The British Parliament approved a bill allowing asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda. The disputed bill will now go to the committee round. The government wants to send asylum seekers arriving across the English Channel by boat to Rwanda.
In the lower house of the Parliament, the votes were divided 313 in favor and 269 against. The government hopes that the law will be enacted before the next elections.
The British Supreme Court blocked the legal initiative in November.
According to it, Rwanda is not a safe country for asylum seekers because it can send the arrivals back to their country of origin or to another unsafe country.
Now the prime minister Rishi Sun too initiative, Rwanda is declared a safe country by law.
It also means that the Supreme Court must follow the law and cannot prevent people from being sent to the country.
The law also nullifies parts of the British Human Rights Act for Rwanda, including the sections that mandate compliance with international agreements.
Thus, the European Court of Human Rights cannot ban flights by invoking the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Convention on Refugees.
1) Have Rwanda and Britain agreed on the matter?
The first agreement was made Boris Johnson during the prime minister’s term last year.
British Home Secretary James Cleverley signed a new deal with Rwanda after the Supreme Court struck down the government’s plans.
According to the government, the new agreement guarantees that Rwanda will not send asylum seekers to their country of origin or to another unsafe country.
According to the agreement, Rwanda would process the applications. The goal is to repatriate the applicants to Rwanda. If Rwanda rejects the application, it will send the applicant to a third safe country or even return the applicant to Britain.
Britain has already paid 280 million euros to Rwanda and plans to pay another 58 million euros in financial support in the name of cooperation.
According to the agreement, part of the asylum seekers would be sent to Rwanda. The number is estimated to be possibly only a few hundreds.
2) What chances did the law have to pass?
The entire opposition was expected to oppose the proposal.
The passage of the bill looked bad because the ranks of the ruling conservative party are cracking. The Times previously reported that more than 40 conservatives the parliamentarian was threatened with either opposing the proposal or voting no. The bill would have been defeated if 30 conservatives had voted against it.
3) Why don’t all conservatives support Sunak’s bill?
The conservative right wing believes that the law does not go far enough. These representatives want to ban appeals against asylum decisions – and, in fact, the application of asylum altogether. According to the right wing of the party, the Rwandan law would still allow appeals against decisions on asylum and sending to Rwanda.
The moderate center of the party, on the other hand, considers the law too strict. According to them, it violates Britain’s human rights commitments.
4) Why is the government pushing the Rwanda law?
According to the government, the flights to Rwanda would serve as a deterrent to aspirants and human smugglers. In Britain, public opinion opposes entry without legal documents. The law that came into force in the summer prohibits asylum seekers from arriving by boat.
The government has made stopping the boats its core promise. It obsessively pursues the Rwanda plan as the most visible act of immigration policy.
5) What effect would the law have on immigration?
The effect on immigration would be vanishingly small. This year, around 27,000 people have arrived in Britain by boat. Only hundreds or a few thousand of them would be sent to Rwanda every year.
160,000 asylum seekers are currently awaiting a decision in a slow-moving process. Tens of thousands of applicants are accommodated in hotels. It costs Britain nine million euros a day.
Immigration in general is at a record high, even though the government promised that leaving the EU would reduce it. Last year, net immigration was 745,000 people. The immigration of EU citizens has collapsed. The largest countries of origin are India, China and Nigeria. Britain lets Ukrainians and Hongkongers into the country for humanitarian reasons.
6) What is the position of Chief Minister Rishi Sunak?
Chief Minister Rishi Sunak’s position is very shaky. If the expensive and spectacular operation had not been successful, the prime minister’s prestige would have suffered a loss. The British media even predicted that this would bring down the Prime Minister and perhaps even lead to new elections.
7) What does the opposition say about the law?
Leader of the opposition Labor Party Kier Starmer has promised to nullify the Rwanda law if the party wins the parliamentary elections next year. The party leads the conservatives in opinion polls by 20 percentage points.
Starmer called the Rwanda law a performance art and a drop in the ocean. “At most a hundred people are taken there, but we have 160,000 people waiting for an asylum decision,” Starmer told the BBC.
According to the opposition, the Rwanda plan is expensive for Britain, which is suffering from a cost-of-living crisis. Starmer promises to stop illegal immigration by cracking down on people-smuggler groups transporting boat refugees in cooperation with other countries.
12.12. at 21:41 Updated throughout with the results of the parliamentary vote. Corrected on 13.12. 12:10 p.m.: the bill still goes to the committee round.