Illustration photo – A wrecked inflatable boat on the coast near Calais, northern France, on November 25, 2021.
London – Britain plans to remove the possibility of applying for asylum to those people who arrive on its shores from the European mainland illegally on boats. Home Secretary Suella Braverman will announce the plan on Tuesday, according to the BBC. The British Red Cross considers this extremely worrying.
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Currently, people seeking asylum in Britain have the right to stay in the country until the authorities deal with their case. But under the new law, those who arrived in Britain on small boats would not be able to apply for asylum and the authorities would immediately send them to Rwanda or another “safe third country”. They should then never enter British territory again.
The BBC recalls that solving the crisis with migrants trying to cross the English Channel in small and often inadequate boats is one of the priorities of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. He promises to “stop these ships once and for all”. He is expected to go to a UK-France summit in Paris on Friday and to discuss the matter with French President Emmanuel Macron. The last such summit was held in 2018.
“Illegal migration is not fair to the British taxpayer, it is not fair to those who come here legally and it would not be right for criminal gangs to continue their immoral business,” Sunak told the Mail on Sunday.
But according to the British Red Cross, Sunak's cabinet plans will have little influence on the decisions of people risking their lives to get to safety. The charity Freedom from Torture, which provides therapy to asylum seekers, described them as “dysfunctional and vindictive”.
The BBC notes that although the British government agreed with Rwanda last year that it could send asylum asylum seekers who came to the British Isles illegally, no such person has yet been taken to Africa. British authorities have not yet launched the procedure due to fierce opposition from human rights defenders and legal disputes. London has also not yet concluded an agreement on the return of migrants with the European Union.
45,755 migrants crossed the English Channel last year, which is the most since 2018, when the British government started keeping these statistics. So far this year, there are less than 3,000. The largest number of asylum seekers come from Albania, Afghanistan and Iran.
