New plan seeks to curb migrant asylumseekers
LONDON — The British government proposed on Tuesday a plan to make it possible to transfer asylumseekers out of the country while their applications are processed and to arrest those who arrive by boat across the English Channel, policies that rights groups say would violate international laws.
The plan, called the Nationality and Borders Bill, was brought forth by Priti Patel, the British home secretary, for a first reading in Parliament on Tuesday. It is the latest measure introduced by the government to “fix the broken asylum system,” as the Home Office described it in a statement.
Patel, in a statement before the bill’s introduction, said the bill “delivers on what the British people have voted for time and time again — for the U.K. to take full control of its borders.”
It includes proposals to create a criminal offense of entering the country illegally, would give authorities more scope to make arrests and would make it easier “to remove someone to a safe country while their asylum claim is processed,” the Home Office said.
The plan, if it were to go into effect, would place Britain in the company of Denmark, which recently passed a law allowing for the offshore detention of refugees, and Australia, which has already put in place similar measures. In adopting what until recent years had been considered a fringe approach to the issue, the British government seemingly reversed decades of global leadership in the rights of refugees and asylumseekers.
The bill differentiates between refugees depending on how they journey to Britain, putting them in two distinct groups and basing their rights on their mode of arrival — either through resettlement or via irregular means, which would be treated as a criminal matter.
The bill also introduces the option for asylumseekers to be moved to a third country while their applications are processed, but that would be contingent on international agreements that do not currently exist. Some fear that the plan could open the door for asylumseekers to be held in detention centers abroad, where their rights and safety could be at risk.
Michelle Pace, a professor in global studies at Roskilde University in Denmark and an associate fellow at Chatham House, a British think tank, said, “From a purely legal position, there is no way that these plans can actually be implemented.”
She noted that any policy that involved the expulsion of asylumseekers would violate the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Australia, Britain and Denmark are signatories.