The UK government introduced an Illegal Immigration Bill on Tuesday (7 March) which plans to prevent migrants arriving via the English Channel from seeking asylum in the UK and deporting them "within weeks", a text to limits of international law by London's own admission.
“If you arrive irregularly, you cannot apply for asylum. You cannot benefit from our modern slavery protections. You can't make spurious human rights claims and you can't stay" in the UK, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told a press conference. "It's hard but it's necessary, and it's right," he said, pointing out that the number of migrants crossing the Channel had "more than quadrupled in the last two years", despite attempts by governments successive conservatives to stop these crossings.
With over 45,000 arrivals across the Channel last year (mostly Albanians and Afghans but also Iranians, Iraqis and Syrians) and already over 3,000 this year, the UK asylum system is 'overwhelmed' according to London.
"Unenforceable and Completely Inhumane"
"We will detain people who come here illegally and then deport them within a few weeks," either to their country or to a country deemed safe like Rwanda, Rishi Sunak said, adding that the government would build new detention centres. detention. He said the law once passed would apply retroactively to March 7.
“Banning people from seeking asylum is illegal, unenforceable and completely inhumane,” Human Rights Watch UK director Yasmine Ahmed tweeted. This is "another shocking blow from the government," Amnesty International said in a statement, accusing the government of using migrants as "scapegoats" amid a cost-of-living crisis and months from now. local elections.
For the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the bill amounts to "a ban on asylum". "The law, if passed, will amount to ending asylum, depriving those who arrive illegally in the UK of the right to seek the protection afforded to a refugee, regardless of the genuineness and urgency of their their request,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.
On the front page of the bill presented to Parliament, the government admits that it is unable to ensure that the bill “is compatible with the” European Convention on Human Rights. But the government "wishes the House to proceed with the consideration of the bill nonetheless." The United Kingdom passed a law last year to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda regardless of their origin, but the project remains at a standstill, blocked by European justice.
