I just heard on the BBC radio news that the first eight immigrants are on their way to Rwanda. But shouldn’t it be Rwanda’s decision who comes into their country? How does the UK have the right or authority to send someone to another country?
Sending Immigrants to Rwanda
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Jury’s still out on the legality. But the guv are sending them to Rwanda with the Rwandan government’s agreement – and paying Rwanda a shitload of cash.
What the folk applauding the scheme don’t seem to have clocked is that Rwanda can send what are described as ‘vulnerable refugees’ back to the UK. That’s going to go down well with the gammons, who are the ones BJ and PP are hoping to pacify with this fucking awful wheeze by a desperate, failing government.
Every time I think I can’t be any more ashamed of what we’ve become, I’m proved wrong.
Rant over.
The news said the Court of Appeal approved it.
Doesn’t make it any less repellent.
Absolutely.
The Court of Appeal did not approve the policy. It simply decided that the High Court judge had properly applied the established rules regarding the grant (or non-grant) of an injunction in this case and it declined to overturn his decision. An application for an injunction does not go into the merits of the underlying case, only whether it is a proper case for the court to intervene at that early stage. I understand that there will be a separate hearing on the legality of the policy, examining the legality of the policy, in due course.
Ed: A bit of unnecessary repetition in that last sentence, Mr Pajp.
Pajp: oops, oops.
My thoughts exactly.
Last-minute legal challenges suggest the jumbo jet might take off with only 7 or 8 people aboard. Has PP not heard of Global Warming?
Woke crap. Fake news.
Do they get a meal onboard served by Boris?
You have just expressed how I feel about it better than I ever could.
Well said.
A deal has been struck between our government and Rwanda’s. We[*] are paying Rwanda to take the people that our government don’t want here.
[*] It’s taxpayers money. Probably “resting” in a Swiss bank as we type.
It would not surprise me if a friend of Priti Patel’s earned a nice fat fee setting the deal up for her.
Something which has had pretty much coverage is that the UK is to take refugees from Rwanda too, presumably because it doesn’t play well with the ‘send them all packing’ narrative.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/memorandum-of-understanding-mou-between-the-uk-and-rwanda/memorandum-of-understanding-between-the-government-of-the-united-kingdom-of-great-britain-and-northern-ireland-and-the-government-of-the-republic-of-r
Gah! *no coverage. I shouldn’t post before I’ve had my coffee.
Has the Home Sec been in the bunker recently? All her Cabinet colleagues seem to be fronting this up in the media at the moment – no sign of Ms Patel…
She didn’t turn up at the Commons yesterday to defend it. When the high court approved it Chris Bryant said “lefty lawyers!”
Does she fancy her chances of becoming PM? Unbelievably, they could do worse. Liz “What does this button do?” Truss for starters.
Mon dieu! There’s a choice from hell…
She’s very popular in the party, apparently.
Dig out Protect and Survive, kids.
PP to follow Boris as PM….I would leave the country.
She cannot even speak properly FFS!
As a matter of interest: In the event of Priti Patel becoming PM, if anyone here was to leave this country in disgust, where would you go?
Easiest for me would be Eire, as my late mother was born there, so I should be able to claim citizenship.
Rwanda?
After Nicola and Boris have finished spatting, Scotland, maybe. Hopefully.
You should all come up to Scotland once we have split up.
Three nanoseconds after the wee Krankie agrees some form of weather improvement plan with Him upstairs, we’ll be coming north. As long as you don’t send us soft southern refugees to Rwanda as a consequence.
I think the weather improvement has already been agreed with 250 years of CO2 emissions. Who needs God when you have Mammon?
Not sure about it being an improvement. Higher temperatures, yes. Along with increased rainfall and even more midges, probably
Gawd ‘elp us! A few decades ago, they had midges on Islay which would munch through corrugated iron roofs to get at ye!
I reckon it’s a bit like when Johnson expected not to win the Brexit vote. The government were hoping that the courts would block the planes leaving, so Johnson could appeal to the red wall racists on two levels – they were trying to send the buggers back and were fighting against the establishment (convincing gullible people they were anti-establishment was one of the best tricks this lot pulled). Without a doubt, this is a vote winner up here, albeit not to the extent they hoped it would be, by a long shot.
