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“This is an immeasurably cruel policy targeting the most vulnerable people in language not unlike that used by Germany in the 1930s.”
This tweet from star BBC sports presenter Gary Lineker, in which he criticized the British government’s new asylum policy, has led to a controversy over impartiality that has left the former footballer off the screens.
But what is this new policy whose fate will be defined by Parliament and which has received harsh criticism from the opposition and from organizations that work with refugees?
The new immigration law that Rishi Sunak’s executive has sent to the legislature seeks, according to the government, to reduce the number of migrants who arrive “illegally” in the United Kingdom.
As announced by Sunak himself, from now on “illegal” immigrants who arrive in small boats with which they cross the English Channel, they will be detained and expelled from the countryeither to Rwanda or to another country considered safe.
The United Kingdom agreed in 2022 with Rwanda on a program to send migrants and refugees who clandestinely entered its territory to the African country.
However, since plans to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda were announced last April, no one has yet been sent there, as the move has been challenged in court by human rights groups.
the new rules
These migrants arriving by boat they will not be able to apply for asylum and, once expelled, they will not be able to return or apply for British nationality in the future.
Migrants will also not be able to obtain bail or be allowed to request a judicial review during the first 28 days of detention.
image source, Leon Neal
Ending the arrival of illegal migrants has been one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s political promises.
According to the British prime minister, the law is “fair”, both for people who already live in the United Kingdom and for those who “have a legitimate right to request asylum”.
The expulsion could deferred for minors, those who are medically unable to fly or those who are at risk of serious violations in the country to which they would be transferred.
The legislation, which was presented this week and which has already begun its process in the House of Commons, will apply retrospectively to all those who arrive clandestinely in the United Kingdom since March 7.
The government wants refugees to use “safe and legal pathways” to claim asylum, but it will also set a limit on the number of people it will settle in this way.
The new law is located in the limits of international lawhas recognized the Minister of the Interior, Suella Braverman, but she does not break it, as she has said.
The law, the British government says, also seeks to break with the model of smuggling mafias that facilitate these “lethally dangerous” journeys and will act “as a deterrent and save lives,” Braverman said in December.
For the leader of the opposition, the Labor Party Keir Starmer, the plan presented by the government is “unfeasible”.
More of 45,000 people entered through this route to the UK in 2022, a sharp increase from 2018, when just 300 people crossed the dangerous seaway by boat. Shipwrecks are frequent and many have drowned.
The British government believes that the issue of migrants arriving by boat is something that concerns voters and that it will be key in the next elections, so ministers are willing to test their legal limits to tackle it. It was one of the central promises of Sunak’s tenure.
Within this strategy, the United Kingdom has strengthened cooperation with France, from where most of the boats with refugees and migrants depart. At a summit in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron, Sunak announced Friday that Britain will finance a new detention center on the French coast and the hiring of 500 more border agents, all worth US$600 million.
image source, Getty Images
Migrants wait to be processed after arriving on a small boat on the British coast.
For organizations that work with migrants, the new law will leave thousands of people in limbo.
“It is unfeasible, expensive and will not stop the arrival of the boats“, has criticized Enver Solomon, director of the Refugee Council, one of the NGOs that have denounced the government’s plans. The organization believes that the new rule shatters the United Kingdom’s commitment to provide refugees with a fair hearing, regardless of how have arrived in the territory, in accordance with the UN Convention.
Currently, asylum seekers arriving in the UK have the right to seek protection under the UN Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has described the measures included in the new law as “very worrying” as it believes that it would leave even those with a convincing asylum claim without protection.
His representative in the United Kingdom, Vicky Tennant, assured the BBC Newsnight program that the measure would violate international law. “We believe that is a clear violation of the Refugee Convention“, and recalled that “even people with very compelling requests simply will not have the opportunity to present them.”
The Refugee Convention, first agreed to in 1951, is a multilateral treaty that establishes who qualifies as a refugee and the obligations of signatory states to protect them.
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