On 28 April the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 became law. Despite heated debate on some of the more controversial measures, there was never sufficient parliamentary opposition to prevent it being passed. Two weeks prior to the Act being given Royal Assent, the government announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Rwanda, which will allow it to transport asylum seekers from Britain to that country. NICKI JAMESON reports.
Pushing back migrants into the sea
Ever since Home Secretary Priti Patel began taking advice from racist, misogynist former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2020, there has been talk of Britain adopting some of Australia’s most infamous anti-immigrant strategies of ‘pushing back’ asylum seekers who attempt to arrive by boat and using ‘offshore’ processing centres.
The lethal ‘pushback’ policy, which was clearly a breach of international law, has now been dropped by the British government, in the face of threatened legal action by charities Care4Calais, Channel Rescue and Freedom from Torture. The policy was also challenged by the PCS union, which generally has few qualms about its members deporting people to face war, drought or poverty, but baulked at being responsible for drowning them. However, the ‘offshoring’ plans continue and now pose an immediate threat to newly-arrived asylum seekers.
Australian offshore asylum centres
Since 2001, successive Australian governments have implemented various versions of the scheme whereby asylum seekers attempting to reach the country by boat have been relocated to ‘processing centres’. In the initial ‘Pacific Solution’ phase in 2001-2007, detainees were kept in harsh conditions on Nauru and Manus Island while their asylum claims were considered. The only saving grace at this stage was that if people survived the brutal camp conditions and got through the asylum process, they were likely to be eventually resettled in Australia.
This changed in 2012, when Australia signed the Regional Resettlement Arrangement with Papua New Guinea (PNG). Then Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced: ‘From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees … If they are found to be genuine refugees they will be resettled in Papua New Guinea… If they are found not to be genuine refugees they may be repatriated to their country of origin or be sent to a safe third country other than Australia.’
There is no evidence from the Australian experience that the dispatching of asylum seekers to other countries does actually act as a deterrent. In 2021 the UN High Commission on Refugees said: ‘This externalisation of Australia’s asylum obligations has undermined the rights of those seeking safety and protection and significantly harmed their physical and mental health… UNHCR’s advice to governments worldwide is to refrain from externalisation.’
One-way ticket to Kigali
Ignoring the UN, Britain has pushed ahead with mimicking the Australian schemes. Ever since Patel and Abbott began conferring, there have been rumours as to which offshore territory Britain would choose in order to relocate asylum seekers, who in the main had risked their lives to get here in small boats across the Channel from France.
Suggested locations included the nearby Isle of Wight (already home to two prisons, and not really ‘offshore’ as legally in England) and Isle of Man (used extensively in both world wars to intern ‘enemy aliens’, most of whom were Jewish refugees), and the further afield ‘British Overseas Territories’ of Gibraltar, Ascension Island and the Malvinas/Falklands. Other suggested options were Turkey, Ghana and Albania; the latter being generally accommodating to refugees and having struck an agreement with the US in 2006 to receive stateless Uighurs from Guantanamo prison camp.
Clearly, there was no likelihood of anyone being permanently resettled on the inhospitable Ascension Island for example, and initially, Patel appeared to be looking at a ‘Pacific Solution’ model. However, the MOU with Rwanda makes it clear that, as with the Australia/PNG Arrangement, the scheme is designed to permanently exile asylum seekers from Britain. Rwanda is being paid an initial £120m but the Refugee Council estimates that the total cost of the scheme to the government will be in the region of £1.4bn per annum.
On 10 May the government announced that the first group of ‘illegal migrants’ would be told that week that they were on the list to go to Rwanda. Four days later, Boris Johnson told the Daily Mail that the candidates had been selected, and by 22 May 100 asylum seekers had been rounded up, served ‘notices of intent’ and detained.
Attacking the lawyers
Legal challenges began immediately after the scheme was announced – both on the larger, generic basis of potential unlawfulness, and on behalf of specific individuals who may face removal, whether or not they had been issued with a notice. One pre-emptive and apparently successful challenge was lodged on 2 May on behalf of an Iranian man, contending that Rwanda has no Iranian community and there would be no facilities for either interpreting and translation or community integration.
Patel and Johnson have lost no time in going on the offensive against those who assist migrants to fight against such attacks. Johnson told the Mail: ‘There’s going to be a lot of legal opposition from the types of firms that for a long time have been taking taxpayers’ money to mount these sorts of cases, and to thwart the will of the people, the will of Parliament. We’re ready for that. We will dig in for the fight and you know, we will make it work. We’ve got a huge flowchart of things we have to do to deal with it, with the leftie lawyers.’
The government is already planning to dilute the protections afforded by the European Convention on Human Rights by replacing the Human Rights Act with a ‘Bill of Rights’ and will no doubt look to find other ways to frustrate opposition via the legal process. There will need to be a massive political fight on all fronts, not just in the courts, to make this scheme unworkable.
Solidarity with asylum seekers!
No-one is illegal!
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! no 288, June/July 2022
