Great Britain
How London wants to act against migrants
Great Britain has a space problem. So far, migrants have mainly been staying in hotels, which costs more than six million pounds a day, according to the government. photo
© Gareth Fuller/PA/dpa
Internment on barges and speedy deportation to Rwanda – the conservative British government is tightening the laws to deter irregular migrants. Is London breaking international law?
Critics find the choice of words too drastic: “Illegal Migration Bill” – draft law on illegal migration – is the name of the project with which the British government wants to prevent irregular entries.
Anyone who enters the country should be immediately declared persona non grata, and there should be no right to asylum. First of all, it is irrelevant whether they are refugees from Syria, for example, or people from a country of origin that is considered safe and are looking for work.
If Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman have their way, all people who reach the British shore in small boats via the English Channel should be immediately interned and soon afterwards deported to Rwanda. There are almost no legal routes into the kingdom for migrants. On Wednesday, the House of Commons voted in favor of the bill in a third reading by a majority of 59 MPs. Before the law can go into effect, it still needs to get the approval of the House of Lords.
Sharp criticism from the United Nations
The mood is heated. The planned measures do not go far enough, especially for the loud right wing of the ruling Tory party. In their sights: the judges of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Luxembourg. They had stopped a first deportation flight to Rwanda at the last minute. If necessary, the Tory hardliners are demanding that Great Britain simply leave the human rights convention. In order to appease them, the government incorporated further provisions intended to make it more difficult for a court to stop deportations.
However, critics of the bill, including the United Nations, have condemned the move as a violation of international obligations. Under the UN Refugee Convention, which also applies to Great Britain, every persecuted person has the right to apply for asylum in a safe country of their choice – regardless of how they got there. The organizations Refugee Council and Barnardo’s estimate that up to 15,000 unaccompanied minors could be detained by the British authorities under the new law in the next three years.
Premier Sunak does not dispute that. His government claims that irregular immigration – once described as an “invasion” by Interior Secretary Braverman – cannot be stopped with tough laws. In the meantime, even a barge has been rented off the coast of southern England to accommodate hundreds of people.
For conservatives, the high number of migrants is a sensitive issue
Because Great Britain has a space problem. So far, migrants have mainly been staying in hotels, which costs more than six million pounds a day, according to the government. There are no reception camps – until the country left the EU, it had little to do with undesired immigration. Accordingly, there are no capacities. But since Brexit, there has been no return agreement with the EU.
A good 45,000 came to Great Britain via the English Channel last year, which is significantly fewer than Germany, for example. But for the Conservatives, the comparatively high numbers are a sensitive issue: they had promised that Britain would regain control of its own borders with Brexit. Since then, strict immigration rules have applied to EU citizens. But now thousands of non-EU citizens are crossing the watery border. They are attracted by lax work regulations, the language is known to most, and many already have friends and relatives in the country.
“When people come to you, take care of them”
From now on, anyone who enters the country irregularly should be sent to Rwanda – and settle there if an application for asylum is granted in the African country. All preparations have been made in Rwanda. As early as the summer of 2022, government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo said the country offered legal support and translation services, as well as adequate housing.
In Rwandan society, the topic is hardly discussed – for fear of reprisals from the authoritarian government. President Paul Kagame has led the country for more than 20 years. He only tolerates opposition to a limited extent. One of the few openly criticizing the project is opposition politician Frank Habineza: “We are against this type of agreement,” he said. “When people come to you, take care of them. We all signed the UN Convention.”
Rwanda is already one of the countries with the highest population density. This also seems to be clear to ruler Kagame. Earlier this year he threatened refugees from the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo: “We cannot continue to take in refugees for whom we will later be held responsible in some way,” said Kagame. Internationally, this raised doubts about Rwanda’s reliability for a deportation project.
Rwanda is safe, according to the British government. She wants to get the asylum law off the table quickly. Because by the time of the 2024 election, she wants to push through other controversial projects. Sunak wants to deny some employees in systemically important sectors such as the health service or the fire brigade the right to strike. In another draft law, the right to demonstrate is to be tightened in order to prevent large-scale protests, for example by climate protectionists. For some critics, such measures are just the tip of the iceberg. The Tories, they say, are undermining British democracy.