What is the UK’s new anti-immigration bill and how many human rights does it violate?
In a bid to achieve one of the five promises sold to the UK public, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has introduced the Illegal Immigration Bill, aiming to ‘stop small boats’ crossing the Channel between France and England.
Whilst praised by Europe’s far right, the bill has been met with concern and disdain from leading refugee charities and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who doubt its alignment with international laws, describing it as an ‘asylum ban’.
The bill hands the government the power to punish those not taking legal routes into the country by denying them access to their rights under the Human Rights Act and other conventions. Yet, it largely ignores the fact that the government hasn’t produced the accessible legal routes that they’re demanding immigrants take.
What does the Illegal Immigration Bill entail?
According to this bill, anybody who ‘illegally’ enters the UK will be detained and removed within weeks of arrival. All asylum, human rights or modern slavery claims from these individuals will be inadmissible and each (along with their family members) will face a permanent ban from the UK.
They will either be returned to their home country, or another ‘safe third country’ with their claims reconsidered there. The government will also then place an annual cap on the number of refugees entering via safe routes.
Past legislation banning child detention will be unravelled, as the bill calls for detention, even of families with children and the deportation of unaccompanied children if their origin country is deemed safe.
The bill was introduced alongside a historic deal with France that will see almost half a billion pounds invested into a new French detention centre, an extra 500 officers patrolling French beaches, and more drones and surveillance tech.
Is the bill necessary?
To be clear there is not, nor has there ever been an “invasion” of asylum seekers as the Home Secretary put it, least of all of ‘bogus’ asylum seekers. In 2015 during the ‘European Migrant Crisis’, the influx of refugees only amounted to 0.4% of Europe’s population. In Lebanon, they constituted 25% of the population.
By mid-2022, 103 million people around the world had been forced to flee their homes. But 69% of them were hosted in neighbouring countries and 74% were hosted in low- and middle-income countries.
Four out of every five refugees stay in their region of displacement, and consequently are hosted by developing countries. Turkey now hosts the highest number of refugees with 3.7 million.
Whilst 1 in every 88 people around the world have been forced to flee, refugees and asylum seekers make up just half a percent of the UK population.
The UK is not facing an invasion, it’s not even taking its fair share. However, it is true that the number of individuals crossing the Channel has become unsustainable and puts far too many lives in jeopardy. Will the UK’s new bill create a more sustainable and safe system? The short answer is no.
Where are the legal routes for refugees?
Was there a way to avoid 45,755 people getting into small boats and risking their lives to cross the Channel last year? Yes, and it involves opening safe and legal routes.
The insidiousness of the UK asylum system is that asylum or refugee status cannot be claimed in the UK unless you are on UK soil, and the only way for most immigrants and refugees to reach UK soil is illegally. And now the government says that this route voids the protection of the Human Rights Act and the UK’s obligation to listen to any claims.
This essentially cuts off all access to the UK except through very limited government defined resettlement schemes. Through government schemes, a limited number of Afghan refugees and Hong Kong citizens are resettled in the UK and in the wake of the Ukraine invasion, routes were set up for those fleeing the war.
In the last year, 165,700 Ukrainians came to the UK through the government visa-scheme, and 0 came via a small boat. Clearly there is enough space for us to take in more refugees, and allowing asylum to be claimed from abroad makes it a safer and smoother process. Our asylum system, however, is overwhelmed because of the time and resources it puts into trying to validify the trauma of those entering the system.
Is the bill legal?
On the front page of the proposed bill, Home Secretary Suella Braverman, acknowledges that she is unable to state that “the Illegal Migration Bill [is] compatible” with “the Human Rights Act” and admitted to MPs that it is “more than 50%” likely to break human rights laws.
Both the UN Human Rights Commissioner and the EU migration commissioner have highlighted that the bill breaches international agreements, explicitly banning migrants from accessing their rights.
It appears to immediately violate the 1951 Refugee Convention, the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act, — which protect refugees from prosecution for illegal entry and the right to not to be sent back home into harm’s way — as well as the Geneva Convention, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the UK’s obligations under the European Convention Against Trafficking (ECAT).
The bill proposes sending individuals back to their own country if the UK deems them ‘safe’, yet without checking whether each individual is free from persecution in that country, the bill will violate Article 33 of the Refugee Convention.
Before it deports individuals, it will detain them for 28 days, potentially breaching the home secretary’s duty to prevent inhumane and degrading treatment. If they are not transferred after 28 days then each of these migrants is entitled to ask a judge to release them due to unlawful imprisonment. 86% of those detained in 2021 were released on this count as the government had no arrangements to deport them.
A multitude of rights enshrined in the ECHR regarding life, torture, slavery, fair trial, detention, family and private life, discrimination, and right to a remedy are likely to be violated. In response, right-wing politicians have called for considerations of the UK leaving the ECHR, relieving the UK of the burden of having to adhere to human rights.
The ECHR was drafted to protect against state power in the aftermath of the World Wars — a time when 250,000 Belgians made their way across the Channel as refugees. Belarus and Russia are the only other European nations not part of the ECHR. Russia which was recently expelled for its aggression in Ukraine.
If this bill is seen through, the UK will likely have to choose to leave the ECHR or be expelled from it due its violation. Leaving the ECHR is not just an ethical concern, it would trigger the termination of the post-Brexit trade treaty — the Good Friday agreement.
