When Theresa May told MPs yesterday that she opposed Priti Patel’s plan to send migrants inadmissible for asylum in this country to Rwanda on the grounds of “legality, practicality and efficacy” she joined the barrage of criticism that has greeted the Home Secretary since she unveiled her scheme last week in Kigali.
The Archbishop of Canterbury said the idea was ungodly, migrant charities have condemned it, while Labour’s Yvette Cooper denounced it as “unworkable, unethical and extortionate”. But while there are obvious questions about Ms Patel’s plan, she’s right that there are problems with the asylum system that won’t be solved simply by making it work more efficiently.
It’s wrong that those — mostly men — able to pay crime gangs to bring them across Europe and the Channel jump the queue ahead of more vulnerable others unable to do the same. Lives are lost, criminals profit, and economic migrants as well as those fleeing danger benefit from the truth that once in Britain it’s hard to remove anyone regardless of which category they fall into.
There’s also the reality, as former minister Rory Stewart has pointed out, that Britain can’t accept all the people who might want to flee here and that a new way of admitting a generous, but limited number of the most needy is probably required. It’s true too that the principle of denying asylum to migrants who have arrived here via safe countries — the basis of the Rwanda scheme — has been long established and was part of the EU’s Dublin agreement used previously to return migrants to other European countries.
But there are big doubts about the Rwanda plan nonetheless which critics claim won’t see off the people smugglers and instead lead to more women and children, who won’t be ejected on arrival, being loaded onto boats instead of men.
There’s also the question of how screening to identify trafficking victims can take place in the rapid timescale envisaged and the prospect of court battles as migrants refused an asylum claim bring legal challenges. Rwanda’s human rights record is a major concern.
Nor are there enough of the safe legal routes to be claimed from afar that must form part of any plan to block Channel migrants. The onus remains on Priti Patel to prove the sceptics wrong.
