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After much ado, the Rwanda Bill has made its way through Parliament, and Rishi Sunak, in his “enough is enough” mode, is promising to launch “multiple flights a month,” whisking away illegal migrants within a brisk 10-12 weeks. We shall see but we have our doubts.
We said two years ago, and repeated since, that the Rwanda scheme could have contributed to discouraging migrants from paying criminals huge sums for the illegal and dangerous trip across the Channel. We said it would not be the silver bullet that solved the Channel crisis. The legislation had to be passed and implemented quickly and it had to be court-proof. Those arriving illegally had to be detained, dealt with quickly and removed. Leaving the Human Rights Act (which embeds the ECHR in UK law) in place and intact was always going prove to be a major stumbling block. It remains in place and as Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick warned when the safety of Rwanda Bill was proposed, it would be largely symbolic in nature with only a handful of flights taking off. We shall soon see how accurate their predictions were. The government is no doubt bracing itself for the legal battles ahead as the human rights brigade, including activist lawyers and open-border NGOs, go into action in the courts.
Unless it is made abundantly clear that making your way illegally to the UK will mean immediate rejection and removal to a safe country like Rwanda, the boats will continue to come (at the current rate, perhaps it will be another record number of arrivals.) Sadly, more too will die.
Remember how immigration barely got a nod in the 2019 election – because Boris Johnson told us illegal arrivals would be sent back and the points-based system would control and reduce legal migration? While Labour focused more on weaponising the Windrush debacle. Fast forward, and immigration is a top three issue again: number one for many.
Boris Johnson’s Tories pretended to talk, sort of, tough on immigration but ended up letting in many more people, especially low-skilled workers. Indeed, there is a case for arguing that this was all intentional. Their plans to stop small boats from crossing the Channel have flopped, and the whole Rwanda scheme has so far delivered precisely zero. They’re now trying to talk big on immigration (again) and throwing out ideas they probably won’t act on (like leaving the European Court of Human Rights. Labour are saying very little, and what they have said on the Channel is, frankly, meaningless. Their plans, if implemented will more likely encourage illegal crossings. Most frustrating for us, and a majority of people in the UK, is that neither party wants to tackle the much more significant issue of the current eye-popping scale of legal migration.
This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every Friday as soon as it is released.