Will the bill even work in practice?
If blowing up trade relations and damaging the reputation of the UK as a progressive nation isn’t enough, the bill just isn’t very viable in practical terms.
The government hopes to deter small boats by convincing immigrants that they will be deported as soon as they arrive to the UK, yet there is still a large question mark as to where. Deporting individuals to another country requires an agreement with that country, of which the UK currently has none, especially after Brexit left the UK with no option to send people back to the EU.
The UK is organising a deal to send Albanian asylum seekers –the most common nationality of asylum seekers in 2022 — back to Albania. But what about those from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq or Syria that make up the majority of asylum seekers? Under the new bill, their asylum claims will automatically be assumed to be ‘spurious’, ‘frustrating’the asylum system and they will be to deported to a ‘safe’ third country as soon as possible.
The only current ‘safe’ third country is Rwanda, yet the conversative ‘dream’ of sending traumatised refugees off to Rwanda was stalled last year and remains tied up in the Court of Appeal. Even if the plan is deemed lawful by the summer, it may still get tied up in the Supreme Court. Whether Rwanda can be considered a ‘safe’ country is also still up for debate considering its past with taking Israel’s refugees and the self-harm and suicidal threats observed on the last flight attempt.
What happens until we find somewhere to deport these refugees? They’ll join the 160,000 people strong backlog of asylum claims and be left in limbo, unable to have their claims reviewed.
In this position they’re unable to work, and must be housed, yet the current detention capacity in the UK is about 2,286 and 80,000 irregular migrants are expected to cross the channel this year.
Footing the bill
The cost of increasing detention capacity and maintaining detention will skyrocket as daily detention currently costs £120 per person.
Flying them to Rwanda will then cost more, with the deal costing the UK £140 million and other costs piling up for food, accommodation, access to translators, legal advice and the charter flights which cost over £13,000 per person in 2020.
Conservative politicians have clung to the figure of the £5 million spent every day on hotels to house refugees as a sign that the system is too expensive. Yet half of this fee was paid by the UK overseas aid budget.
The heavily cut aid budget is part of a UN agreement to provide assistance to the most vulnerable around the world, but the UK gives less than the internationally agreed upon figure and recent reports suggest up to a third of the budget has been appropriated by for domestic use to fill the gaps of an asylum system left in disarray.
Whilst the UK looks to appropriate even more of the budget, recent cuts have even been associated with a major cholera outbreak, killing a 1000 people.
The new bill, along with the increasing sums of money paid to France to increase surveillance on their beaches, will see costs balloon; where will the money come from?
It will continue siphoning off money for development and aid abroad, increasing displacement and global refugee numbers and it will undercut public services in the UK. If the idea is to avoid refugees risking their lives on these journeys and simultaneously save the UK and its people money, is this really the way forward?
No, but those aren’t the aims. The aim is to deliver on the xenophobic promise of stopping small boats which the government has managed to convince the public are to blame for over-run and under-funded public services, and not the government’s own mismanagement.
Will the bill stop small boats coming?
The success of this bill relies on convincing migrants that their claims will not be heard in the UK and therefore crossing the Channel is futile.
Yet assuming the Home Office has read its own, or any, research they would know that the risk of deportation, and cruelty of immigration or welfare policies have little impact on these decisions. Instead, decisions are made on the agents transporting them, family connections, language and perceptions of a democratic, stable and lawful environment.
Despite the Rwanda plan being high-profile, it did not appear to deter refugees coming to the UK, with far more boats reaching UK shores in 2022 than in 2021.
The only way this policy succeeds at acting as a deterrent is by eroding the idea that the UK is a lawful environment with any regard for human rights or international law.
The UK government has strived to make the refugee experience as inhospitable and inhumane as possible with endless detention, housing that isn’t fit for council tenants, and a meagre £5 a day for food, clothing and hygiene products.
These efforts symbolise the deluded and disassociated privilege of many policy makers who cannot even begin to comprehend the traumas these refugees have already witnessed.
Will the bill succeed?
The Illegal Immigration bill is exactly what it says on the tin — ‘illegal’. It violates numerous laws and conventions, which would likely see the UK caught up in courts for years to come at the cost of the tax-payer. It isn’t cost-effective, won’t make the system flow more seamlessly, is not currently practicable and will fail to protect the most vulnerable, instead ignoring and compounding their trauma through detention and deportation.
The only thing this bill succeeds in doing is making the Conversative party look as though they are taking action against immigration ahead of the 2024 elections. And maybe that’s all it is.
Considering the violations and impracticalities, the bill may never be put into action, but the damage will still be done. Other far-right government will look to this as an example to build from. Suella Braverman’s warning of “billions” of refugees eager to reach our shores will be stuck in the public mind and undermine acceptance and support for refugees.
Sunak stated “that there is nothing inevitable about illegal migration” but there is in a country without accessible legal routes; there is in a world facing ever increasing political repression, exploitation, war and climate crisis; there is when the UK refuses to acknowledge its role in creating these crises and puts more money into the policing and surveillance of migrants than addressing them. Illegal immigration is inevitable when the doors to safety remain locked and armed.
Want to know more about the reality of being an asylum-seeker or refugee in the UK, explore the recent news:
UK minister admits 200 asylum-seeking children have gone missing
Home Office paying asylum seekers £1 an hour to clean detention centres
