Britain's Parliament will vote on Tuesday whether to support a law that would stop asylum seekers – about 50,000 last year – from crossing the English Channel.
LONDON – Britain has a problem with asylum seekers crossing the English Channel from France in small inflatable boats, inflatable boats and even kayaks. The government's proposed solution? Send them to Rwanda.
Rwanda is more than 4,300 miles from the UK.
Britain's Parliament voted on Tuesday for a law designed to stop people – about 50,000 last year – from making these dangerous journeys.
The policy was first announced in 2022 by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Parliament's approval came after months of delays, resignations of senior ministers and legal challenges.
Acting British leader Rishi Sunak has made “stopping the boats” one of his legislative priorities. Here's what Britain's Rwanda asylum law is about – and why some critics believe it could set a “dangerous” precedent.
What is Britain's Rwanda Law?
Sunak wants to deport some people to the East African country who try to cross the English Channel into Great Britain to apply for asylum there. The plan is part of his government's attempt to stop illegal migration routes, an issue that has sparked revolt from the right wing of Sunak's ruling Conservative Party and angered some voters.
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Many of those making the 20-mile crossing of the English Channel come from Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan – countries where conflict has been or is currently raging – and where political freedoms are scarce.
Many also come from Albania, one of the poorest countries on the edge of Europe.
The first deportation flights to Rwanda were scheduled to start last summer. They were canceled at the last minute after Britain's Supreme Court ruled that Rwanda was not a safe country for refugees because they could face persecution. The court concluded that the plan was likely to breach British and international human rights standards.
“The British government labels people arriving via this route as 'illegal migrants', but that in itself is contestable because the right to asylum is a human right,” said James Wilson, director of Detention Action, a British charity, which advocates for better treatment for asylum seekers.
What happened to the vote on the Rwanda bill on Tuesday?
Lawmakers approved a first reading of the bill by 313 votes to 269 — a majority of 44.
Sunak's Conservatives currently have a working majority of 56 in the 650-seat British Parliament.
Sunak pushed the legislation through Parliament after his government recently signed a new deal with Rwanda and introduced a supplementary emergency law – the Rwanda Security Act – aimed at addressing Supreme Court concerns about Rwanda's security for refugees.
The think tank Freedom House notes that while Rwanda's government under President Paul Kagame “has maintained stability and economic growth, it has also suppressed political dissent through extensive surveillance, intimidation, torture and rendition or suspected assassination of exiled dissidents.”
Tuesday's vote in the House of Commons was specifically about the Rwanda Security Bill, which has divided Sunak's cabinet and led to the resignations of his immigration minister Robert Jenrick and home secretary Suella Braverman. Both said the Rwanda plan was doomed to failure because it was not radical enough.
The bill could face a second reading in January or be postponed in the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the British Parliament. If that fails, Sunak will come under renewed pressure as polls show his party well behind the opposition Labor Party ahead of an expected general election next year.
According to YouGov, an online polling company, immigration is the second most important issue for the British public after the economy. Braverman has warned Sunak that he faces “electoral oblivion” if he fails.
What’s in it for Rwanda?
Mostly money.
The British government has already paid Rwanda around $300 million for the asylum program, although not a single person has been sent on one of the deportation flights.
The money is intended for Rwanda to accommodate the refugees in specially built hostels and hotels. According to the British government, each asylum seeker to Rwanda is expected to cost an average of $213,450.
But Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, a Rwandan opposition politician, said Britain's asylum law was not suitable for countries like hers, which are poor and where the government struggles to meet most people's basic needs.
“The refugees will live in beautiful buildings in the capital while Rwandans live in abject poverty,” she said.
Umuhoza said Rwanda already had an influx of refugees from neighboring countries such as Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which it had not adequately cared for.
“Rwanda is not a free country where one can freely express one’s opinion,” she said.
Indeed, one of the peculiarities of the agreement, as some say Law and human rights scholar have pointed out is that Britain will continue to grant asylum to Rwandans – the very country to which it sends all its asylum seekers.
Asylum applications must be heard “fully and fairly”.
Detention Action's Wilson said there were few precedents for what Britain was trying to do with its asylum seekers.
For more than two decades, Australia has been sending asylum seekers to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, a country in the Pacific Ocean. Between 2013 and 2018, Israel conducted a short-lived experiment with Rwanda that was similar to the British idea, although participation was voluntary.
But neither program, he said, has shown evidence that it is a “success story.”
“It’s very concerning,” he said. “Any asylum claim in the UK should be heard fully and fairly in the UK.”
He said that “relocating people to another country or territory represents a step backwards” from Britain's commitment to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, a key treaty that established the rights of refugees.
Tazreena Sajjad, a professor of politics and security at the American University School of International Service in Washington, said countries around the world are finding more ways to deter asylum seekers and refugees. She said these “deterrence measures” can be physical and bureaucratic as well as symbolic, ranging from border walls in the US and Europe to border control technologies that use military technologies such as drones, facial recognition surveillance, lie detectors and motion sensors.
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She said direct use of force by border guards and security personnel was also common practice.
“For years there has been documented evidence of violence along the Balkan route in Europe, where border security has used attack dogs, torture, physical and sexual humiliation and beatings, including of pregnant women and children, to deter entry. There are many asylum seekers in Europe.” Seekers remain stranded in forests and border areas such as along the Polish-Belarusian border because neither side grants them entry.”
All of this, she said, reflected “various types of violence against the bodies and lives of refugees and asylum seekers.”