Sending U.K. refugees to Rawanda

I don’t know what the action should be DaisyAnne. Please tell me what I’m thinking it should be?! No, I’m struggling like most of us to think of something that would work.

As to what I want achieved, I guess that could be summed up as alleviation of suffering. The UK government has a responsibility for the way in which we live in this country, but currently standards are dire in many quarters. The level of child poverty is horrifying as is the fact that so many families are dependant upon food banks. The list goes on but sadly so too do the demands on the public purse. Hopefully a solution – or at least an improvement - to the current immigration issues would free up time and money to deal with suffering in the UK.

volver Please can you tell me who - and on what intelligence - told the government that their plan probably won’t stop the traffickers. And do we know if they had a feasible alternative plan?

volver Please can you tell me who - and on what intelligence - told the government that their plan probably won’t stop the traffickers.

Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Home Office. Who actually works in the Department that Patel heads up.

www.ft.com/content/25fecf58-22c9-48d0-80c7-917a0ff81e3f

This thread is full of ideas for stopping the traffickers, but as you haven't read it, what about this one? Allow people to apply for asylum without actually having to be on UK soil. Process the application as quickly as possible. Work with other countries, where these applications can be made, to ensure that the applicants can have suitable accommodation. That is humane, not loading young men onto planes and flying them to far off countries.

I think France has several times offered facilities for asylum seekers to be processed in France but the U.K. Govt has refused.

Thank you volver. I couldn’t access the report on your link (paywall) but I read The Guardian’s report which said “in his letter Rycroft stressed that he was not saying the policy would not work as a deterrent – just that it was impossible to know either way.”

Yes, your idea sounds promising and deserving closer scrutiny and I wonder if the Home Office considered it as an option. The trouble is, another option got there first and, with time being of the essence here, the government has to get on with something.

Yes, your idea sounds promising and deserving closer scrutiny and I wonder if the Home Office considered it as an option. The trouble is, another option got there first and, with time being of the essence here, the government has to get on with something.

I admire your optimism, AcornFairy. Does anyone else have any confidence at all that this government will 'get on' with anything?

This appalling scheme has been hurriedly introduced because the tories believe that most of the UK population are raging anti immigration racists and will love it; thus saving their bacon in the upcoming local elections.

Sorry about the paywall acornFairy. It seems to work OK for me although I haven't paid for it.

This is an extract from his letter to Patel:
Evidence of a deterrent effect is highly uncertain and cannot be quantified with sufficient certainty to provide me with the necessary level of assurance over value for money.

I do not believe sufficient evidence can be obtained to demonstrate that the policy will have a deterrent effect significant enough to make the policy value for money.

I don’t buy the idea that time is of the essence. We could just shoot them. That would be quick to implement. We won't though, will we? What have they been doing for the past 2 years since they have been in office? (OK, dealing with a pandemic, fair enough ? ) But why rush to an illegal and immoral action? It’s not my idea, I copied it from somewhere, can’t remember where.

Apologies if this has been mentioned before but it was pointed out in parliaments today how many vaccinations people need if they’re travelling to Rwanda and how many bad things they can catch once they’re there. Something that hadn’t crossed my mind. I think it was Andrew Mitchell who mentioned it. He’s the one, I believe, who worked quite closely with Jo Cox.

We're not going to Rwanda! Migrants who have spent months waiting to make the perilous Channel crossing to Britain say they will stay in Calais amid UK's plan to send asylum seekers overseas(daily mail)

Fingers crossed this is the case.

The dozen men mostly in their 20s and 30s have spent months waiting to cross but have now changed their mind. Seems Pritti Patel's scheme is having an effect and no one has been sent to Rwanda yet. So much for all the critics.

People scared to come here because they'll be sent somewhere to be beaten and killed.

Makes you proud to be British.

I'm proud to be British, English actually and pleased that this scheme seems to be working.

Maudi

I'm proud to be British, English actually and pleased that this scheme seems to be working.

Well I'm not.....

That's your problem not mine.

And we decry those who wanted to rid their country of Jews, or Palestinians, or any other identifiable group they can blame for not having reached the top of the tree.

I will always owe my allegiance to the UK but I certainly don't feel proud of the extremists we seem to have bred.

Rubbish when you haven't got a solution mention......

Denmark are also in talks with Rwanda.

It's a deterrent to stop the smuggler gangs.

Solutions have been "mentioned" ad nauseam, both here and in the press. But they are a bit more complicated than just "deport the folks we don't like" so they don't get much attention from the extremists, even though they are more likely to work.

I think it is fine to recognise, and to state, that the Rwanda plan is inhumane and ill behoves a civilized country, whilst at the same time having no instant solution to the problem. Not having an easy answer is no bar to stating that the government's plan is unacceptable.

Maudi

Rubbish when you haven't got a solution mention......

Denmark are also in talks with Rwanda.

It's a deterrent to stop the smuggler gangs.

I would certainly not suggest a "Solution", Maudi. It seems you see this as a "final" one, to cure us of those seeking asylum. It's quite sickening.