The votes they won behind the red wall last time were mainly because of Brexit. I guess a small amount were due to the number the media did on Corbyn. But let’s face it, a big reason for people in places that would least benefit from Brexit voting for it was that it appealed to their worst traits. But they’ve done Brexit (apparently), so to keep these votes they think they need to pull a few stunts like this.
One of the more vocal critics of the is policy has been the UNHCR. So can anyone explain this to me:
https://www.unhcr.org/rw/15669-etm-rwanda-eu-support-helps-unhcr-to-bring-fresh-hope-to-a-young-refugee.html
So when an EU funded scheme sends refugees to Rwanda it gives them “fresh hope” and they are to be considered “fortunate”; but when the UK follows the same policy for people who are arriving from France…
They aren’t refugees. They are asylum seekers.
Seeking asylum from France?
No! This is dangerous nonsense. The International refugee Convention states that asylum seekers can seek asylum in any country they choose. ‘Safe country’ is a different thing altogether, covered by the Dublin Convention, which was an EU initiative that the UK is no longer party to. Yet another Brexit bonus. Now that we’re out of the EU, invoking safe country is merely another way of saying, ‘We are UK. We’re an island at the end of the line. If we pull up the drawbridge we can make it France’s problem. Or Germany’s, or Italy’s, or whatever.’ Classic Little England stuff.
As it happens France already accommodates more asylum seekers that the UK does, as do Germany. And people who elect to risk their lives coming to the UK do so because they have family here, or because they speak English, or because they have some weird idea that the UK is a nice country that will give them a warm welcome.
Over and out.
The people smugglers who endanger lives for their own profit will be delighted by this.
Of course it’s about Brexit. It always is.
Don’t let any inconvenient details get in the way of a casual and irrelevant swipe about Brexit consequences.
The ‘Common European Asylum System’ (inc. the ‘Dublin’ regulation) ceased to apply to the UK after January last year as a direct consequence of Brexit. It’s just the facts of the matter.
Brexit also means that we’ve lost the EU funding we had for asylum and immigration initiatives. But then you knew that, didn’t you?
I stand to be corrected, but I think the difference is that the UN scheme was optional – sanctuary was offered and either accepted or not, and only operated within Africa. From Libya mostly I think. Unlike the UK scheme, it wasn’t about securing the votes of the ‘Britain is full’ party.
A very fair point. But not relevant to my concern, which is how Rwanda – a Commonwealth country –is having its name dragged through the mud by people in this country who have a political axe to grind.
I find it a bit questionable when some complain about them going to Rwanda as if it’s some sort of hell. (In the Twitter sphere generally not on here necessarily)
I wonder if it’s a left over from the 1990’s genocide they had. But these days Rwanda is a perfectly stable liveable country, in need of young people of working age. We’re not sending them to their deaths.
Now now.. of course I think this is a silly policy. It’s emotive, it’s pointless and it doesn’t achieve anything other than throw a few bones to the more right wing in the Tory party. Plus make them more unappealing to the rest of us. But let’s not denigrate Rwanda at the same time. Africa is not some sort of hellhole.
I haven’t followed this news story all the closely, but isn’t the entire point of this policy (beyond looking hardline for the Tory base and baiting the left) that is disincentivises people to make the channel crossing because they don’t want to end up in Rwanda?
That’s presumably why the cost/benefit analysis stacks up, why planes will be leaving with half a dozen people on them, etc? The message it sends is don’t come here or you may end up there, with “there” being pretty clearly less desirable than “here” (or France, for that matter).
I’m not a fan of this policy, but the debate around it seems to miss the point in some ways. It’s obviously not tenable to have a total free for all across the channel, and will presumably become less tenable still as we begin to see mass climate migration. No one appears to have a good solution to the problem, so we’re left with two camps – one pretending it’s not an issue at all and the other attempting to navigate a response but arriving at what are ultimately gesture politic ideas like this one.
I don’t personally have a better solution, but I do wonder if the issue might benefit from a slightly different (and perhaps less polarised) discourse. Particularly given that otherwise we hand an easy win to the Tories, however this plays out.
All men aren’t they?
Presumably the traffickers will now focus more on women and children. Smaller – so fit more aboard – so – a Brucie (or, should that be, a Priti) Bonus!
