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When the UK first devised plans to send asylum seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda in an attempt to stop small boats crossing the Channel, ministers had in mind Australia’s ruthless approach to intercepting and “offshoring” irregular migrants.
Nearly two years later, and the lengths to which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has had to go in his efforts to replicate parts of the Australian model, underline the legal barriers and geographical differences that were there from the outset.
Moreover, migration experts point out that the political furore around the policy has given it totemic status within the Conservative party as a means of “stopping the boats” without evidence that it will have the desired deterrent effect.
The scheme, former Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings wrote last week, “has taken on a life of its own, with even the new prime minister treating it as if it were an actual strategize.”
In a last-ditch attempt to get flights carrying migrants to Rwanda off the ground before the general election expected next year, Sunak this week sought to revive the policy with measures aimed at overriding the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that it was unlawful.
Sunak declared on Thursday that a new treaty with Rwanda, and emergency legislation preventing recourse to international and domestic human rights law, would make it “vanishingly rare” for courts to be able to interfere in deportation decisions. “This bill blocks every single reason that has ever been used to hinder flights to Rwanda from taking off,” he said.
The constitutional and reputational ramifications for the UK will be debated for months to come. But experts said the bill, which faces opposition in both houses of parliament, would still get the government little closer to achieving its aim of “stopping the boats”.
Small boat crossings are down by a third this year on the record numbers in 2022 because of a combination of a returns agreement with Albania, bad weather and greater co-operation from the French authorities. But nearly 30,000 migrants have still made the journey — a figure higher than in 2021.
Analysts warned that Rwanda’s limited capacity to take in the number of people reaching the UK through irregular routes means the policy was never equipped to address the scale of the problem, or many argue, supply the desired deterrent effect.
“In terms of finding any solution to irregular migration we are losing sight of the bigger picture,” said David Cantor, founding director of the Refugee Law Initiative at University of London’s School of Advanced investigate. There also remain questions about what happens to any migrants eventually sent to Rwanda.
In key testimony to the Supreme Court, the UN refugee agency gave evidence about a similar Israeli scheme suspended in 2018 in which all of those deported to Rwanda ended up in Europe or elsewhere.
Persons transferred under that scheme “were routinely and clandestinely expelled from Rwanda . . . prevented from making asylum claims and subjected to grossly intimidating treatment . . . following which those transferred became too frightened to proceed around or simply disappeared”, the UNHCR said.
Australia’s methods, however controversial, have been more effective at preventing people from reaching its borders irregularly by sea.
It has achieved this because it could intercept the migrants in international waters in boats that were much larger than those typically used in the Channel, making them easier to spot. It was then able to turn back those on board to their countries of departure under agreements with the relevant governments. A smaller number of migrants were sent to detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
“Because the boats were intercepted, people stopped trying. You cannot do that in the Channel,” said Colin Yeo an immigration lawyer and author of the Free Movement blog, pointing out there were no international waters on the routes favoured by smugglers between France and Britain. “The idea that removing a few hundred or thousand to Rwanda would stop the others coming has no basis.”
Longer term, Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory think-tank in Oxford, warned Sunak’s attempt to enforce the Rwanda policy could spark a race to the bottom that risked shredding global protection for refugees and ultimately rebound.
“The bill tramples over the entire human rights infrastructure in UK law and essentially indicates the UK’s intent to significantly violate international law. We drafted many of these agreements. It raises the question if we don’t abide by them why should anyone else?” he said.