Denmark may be "in talks" with Rwanda; they are also looking at allowing asylum seekers to work in Denmark while they wait for the various processes for granting/not granting asylum to be carried out.

If we did this and then issued Right to Stay status after say, eighteen months if the asylum process is incomplete, it would cure what is a "crisis" of our own making. That crisis is caused by a hostile environment in the Home Office and a country that cannot design fast and fair systems even when it is to save lives.

You offer no proof whatsoever that the "Final Solution of Rwanda" will stop the smugglers. Neither does this appalling government. Those advising them state positively it will not reach any such target.

My question all the long has been: Why Rwanda? From the BBC three days ago:

Under the scheme - announced last week - people deemed to have entered the UK unlawfully will be flown to the African country, where they would be processed, and if successful, would have long-term accommodation in the African country.

Why would Rwanda need more young men? It already has one of the highest population rates in Africa. The population is young, with about two-fifths of the population under age 15 and another one-third between ages 15 and 29.

The population increase is greater than that of the global average. Average life expectancy is 50. Rates of HIV/AIDS are high. Malaria and tuberculosis are serious health concerns.

Almost three-fourths of the population is rural and lives in nuclear family compounds scattered on hillsides. The majority of the workforce is engaged in agricultural pursuits.

Patel wants to send young men to a country which I supect doesn't need them, where, if there is work at all, it will be in agriculture. Last month British newpapers were reporting that the DWP is to promote "career opportunities" in picking fruit and vegetables in an attempt to stop produce going unharvested on British farms

A friend reminded me of the Libyan scheme 12 years ago where Gaddafi claimed that Europe would turn "black" unless it was more rigorous in turning back immigrants.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11139345

www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/01/eu-muammar-gaddafi-immigration

Effectively, the governmentis saying we need more workers but not if your skin is black.

I see that Patel, has been accused of misleading parliament over the so called channel pushbacks.

Is there anything at all that we can trust this shower of a government with?

Patel connived to mislead, asylum seekers, parliament and the voter, in saying that those in little boats would be pushed back by the RN etc to France.

Absolutely not the case apparently. I suspect that she was told so in no uncertain terms by the RN, RNLI and others that this would be tantamount to not just acting unlawfully, but that they would be open to the accusation of murder on the high seas.

Patel tried to conceal the truth by so called public interest immunity.

The courts judged that this was not and never could be in the public interest to conceal what was the truth of the matter.

Maudi

I'm proud to be British, English actually and pleased that this scheme seems to be working.

I wasn't aware that the scheme had even started yet (and almost certainly never will).
Well, apart from the one of fooling gullible voters that things are in hand!

It's a bit like Brexit - no end of people interviewed at random for TV reports were convinced that from the day of the referendum, our country was suddenly free of anything 'European', be it workers or regulations, and were happy that things were better, when in reality not a single thing had changed at that time!

This is one paragraph from a much longer article in this weeks Economist. It is hardly a "left-wing" publication. If you have access the article is headed "Somebody else's problem". I would have added a question mark to that.

If the Conservatives pull this off, it will be a perilous new step for the world's refugee system. Britain is not trying to process asylum claimants offshore, as Australia did when it interned boat people in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Nor is it trying to push asylum-seekers back to the country they arrived from, as America has done since covid-19 hit (although it will soon relent) and as the European Union has done with Syrians who cross from Turkey to Greece. Britain proposes to send people 6,500km away, regardless of where they came from.

Thanks for flagging that DaisyAnne.

People can read the article free of charge on a library app if their county library has a subscription.

This was the part that struck me most:

The much greater danger is that the plan works. If Britain manages to send thousands of asylum-seekers to Africa, others are likely to get the message and not try to come to Britain at all. Few refugees would find Rwanda congenial. Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, calls it “that dynamic country” and “one of the safest...in the world”; his home secretary, Priti Patel, says it has “many, many interests in common” with Britain. Such praise is overblown. Rwanda may be orderly, but it is also extremely poor and has one of Africa’s scariest, most repressive governments. Britain has accurately criticised its human-rights violations in the past, although it may refrain from now on. Dealing with an autocrat messes with your moral compass.

If asylum-seekers steer clear of Britain, other rich democracies will surely wonder why they should adhere strictly to decades-old conventions. They too are likely to start cutting deals to offload their asylum-seekers onto poorer countries, no matter how autocratic. The world will stumble towards a new system for processing refugees, in which money buys immunity from claims. The countries most able to accommodate desperate people will end up doing even less than they do today.

Money buys immunity - an interesting phrase for our current government in all kinds of contexts.

So I ask again. Why Rwanda?

It certainly was an interesting article and your quoted paragraphs show the complete contrast to the opening sentence.

"Britain was one of the first countries to ratify the Refugee Convention of 1951, which spelled out countries' obligations to protect fugitives from persecution who had arrived in their territories and not return them to danger."

I have said before but this shows it far too well - we have remembered very little of the truths our country learned during the last war.

You have also sent me scurrying off to look at my now "on-line", as well as physical, local library.

Official Statistics
Weekly number of migrants detected in small boats - 18 to 24 April 2022
Published 25 April 2022

Deterrent seems to be working.