“You don’t get anything for a pair, not in this game.”
Men and boys are the ones coming over because they are the ones who can most easily find work and earn money.
Women with children in tow have much less opportunity in that.
The reasoning is that the males can work and either send money to their families at home, save and then return home with a load of cash to set themselves up in business or else save enough to bring their families to join them later.
“It’s obviously not tenable to have a total free for all across the channel, and will presumably become less tenable still as we begin to see mass climate migration. No one appears to have a good solution to the problem…”
I do, @bingo-little. Take up the French offer of processing facilities at Calais (rejected by the UK government, natch). Put some proper thought and money into the procedure (including sufficient staff tested for their qualities of empathy, simplified forms, plenty of translators, no random bits of surrealism like granting visas to 3 members of a family but not to the fourth). Successful applicants, in controlled numbers, say 100 a week, will be given ferry tickets to Dover. Their arrival will be no surprise, so arrangements can be made for the onward journeys, accommodation etc. And let them work.
It’s tough for those waiting, but it already is. The numbers will build up, but successful applicants will know that their turn will come and that they won’t die en route. (Even under present circumstances getting on for 70% of applications from those who arrive by dinghy are eventually granted anyway.) Unsuccessful applicants may still try the people smuggler option, or they may simply decide to try their luck elsewhere if they are these fabled “economic migrants” that we hear so much about. But the smugglers’ business model, that the government is so keen to “smash” will take a big hit.
Anybody think this is a stupid idea?
No, I don’t think it is a stupid idea at all. And neither does the refugee charity (one of those “loony lefty” ones which failed at the High Court earlier this week) which my pal’s wife works for.
The current situation is nobody can apply for asylum in the UK, from anywhere but within the UK, because the UK Guv refuses to allow applications from, say, overseas British Embassies. And the UK does not offer safe passage to the UK for asylum seekers to apply within the UK. So people take to boats in order to arrive at Dover and apply.
With my problem-solving Engineering head on, the obvious solution is to open an application office in Calais. And to allow applications from British Embassies.
It’s worth asking why the government doesn’t opt for this common sense and relatively cheap way of discharging their international and humanitarian obligations, and instead opts for an absurdly expensive and morally repellent alternative that pleases nobody except their own lickspittles.
Answer on one side of the paper only.
I guess there’s a reason because other countries are trying to follow or have followed a similar path. Denmark will go the same way and Rwanda is their choice also. In fact I imagine the UK got the idea from them. Like much that populist, right wing politicians will do the ideas come from other like-minded politicians from elsewhere. They are all the same and often act the same! Ultimately much of it is seeking solutions to problems that all governments have and all politicial parties need to deal with one way or another. When I heard about Denmark’s plans I thought it was pretty smart and could remove the whole immigration issue as a political hot potato. I think they meant to have people live in Denmark once processed though, which is a whole other proposal.
I don’t think it’s a stupid idea by any means, particularly given the alternative.
That said, nor do I regard it as a slam dunk. It’s been discussed for years (in fact, I recall Theresa May being a fan at one point), but ultimately there’s a concern that demand is scalable, and that such processing facilities would prove to be something of a magnet.
It’s also not a solution to the specific problem I was talking about, which is the problem of deterrence. Even if you do open processing facilities of the type you discuss, you’re going to face the twin issues that not everyone will be granted asylum/prepared to wait to find out, and that demand for crossings has already risen rapidly and is expected to rise further. At the moment we are seeing just south of 30,000 individuals crossing per year, with another 60,000 or so prevented by the French authorities. That number is expected to climb even under the status quo. 100 approved applications a week gets you 5,000 out of those 90,000.
Those numbers will already grow in 2022. Stick a processing centre in Calais and it’s quite possible you’ll see further growth still, which would be a political disaster for whoever implemented the policy. A lot depends on whether the people crossing are truly asylum seekers or economic migrants. A lot of ink has been spilled over that question, but – let’s be real – given the numbers involved they’re going to be both, aren’t they? And no one really knows in what proportion.
With all of that in mind, we’re going to need to continue to deter those who want to cross from doing so. A Calais processing centre addresses one half of the equation, but not the half I believe lacks a proper solution (and that, frankly, makes us all uncomfortable to talk about).
