London Symbolic victory of the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, against the weakest, in a desperate attempt to make an electoral profit. After five months of bickering and a tense tug-of-war between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the British Parliament has finally approved, in the early hours of the morning this Tuesday, the controversial legislation to deport Rwanda asylum seekers who entered the UK without documentation.
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Sunak, at very low levels of popularity, hopes that the initiative will reverse the catastrophic trend of the polls in the run-up to the general elections, which will take place in all probability after the summer, and which so far have him more than twenty points behind under Labor.
It is the second time that Westminster has sanctioned the so-called law of the flights of shame, after having urgently modified a first piece of legislation that was unanimously considered illegal by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in November. Parliament’s approval has come after eight hours of debate, which have put an end to what is known as ping pong process, in which on five occasions the House of Lords have returned the law to the Commons with 10 initial amendments. Of these, the government has accepted only one, tonight, which prohibits the collaborators of the British army in Afghanistan until the fall of Kabul from being deported to Rwanda even if they have entered the Kingdom Unit without proper documentation.
Pressure on the House of Lords
Hours before the final debate began in Westminster, the premier had appeared before the press with the slogan “Stop the herdsmen” (“Stop the boats“) at the lectern in Downing Street. He put pressure on the House of Lords and urged their Lordships to give the green light to the law “without excuses, even if they have to spend the whole night”. It was not necessary, however. Around from 0.30 local time, the House of Lords has accepted a defeat that is legal but even more moral.
From the point of view of effectiveness, in addition, the flights of shame they are more than dubious, as Peter William Walsh, from the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, also highlighted last night. “Evidence shows that these kinds of deterrence policies are not a deterrent at all. Fundamentally, though, it will depend on the number of people being sent to Rwanda. It would have to be very big, extremely big, to make migrants change their minds before going up to a pasture [al canal de la Mànega]”. A deportation deal between London and Albania has not prevented 10% of migrants who arrived on cross-Channel caravans still being Albanian.
Sunak had assured that once the law was approved, “after ten or twelve weeks” the first flights to the East African country would take off. The first tickets on commercial flights have already been purchased, Sunak assured in his appearance, and later it is planned to charter a plane.
He premier, however, he had to admit that he would not be able to meet his goal of launching the program in the spring. Two years after it was promoted by Boris Johnson, it finally looks like the government will get its way. The Labor Party, however, has already announced that if it comes to power – as is expected before the end of the year – it will repeal the law. The initiative has already cost the Treasury more than 200 million pounds and in recent weeks it has become known, through information from The Times, that 70% of the 160 new apartments funded by London that were to house deported migrants the builder has sold to the local population.
The law will receive royal assent this Tuesday, but it will not be until at least July 1 that, in principle, the first migrants will be deported. However, the government expects an avalanche of legal resources to defend those affected, and to decide on each individual case the Ministry of Justice has guaranteed that up to 150 judges, 25 rooms and up to 5,000 hours of court hearings will be dedicated to this to give exit to the files through the emergency route. Critics point out that they are far more resources than those allocated to try the rapists and that they will cause judicial delays in other areas, in a justice that accumulates thousands of cases to see.
5,000 hours of judges
Downing Street also expects resources from humanitarian and human rights organizations, at least before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which in July 2022 already stopped the first flight fifteen minutes before it took off. There is therefore the possibility that at one point or another in the process Sunak will have to decide whether to oppose a judgment of the ECtHR or even, as the most radical sectors of his party are asking him, to abandon the link with a court which he helped to establish.
Immigration is a political battle horse in the UK. The legal one and the one without papers. Through the English Channel, in the first three months of this 2024, 5,435 people have entered, more than in the same period last year (3,793) and also than in 2022 (4,548). The British government gives as an example of what some ministers sometimes describe as an invasion the fact that between January and March 2018 only 7 people arrived, and that in 2023 29,437 people crossed the Channel. In 2022 there were 45,755.
But it is legal immigration that is really massive: more than 745,000 people in 2022 and 672,000 in 2023. Brexit, then, which was supposed to be the silver bullet, has not contributed to the supposed border control. Above all because the country, with an increasingly aging population, needs workers for the primary sector and for services such as care and healthcare.
To hide the failure of border control – it was just a lie brexiters–, the weakest, the refugees and those fleeing dramatic situations, are the Conservative Party’s scapegoats. Yesterday Sunak warned his MPs to give him time throughout July and the summer to make the Downing Street speaker’s slogan: “Stop the grazing” a reality. With this idea he wants to run in the elections. And it will thus confront the Labor Party, which does not support the shame on you. Migrants, once again, are not people in British politics. They are only used.
2024-04-23 06:04:11
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