to an area to film and there was a Large University building there and we were not allowed to film it. We could film the civilian houses that were destroyed, but we couldnt film the university building. Why . I dont know. Were they doing something secret . Did they not want to show the russians that they had managed to hit it . We dont know these things. But there is often also a pattern, which is, when the war is new and when there is that sense of shock that its started, you can do local deals as a reporter with commanders. You say, will you take us up to your positions . And they say yes. But after a month or two, what tends to happen, notjust here but pretty much every other place i have been and pretty much every other war i have been to, is that they get organised. The information side get organised, so they put restrictions on what we do. Its not a sinister thing, this is what always happens. These days, in the 24 7 digital world, winning the media war is critical for all sides. They want to get their Point Of View across. So they try and control what we do, and ourjob is to not be controlled. Strategists talk about the fog of war and trying to work out what the hell is happening. Personally, as someone who as a journalist has covered 20 or more wars, i am not surprised it is difficult to find out what the hell is happening, because its always like that. Now, its the mid term elections in the us next weekend and there is a lot at stake, not least how much joe biden may be able to get done in the next two years. But there is more to these midterms too, because they are helping us understand americas relationship with the truth. This is our country. Elections are always about policies and personalities but on wednesday this week, joe biden made it about more than that. There is a path to chaos in america. And the president connected that warning directly to this. The 2020 election was rigged and stolen and now our country is being destroyed. Donald trump has been saying this since election night. It wasnt true then, its not true now. This claim has become a test of republicans commitment to facts, evidence and reality. We have worked with the bbc� s disinformation unit to look at republican candidates in these elections. We found that 35 of the candidates have publicly and fully denied the 2020 Election Result. Of those, three quarters are projected to win. An overall 53 of these candidates have questioned the Election Result and these candidates are in sync with Many Republican voters. We can certainly see this in how some republicans are positioning themselves. One example