I say all of this not to argue against your proposal. I think it’s a sensible one and if I were king for a day I’d be minded to try it. I say it to demonstrate the broader point I’m trying to make here: this is actually a really complicated issue, regardless of who’s in government, and it’s probably only going to get more urgent and complicated from here.
I struggle with the whole notion of economic migrants, if only because as far as the “It’s an Invasion” party are concerned everybody who turns up “illegally” is by definition an economic migrant. It’s almost as if they’re frightened by brown people in hoodies. It’s almost as if Afghanistan, Syria, Iran etc were lands of milk and honey and these people were simply after a salary bump.
But there are or have been actual wars or persecution of minorities going on in these countries. Inevitably suffering people leave, firstly to save their lives, secondly to find a better one. They are now refugees. Life in refugee camps in Jordan, Turkey or Greece, while technically “safe”, is no life at all. So then the thought process is, I assume, perhaps I can find a better life in Western Europe for myself and eventually my family. I’ll go to Germany/France/UK/wherever. I’ll have a terrible time getting there, but they look after people, I can apply for asylum. Perhaps I can find work, make some money and send for my wife and children.
So are these people now economic migrants according to the Farage definition? Of course not, they’re still refugees and entitled to seek asylum in any country they choose. Many choose the UK for whatever reason, and that’s their right.
So who are the economic migrants then? Albanians, perhaps? There are 3m Albanians in the country, 10m outside it, the economy is fucked by successive crises including the collapse of communism, the war in Kosovo etc. As far as I’m aware there’s no great degree of persecution there (correct me if I’m wrong), but Albanians who can’t make a decent living inside the country will naturally look elsewhere. And why not? Does this make them undesirables? Having seen a few movies I’d say possibly. Automatically so? Of course not.
So there are degrees of previous suffering, but everybody who turns up on the south coast is in search of a life better than the one he or she had before. Much the same as Jonny Ive when he left England to go and work for Apple in California. It’s up to the government to sort out the bad apples from the good and turn them back, instead of characterising them all as bad apples.
I’m sure there must be a ringing conclusion to all this toffee, but it’s getting late and it’s time for my nightly dram, during which I try not to tax my brain too much. So…
There are degrees of previous suffering, but the asylum route is meant to exist for people who have a real need and pressing need of it, rather than those who can’t make a decent living at home and think they might do better elsewhere.
That’s the (rough) distinction between an asylum seeker and an economic migrant, I’d have thought.
You’re quite right that it’s the job of the government to sort one from the other, but the problem – per my post – is that once they’ve done so (or even before they’ve done so) there will presumably still be people willing to risk a dangerous boat ride for the prospect of a better life. And we don’t really know what proportion of the 90,000+ listed above fall into that bracket.
The fact that there are people who think that all 90,000 are economic migrants should not blind us to the fact that – inevitably – some of them will be. Otherwise we end up in a daft, binary debate that’s based more on avoiding looking like the enemy than actually engaging with the reality of the situation.
It shouldn’t need stating, but equally none of the above should blind us to the hardships endured by what I’m sure is a comfortable majority of those attempting to enter the UK in this manner.
Obviously, per my previous post, there will be people who risk a dangerous boat ride (not to mention a long and dangerous land journey) as long as there are no practical alternatives. Would people who can’t make a decent living at home put themselves through that? I suppose they must.
It’s not practical I suppose for Afghans or Syrians to apply for asylum in Kabul or Damascus, not least because we don’t have embassies in either place any more. But further down the line, perhaps? Roving diplomats in the camps? Dunno – I have a sudden vision of Richard Wattis in long khaki shorts.
I suppose I cling to the notion that a civilised country would simply find a way to separate people we want (or don’t mind having, perhaps) from people we don’t want, whether they are refugees or economic migrants. Then the distinction ceases to have any meaning.
At the moment, this country is crying out for economic migrants. Staff shortages are holding back every sector of the economy.
I don’t think the country is crying out to resolve its economic problems with labour arriving illegally via dinghy.
Sorry Bingo, but a great many would arrive legally if the Gov’t actually made 10% of the effort to open legal entry channels that they are putting into this Rwandian farce.
Tens of thousands of economic migrants do arrive in this country every year, via just such channels.
