British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke at a press conference in London on Monday about the pact between Britain and Rwanda to transfer asylum seekers to the African country.
Toby Melville/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
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Toby Melville/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke at a press conference in London on Monday about the pact between Britain and Rwanda to transfer asylum seekers to the African country.
Toby Melville/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
LONDON – More than two years after it was first introduced, the British government is stirring up controversy planning an eviction asylum seekers to Rwanda were approved by Congress early Tuesday.
The unelected House of Representatives cleared the way for the bill to become law after scrapping the final proposed amendments shortly after midnight, the Associated Press reported.
Even before his flagship policy was passed, British Chancellor Rishi Sunak on Monday took to the podium with the slogan “stop the boat” – a reference to one of his key election bids. campaign commitment. At a news conference, he told reporters he would stop at nothing to pass laws to prevent people without visas from crossing the English Channel from France to Britain.
“No ifs, no buts. These flights are going to Rwanda,” Sunak speak.
The plan is to send some people the government says have come to Britain illegally to Rwanda, where local authorities will process their asylum claims.
England Signed One agree with Rwanda in April 2022, with Rwanda agreeing to process and settle asylum seekers initially arriving in the UK.
The British government said the threat of deportation to Rwanda would stop migrants from making the dangerous journey across the Strait. It records more than 4,600 people migrated crossed the strait from January to March, surpassing the previous total for that period.
Critics and lawmakers say yes no evidence The plan will act as a deterrent.
Sunak, who is following in the polls ahead of the election scheduled for this fall, is carrying out the Conservative Party’s re-election campaign according to this plan, despite some Legal challenge from leading British and European courts. In one of his latest moves, last year, Sunak introduced “urgent” the act enshrined in British law that Rwanda was a safe country, in an attempt to save the scheme after it was abandoned struck down by the UK Supreme Court.
There have been no migrant deportation flights departing from London to Rwanda in the two years since the plan was first announced by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In June 2022, a plane was grounded following an 11th-hour ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. intervention to prevent the deportation of one of the asylum seekers on the flight.
This set the stage for the remaining six people on the flight to launch legal challenges in the London courts. Last year, NPR spoke with an asylum seeker from Iran who was on that grounded plane.
“They treated us like criminals and murderers. Every time I knocked on the door, I thought the authorities would come and escort us back to that plane,” said the man who is currently living temporarily in a hotel. with NPR.
The plan has attracted widespread attention criticism from human rights groups and lawmakers from different parties, Include some within Sunak’s own party, who said it was inconsistent with the UK’s responsibilities under international human rights law. Many also believe it is no coincidence that Sunak pushed this through Parliament within months of the expected election.
“Much of this is performative cruelty,” said Daniel Merriman, a lawyer who represents several asylum seekers who have been deported to Rwanda in the past. “The elephant in the room in the upcoming election.”
Opinion polls show that the British public is largely divided about the idea of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Sunder Katwala, director of Britain’s future, a nonpartisan think tank that researches public attitudes. “On the question of whether it would happen, whether it would work and whether it would be worth the money, the majority were very skeptical about this.”
The British government has paid to Rwanda Nearly 300 million USD to receive refugees England doesn’t want it.
While Sunak’s Conservatives largely support the move to Rwanda, some hardliners in his party say the latest version of the law, which has been rewritten several times, is not tough enough. snake. Suella Braverman, the former interior secretary who spearheaded the Rwanda plan when she was in office, said latest This version was “seriously flawed”, with “too many loopholes” that would not have prevented the crossing.
While Sunak may have overcome one hurdle this week, experts say he can expect others.
“His real headaches may lie ahead,” Katwala said. Now he has to show whether it works or not.”
One challenge can be getting an airline to agree to participate. On Monday, experts from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Aviation authorities warned against facilitating what it called the “illegal deportations” of asylum seekers to Rwanda, saying they risked violating international human rights law.
And court challenges could delay implementation of the law, Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, told The Associated Press.
“I don’t think it has to be at home and dry,” he said. “We will see some efforts to legally stop evictions.”
