Thursday 14th April was the day that asylum seekers in the United Kingdom woke up to a new reality. Cut in this new reality includes both intending and some existing asylum seekers who are already on UK soil.
It was a day the asylum system in the United Kingdom may have been permanently altered to the detriment of many asylum hopefuls. Most of these asylum seekers and migrants are indeed running from very desperate and life threatening situations in their home countries.
On the said day, in faraway Rwanda in East Africa, about 4,000 miles from the UK, Priti Patel, the UK Home Secretary dropped the bombshell that have reverberated across the UK landscape and beyond.
The Home Secretary announced a new deal struck between the UK and Rwanda which provides a new arrangement for the processing of asylum seekers who arrive in the UK through what she described as illegal channel.
The new arrangement, which was also collaborated at home by Boris Johnson on the same day, will in effect allow the UK government to bundle the affected asylum seekers into a one-way flight to Rwanda. The UK Prime Minister referred to this arrangement as “the morally right thing to do”.
While in temporary holding camps in Rwanda, their asylum applications will be processed and assessed by the Rwandan government right there in their country. This assessment is expected to be concluded within three months.
Anyone whose application is eventually found or considered successful by the Rwandan authorities, will then possibly be offered asylum in Rwanda. There is never a chance of returning the asylum seekers to settle in the UK, no matter the genuineness of the asylum claim.
For hosting the asylum seekers and for assuming the UK government`s responsibilities under international law, the Rwanda government will be paid by the UK a whopping sum of £120m yearly in what they referred to as development aid.
BASIC FACTS
- This new arrangement has a retroactive effect, and will affect asylum seekers who arrived in the UK since 1st of January 2022.
- UK government claims that only migrants who arrived the country through illegal channels will be affected. Such illegal channel migrants are those who cross into UK from France through the English Channel.
- The new arrangement according to UK government is intended to dissuade people from coming to the UK through unlawful routes.
- It is also targeted at discouraging the risky option of crossing the English Channel.
- As a further deterrent, people who ply in human trafficking who are actually responsible for smuggling migrants and asylum seekers into the country are target for imprisonment.
- It was also stated that the relocation of asylum seekers to Rwanda would majorly affect singles, meaning that people with family might be spared the sorrowful one-way ticket to Rwanda, a country the US State Department as recent as last week described as a country with “significant human rights issues”.
- Though they government have claimed that this new policy will target single young men without families and asylum seekers whose claim are judged inadmissible, however, the Prime Minister in his speech heralding the policy stated that the number of people may be affected will be “unlimited”.
- The UK government also says that Rwandan citizens who come to the UK for asylum will not be affected by the new policy, and will not be relocated back to their home country.
- The new arrangement is expected to be codified in the new UK Immigrations and Boarders Bill, which has suffered defeats in the parliament, but expected to be resubmitted in the coming week. However. The BBC reports that the Home Office believes the current asylum laws are sufficient to support the immediate implementation of the deal.
- A snap poll on the same day the deal was announced, which was carried out by YouGov, a UK based firm shows that majority of participants were opposed to the Rwanda UK asylum.
NOTABLE QUOTES
In his speech heralding the Rwanda deal, the Prime Minister said: “We cannot have people continuing to die at sea, paying huge sums to evil people traffickers who are simply exploiting their hopes and their ambitions. “We need to encourage them to take the safe and legal route if they want to come to this country. Our compassion may be infinite but our capacity to help people is not… we can’t ask the British taxpayer to write a blank cheque to cover the costs of anyone who might want to come and live here” he said.
Priti Patel, the UK Home Secretary who was in Kigali, to ink the Rwanda UK deal said: It was a “global first and it will change the way we collectively tackle illegal migration”, she said.
The UK Shadow Home Secretary – Yvette Cooper, tweeted: “Desperate & truly shameful announcement from Govt tonight as an attempt to distract from Boris Johnson’s lawbreaking. Unworkable, unethical & extortionate”.
The Labour leader Keir Starmer called the deal: “pathetic distraction”.
Also, a group of moderate Conservative MPs under the banner of “The Tory Reform Group”, tweeted saying that the deal was “wrong because vulnerable individuals should not be transported across the globe to be processed” and that it is “irresponsible because this hastily thought through plan will cost taxpayers millions”.
Further, Enver Solomon, the Chief Executive of the Refugee Council, a British charity organization for asylum seekers, in response to the deal said that his organization was “appalled by the government’s cruel and nasty decision”.
BACKGROUND
Asylum seekers have been a turning issue in the British Home Office, especially since 2019 when Priti Patel assumed the office of the Home Secretary. The asylum issue became more pivotal with the increase of the number of migrants crossing the English Channel from France.
This crossing became even more pronounced since Brexit, when French government following disagreement with Britain decided to look the other way, while smugglers and human traffickers have a field day making brisk business from smuggling asylum seekers into the UK through France.
As far back as 2020 Priti Patel is reported to have considered the idea of relocating migrants outside of the UK for asylum processing. However, this idea never came to light and died stillborn, until this recent attempt that has just been inked in a deal with Rwanda at the cost of £120m to British tax payers.
Previously, a similar deal of relocating asylum seekers, which was entered into between Israel and Rwanda have not received a good review. Victims who were relocated from Israel to Rwanda under this arrangement were each reported to have cried had I known. The deal between Israel and Rwanda was discontinued in 2017, and out of about 4,000 people relocated to Rwanda under the deal, only 9 people remained. Each of the 9 people remained not out of choice but basically out of helplessness.
5 years after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland wants to repeat the same error.
FOLLOW THE NEWS
Like and follow Clariform on social media and stay connected to the news and things that matters to you.
FACEBOOK I TWITTER I INSTAGRAM