Perhaps that number should be higher, but this is a conversation about asylum seekers/people arriving on boats.
To the extent that those people are economic migrants they should not be entering the country unlawfully.
I wouldn’t have expected that to be a controversial notion.
I think it’s an obligation for the UK as a so called first world nation to face into a rolling humanitarian disaster and offer some practical help; to do something more than say “the rules is the rules” and someone else’s problem.
Of course. Although I don’t think we’re meant to use the term “first world” any more.
When I’m PM (surely only a matter of time) I will abolish the term economic migrant altogether. It’s become a weapon of stigma in the culture wars, and I think we can agree that people who use it to the exclusion of all equivalents are an absolute shower and should be put in the stocks.
Henceforth they will be known as PINFOWAAFOHIMABL (People In Need From Overseas Who Are Asking For Our Help In Making A Better Life), such help to be given or refused according to a set of humane principles and circumstances.
@bingo-little Are you gonna tell Professor Griff or shall I?
If you think we could have this sort of debate openly within Rwanda, you must have got hold of some Rwandan Tourism Authority brochures by mistake.
It isn’t a hell hole, but neither is it “a perfectly stable country”, it’s still a pressure cooker country with the lid being kept on by an authoritarian leader (alleged to have been responsible for the assassination that kicked things off in the ’90s) who cracks down on anyone and anything he doesn’t like.
The argument that the government seems to be advancing is – this is to dissuade people from crossing the channel; it’s the immorality of the people smugglers we are tackling; if asylum seekers think they’ll end up in Rwanda, they’ll stay in France; there are legal ways for people to flee war zones and torture to the UK; you don’t have an alternative; shut up Buttwad.
There also seem to be a lot of unspoken assumptions underlying that. It’s bad to let people come into this country; there’s no reason why they should come here rather than stay in another ‘safe country’; there actually is a legal route into the UK for asylum seekers; asylum seekers with family or friends in the UK will be dissuaded; if we close the borders, the problem will go away; we can buy minerals, food and other commodities from these countries, but they can’t come here; we can sell weapons that get used by warring factions in their countries, we can even send our militaries into those countries, but they can’t come here; the world’s problems stop at the channel and we don’t inhabit the same planet with the same climatic conditions which our industrial revolution instigated.
I’m not sure what would happen if there was a ‘free for all’ across the channel, but I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have David Cameron’s ‘swarms’ on the hovercrafts and ferries. Most people are still in their home countries, or in neighboring ones. The UK has a problem of too few people to do the jobs needed. Many western countries seem to have too low a birthrate to sustain the less economically active older generations.
Somehow the states that govern the countries of the world, supported by the people who live in and among and between those notional entities, have to work out between them how to manage the inevitable demographic movements as more and more wet bulb zones, floods, droughts and sea level rises make areas of the world uninhabitable for human life. Either that, or we build fortresses, live on cabbages and potatoes and let them all die.
It’s not really cool to quote me viz “free for all” and then start talking about the UK birthrate in the same breath, as if I was commenting on overall immigration.
It is, however, deeply characteristic of the manner in which these discussions frequently occur.
For the record: big fan of immigration. It’s the reason I’m here in the first place, helping address those demographic shortfalls (both on this blog and in wider society).
All of that said, I still don’t regard it as particularly desirable to simply declare that anyone who can make it over by boat is free to stay. Nor do I believe it to be politically tenable, unless you want the Tories in power forever.
Apologies, Bingo, if it seemed I implied something untoward. I hope you know me well enough by now that I post in the spirit of inquiry and am always willing to be corrected if I misattribute thoughts or associations. Also, I can be a bit obtuse – but not intentionally malign.
I liked a lot of what you posted – getting to the underlying substance behind the current stirred-up moral panic. I suppose I was caught by surprise and didn’t really understand what you meant by a ‘free for all’. The impression I get when I have heard it used before is an example of the language the current government is happy to use to polarise the debate into – either you support exporting all who cross the channel by boat to Rwanda, or you think all the world will and should come unrestricted to the UK. It’s the sort of stuff that Farage pumped out with his breaking point poster and Cummings targeted with his FB microadverts suggesting all of Turkey would move to the UK if Brexit didn’t happen. It didn’t seem like you.
