7 MARCH 2023 | NEWS
The Government has today introduced legislation intended to curb the arrival of illegal immigrants by the vector of small boat crossings of the English Channel.
Known as the Illegal Migration Bill, the new legislation will ensure that people who arrive in Britain via an illegal route will not be able to claim either asylum or citizenship in this country, or to settle in Britain.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman told the House of Commons that asylum-seekers arriving through unauthorised channels would face detention and, if deported to another country like Rwanda for processing – or their own country if deemed safe – would never be allowed to travel to the UK again.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the measures as “tough”, but also “necessary and fair”. But Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said they amounted to letting people-smugglers “off the hook”.
He added that the present asylum system was “devastatingly unfair” on those migrants who do seek to come to the UK via legal routes, such as the UK Resettlement Scheme, the Community Sponsorship Scheme, the Mandate Resettlement Scheme or Refugee Family Reunion.
Meanwhile, the UNHCR (the UN’s refugee agency) has said it is “profoundly concerned” over the Bill, expressing the view that it would effectively amount to an “asylum ban”, as well as “a clear breach of the Refugee Convention”.
Speaking to journalists, the Prime Minister said he believed the new system being introduced was compliant with international law, as well as the European Convention on Human Rights, adding: “We have tried every other way – it has not worked.”
The UK is currently obliged to take in refugees under the Refugee Convention, signed in 1951, and to hear each case fairly. Its core principle is ‘non-refoulement’, which disallows the return of a refugee to a country where they may face a serious threat to their freedom or life.
The Government has said that “deterrents can work and will work” for those seeking to enter the country illegally, adding that there has already been “a change in numbers”, specifically referring to migrants coming from Albania.
But Labour MP Stephen Kinnock has proposed an alternative solution, saying that a negotiated deal with the EU would be the best way of stopping illegal arrivals on small boats. Mr Kinnock told BBC News that the new legislation amounted to “empty rhetoric” and that the Government was “losing control” of the UK’s borders and asylum system.
Under his proposals, the UK would be expected to take in a certain proportion of migrants, while the EU would be responsible for returning those who arrived illegally to the country they sailed from.
Adding that this was “the way to break up the people-smugglers”, he continued: “We then need upstream processing, working with our European partners and allies getting a strategy across Europe to address this issue so that we take our fair share and other European countries do the same.”
Médécins Sans Frontières, an international aid organisation, has also condemned the proposed legislation, saying that it “strongly condemns the dangerous new Illegal Migration Bill”.
Natalie Roberts, the Executive Director of MSF UK, said: “The idea that people will be rapidly returned or expelled to Rwanda is not realistic, and so we anticipate that thousands of people will become stuck indefinitely after arrival to the UK, where there is no clear plan to accommodate them.”
She added that “there are virtually no safe and legal routes for people from the vast majority of countries to reach the UK.
“We know, and this Government knows too, that this utterly cruel legislation will not stop people fleeing violence, persecution and other hardships.”
Finally, the Church of England’s spokesman on migration affairs, the Bishop of Durham, has voiced similar concerns, saying: “No-one wants to see people risking their lives to reach safety, but we must ask: is this Bill the right response – one that is built on compassion, justice and moral leadership?”
The date for the Bill’s second reading in the House of Commons is yet to be announced.
