The U.K. government will send illegal immigrants to Ruwanda

April 15, 2022
| Report Focus News

In a move that has been roundly condemned as inhuman by the opposition and human rights groups.

The U.K. government announced that all illegal immigrants that arrived on British soil as of 1st of January will be taken to Ruwanda for processing.

U.K. Ministers have signed a deal to send asylum seekers arriving in the UK to another country to have their cases processed.

The move to send ‘illegal immigrants’ moved to Ruwanda has been criticised by experts who have warned that it will encourage people traffickers.

The British prime minister Boris Johnson is announced that his government had cobbled an agreement with Rwanda that will see migrants “offshored” to the African country more than 4,000 miles away, while they wait for an asylum decision from the Home Office.

It is understood that the Rwandan government will be paid an initial cost of £120m under the deal, which will be funded by the British taxpayer.

The British prime minister set out the plans in a speech on Thursday morning, stating:“Our compassion may be infinite, but our capacity to help people is not.

“The British people voted several times to control our borders – not to close them, but to control them. So just as Brexit allowed us to take back control of legal immigration by replacing free movement with our points-based system, we are also taking back control of illegal immigration, with a long-term plan for asylum in this country.”

But while the government claims the move will allow the UK to “take back control”, critics condemned the policy, saying it was “cruel and nasty”.

Describing it as “unworkable, unethical and extortionate”, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper warned that it would cost the UK taxpayer billions of pounds during a cost of living crisis and would make it “harder, not easier” to get fast and fair asylum decisions.

She slammed the announcement as a “desperate and shameful” attempt by Mr Johnson to “distract from his own law-breaking” and from the “collapse” of the Home Office’s decision-making on asylum claims, which sees thousands waiting for more than a year for a decision.

“The Home Office is now a catalogue of failure, from passport queues to Ukrainian visa delays, to rising crime and falling prosecutions. Instead of getting a grip on the basics, all Priti Patel and Mr Johnson do is come up with wild and unworkable headlines. Britain deserves better,” she added.

Enver Solomon, of the Refugee Council, described the plan as “cruel and nasty” and said it would do little to deter people from coming to the UK, only leading to “more human suffering and chaos”.

“Far from enabling people to rebuild their lives, we know from where this has been done by other countries [that] it only results in high levels of self-harm and mental health issues, and can also lead to people ending up back in the hands of people smugglers,” he said.

The plan to develop capacity for offshore processing forms part of the Home Office’s controversial Nationality and Borders Bill, which is currently going through parliament.