There are people on the other side of the Channel to England who want to and are crossing over. Could their claims not be processed in France, or be brought over to the UK to be processed in the UK? Maybe I am being characteristically obtuse, but what would be undesirable about letting them stay? My point about low birthrate and unfilled jobs was to suggest that Britain is not full, but rather in need of employment-age people willing to work. Are not asylum seekers a subsection of immigrants as a whole?
If they are vilified, then yes, Tories may remain in power forever – though I suspect they would always find another scapegoat even if people realized that asylum seekers are individuals, not anonymous numbers.
Can we take the heat out of the discussion, but keep the light shining?
Not to worry, Sal – there’s no heat here, I’m not angry. I know you’re a good spirited person, I just felt the need to flag and correct, for hopefully obvious reasons.
I would be wary of the urge to sort people into camps, particularly on the basis of there having used a fairly commonplace expression. It’s often a cheap alternative to actual engagement with ideas and it allows one the delusion of believing that anyone who thinks differently to you must wear the proverbial black cap. Farage? Please.
What would be undesirable about letting people into the country without any sort of regulation or documentation, entirely outside any system of control or record and in a manner which puts said people at some considerable peril in the journey? I’d have thought that should be obvious.
There should be a clear pathway for asylum seekers (and yes, I’m aware that the current pathway is anything but clear). They should be deterred from entering outside that path. There should be controls at the border, as there are at most borders. These aren’t wild ideas.
The Rwanda policy is highly unlikely to succeed, and it’s clearly distasteful on a number of levels, if not outright unlawful. It’s not something I would vote for. However, I can understand that to those for whom these issues are a concern, it does at least look like an attempt to address the problem.
On the wider subject of immigration: after the Brexit vote I spent a lot of time listening to people whose views I don’t share, or from walks of life that are not my own. It became apparent that, although to me immigration is wonderful – it means I get to be born, and to live in a lovely multicultural area where everyone is relatively well off and our kids all get to play together and share their cultures – not everyone has that experience, and that there isn’t one single monolithic truth on the subject. I try to remember that now when these things come up – that my own experience is not the only experience. Because if we fail to recognise that, and particularly if we paint the negative experiences of others as some sort of personal moral failing in all instances, I think it can lead us to some fairly dark places, Brexit being one of them.
Anyway – that’s about as much as I have to contribute on this subject. I don’t feel super strongly on the matter in either direction, other than that I don’t think you will ever convince the British public (in particular) that completely open borders are either viable or desirable, and that it’s best to grapple with that reality rather than ignore it or shoo it away.
Thanks for coming back and taking my reply with good grace, Bingo.
Mike’s response above, about pragmatic and sensitive processing of applicants is probably where I stand. Not completely open borders, but managing the issue openly, responsibly and countering lies with facts.
I think Cummings and Farage exploited people’s justified feelings of neglect, by inflating their fears with lies for their own ends and while the Rwanda policy might be an attempt to solve a problem, it’s like hitting a screw with a hammer, rather than using a screwdriver.
I sense we’re not so far apart that better clarity on my part would have elucidated.
Aw, you guys!
Got to say, Bingo – twould be far easier to admit that what Salwarpe says here sums up the entire rotten situation perfectly rather than pick pedantic holes. “Yeah, that nails it” would have done
I hereby withdraw the word “pedantic” and apologise for its use
Some good news to wake up to this morning. For now, anyway.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61806383
Suella Braverman has had to try and say that Boris Johnson – the Prime Minister – wasn’t implying that asylum seekers shouldn’t be defended.
” I’m always going to support lawyers who take on difficult cases and it is of crucial importance that they are free to do so. That is the cab rank rule … that is the golden thread running through the profession.”
When it was put to her that her words were at odds with what Boris Johnson told cabinet yesterday, when he implied that the lawyers opposing the deportations were “abetting the work of criminal gangs”, she said that she wasn’t sure Johnson used that phrase and she suggested he was being misquoted. (Johnson did use that phrase, and he wasn’t being misquoted.)
Nice little foretaste of what we can expect when we leave the European convention on human rights.
Just a quick one to point out that, despite today’s dead cat, seeking asylum is not a criminal offence and so ankle tags will not be required, thankyouverymuch.
Although, can the AW hive mind think of anyone who has recently had a run in with the law?