British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Wednesday announced a controversial new plan to stop the surge of illegal migrants coming into the country. Issuing a warning, Sunak said that those who enter the UK illegally will not be allowed to claim asylum.
“If you come here illegally, you can’t claim asylum. You can’t benefit from our modern slavery protections. You can’t make spurious human rights claims and you can’t stay,” Rishi Sunak said in a tweet.
“We will detain those who come here illegally and then remove them in weeks, either to their own country if it is safe to do so. Or to a Safe Third Country like Rwanda and once you are removed, you will be banned as you are in America and Australia from ever re-entering our country,” he added. Called the ‘illegal migration bill’, the draft law will crack down on those crossing the English Channel in small boats.
Under the draft law, interior minister Suella Braverman will be given a new legal duty to deport all migrants entering illegally, such as across the Channel, trumping their other rights in the UK and European human rights law.
“The current situation is neither moral nor sustainable. It cannot go on,” Rishi Sunak added.
“And it’s devastatingly unfair on those who most need our help, but can’t get it as our asylum system is being overwhelmed by those traveling illegally across the channel,” he said.
More than 45,000 migrants arrived on the shores of southeast England on small boats last year — a 60 percent annual increase on a perilous route that has grown in popularity every year since 2018.
Rights groups and opposition parties have criticized the new law and say that the plan is unworkable and unfairly scapegoats vulnerable refugees.
The UK has already tried to implement deportations, last year introducing a program to relocate some asylum seekers to Rwanda. However, no flights to Rwanda have left the UK yet after the plan was grounded in June last year by an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights.
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