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Our government has, it seems, been contacting (by phone) asylum seekers whose asylum applications have been rejected to offer them £3,000 to move to Rwanda. They will be flown there on commercial flights and be supported while they are establishing themselves in Rwanda where they will be able to work.
The excellent Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, has accused the Prime Minister of “betrayal”, describing the policy as little more than “symbolic flights”.
This isn’t the first time such a scheme has been proposed. In fact, it’s a rerun of a New Labour buyout policy. In 2006, Tony McNulty, then Labour immigration minister, offered a £3,000 incentive for asylum seekers to leave Britain voluntarily. Interesting therefore that Stephen Kinnock, shadow immigration minister, described the new scheme as “a wheeze”, to be treated with scepticism.
There is further irony in recalling that Damian Green MP, the shadow immigration minister in 2006, who went on to be Theresa May’s first immigration minister, also expressed scepticism about the New Labour programme. He commented, “What is clearly driving it is that the Government has missed their target of removals for 2005… [t]hey must be very worried they are going to miss it again.”
So the Labour party, have renounced a policy they once championed, while the Conservatives have embraced a policy of which they were once rightfully sceptical. As Margaret Thatcher said at her last cabinet meeting, “it’s a funny old world.”
Our take on this? Besides it being another clear sign of desperation, our Executive Director, Mike Jones, put it rather well when he said on TalkTV, “This is just an exercise in public relations and optics. They want a photo of bums on seats, on a flight to Kigali, before the next general election. But it’s not going to solve the problem.”
One final comment on Labour’s position on illegal Channel crossings. They simply don’t have a credible alternative to Conservative policies. They propose to abandon the Rwanda scheme even if it were to prove successful, go after the gangs (this is already happening), speed up processing and negotiate a ‘returns’ agreement with the European Union. Perhaps they will also come up with more “safe routes” for asylum seekers? Such a package of measures will not discourage the boats. Numbers will likely shoot up.
The Safety of Rwanda Bill returns to the Commons on Monday, so we will undoubtedly come back to the small boats’ crisis.
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.