Sunak wins vote on migration bill
The plan to send migrants to Rwanda is key to the UK leader’s intention to stop ‘boat people’
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak won the first vote in the House of Commons on Tuesday on a revised bill that would make it easier to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda, to have their asylum claim determined there.
The country’s supreme court ruled unanimously in November that the plan was unlawful because it could lead to the harm of asylum-seekers (refoulement) — as did European courts — and that it contravened several other United Kingdom and international laws, including the
Human Rights Act and Refugee Convention, respectively.
The Guardian reported that “five judges at the supreme court unanimously upheld an appeal court ruling that found there was a real risk of deported refugees having their claims in the east African country wrongly assessed or being returned to their country of origin to face persecution”.
As reported by the BBC, this led to a new treaty with Rwanda “to strengthen its asylum process, and proposed new UK laws declaring that Rwanda is a safe country”.
No asylum-seekers arriving in the UK have yet been sent to Rwanda, because of legal challenges. As a sweetener for Rwanda, that country received £140 million when the plan was first announced in 2022, and an additional £100million in 2023. According to the BBC, an additional £50 million is “anticipated in 2024”.
The UK’S fact sheet on the Illegal Migration Bill states there has been an influx of people making the journey to the UK from “well-established, safe countries” where they are not at risk of persecution. While saying that the journey to Britain was dangerous for asylum-seekers, the government has also said there had been an “inexorable” increase in the number of illegal arrivals to British shores “adding unacceptable pressures on our health, housing, educational and welfare services”. The UK’S asylum system costs the country £3 billion a year, according to the government, which includes £6 million a day on “hotel” accommodation.
According to the government, the UK “offered a place to 481 804 men, women and children seeking safety via safe and legal entry routes” between 2015 and December 2022.
Sunak has been under increasing pressure from his Conservative peers to make sure the bill is watertight, while hardliners said it had been watered down too much. The vote was passed 313 to 269.
Although the UK government regards Rwanda as a safe country, evidence is to the contrary. According the 2023 Human Right Watch report, critics of the government were arrested, threatened and put on trial, with some claiming torture.
The report further noted that abusive practices by Rwandan authorities stretched beyond the country’s borders.
“Rwandan refugees and members of the diaspora reported being threatened and harassed by Rwandan government agents or their proxies. Human Rights Watch received information about several cases of Rwandan refugees being killed, disappeared, or arrested in suspicious circumstances, including in Mozambique and Uganda.”