British Parliament approves plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda

Updated April 22, 2024 at 10:47 p.m. ET

LONDON More than two years after its first introduction, the British government's controversial project plans to expel asylum seekers in Rwanda was approved by Parliament on Tuesday morning.

The unelected House of Lords cleared the way for the bill to become law after dropping the last of its suggested amendments just after midnight, the Associated Press reported.

Even before his signature policy was adopted, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stood on Monday at a lectern emblazoned with the slogan “stop the boats,” a reference to one of his key elections. campaign promises. At a press conference, he told reporters he would stop at nothing to pass the legislation, to deter people without visas from crossing the Channel from France to England.

“No ifs, no buts. These flights are going to Rwanda”, Sunak said.

The plan is to send some of the people the government says are arriving in the UK illegally to Rwanda, where local authorities would process their asylum applications.

Great Britain sign A agreement with Rwanda in April 2022, during which Rwanda agreed to process and settle asylum seekers who initially arrive in Britain.

British government says threat of deportation to Rwanda deter migrants to undertake the dangerous journey across the Channel. He recorded more than 4,600 migrants crossing the English Channel from January to March, surpassing the previous total for this period.

Critics and lawmakers say there is no proof the plan would have a deterrent effect.

Sunak, who is lagging behind in the polls with the elections scheduled for this fall approaching, is putting his Conservative Party's re-election campaign on this plan, despite several legal challenges of the highest British and European courts. In one of his latest initiatives, last year, Sunak introduced “emergency» legislation to enshrine in British law that Rwanda is a safe country, in a bid to save the plan after its completion. struck by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.

No flights deporting migrants left London for Rwanda in the two years after then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the plan. In June 2022, a plane was grounded following a last-minute ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which intervened to prevent the deportation of one of the asylum seekers on board the flight.

This prompted the other six people on board the flight to take legal action in the London courts. Last year, NPR spoke with an Iranian asylum seeker, who was on board this grounded plane.

“They treated us like criminals and murderers. Every time we knock on the door, I think it's the authorities coming to escort us to that plane,” the man, who is now temporarily living in a hotel, told NPR.

The plan was widely publicized criticism of human rights groups and lawmakers from different parties, some of whom within Sunak's own party, who believe this is incompatible with the UK's responsibilities under international human rights law. Many also say it is no coincidence that Sunak is pushing this bill through Parliament a few months after the scheduled election.

“A lot of it is performative cruelty,” says Daniel Merriman, a lawyer who has represented some of the asylum seekers scheduled to be deported to Rwanda in the past. “The elephant in the room in the next election. »

Opinion polls show that the British public is widely divided on the idea of ​​deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.

“In principle, people are really divided in two,” explains Sunder Katwala, director of The British future, a nonpartisan think tank that studies public attitudes. “As for the question of whether it’s going to happen, whether it’s going to work and whether it’s going to be profitable, a majority is already very skeptical about it.”

The British government has already paid Rwanda nearly 300 million dollars to welcome asylum seekers Britain doesn't want to.

While Sunak's Conservatives largely support the transfer to Rwanda, some hardliners in his party say the latest version of the legislation, which has been rewritten several times, is not strict enough. Suella Braverman, a former interior minister who led the Rwanda plan when she was in power, said the last This version was “fatally flawed”, with “too many flaws” which would not stop the passages.

While Sunak may have overcome one hurdle this week, experts say he can expect more.

“His real headaches might be ahead.” Now he has to show whether it works or not,” says Katwala.

A challenge could be to get an airline to agree to participate. On Monday, experts from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned the aeronautical authorities against facilitating what it calls “illegal returns” of asylum seekers to Rwanda, saying they risk violating international human rights laws.

And legal challenges could delay implementation of the legislation, Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, told The Associated Press.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily a cut and dry situation,” he said. “We will see attempts to legally block evictions. »

Copyright 2024 NPR. To learn more, visit https://www.npr.org.