The most pessimistic said that the real reason for announcing this new strategy was to distract attention from Boris Johnson’s troubles with the police. Indeed, although it was known that the government was considering doing something like this, it is not surprising that it was announced to the press when Parliament was closed for the Easter holiday. As a tradition, it should have gone through Parliament first.
The new strategy is to detain a number of people who arrive to seek political asylum until they go to Rwanda. Even if they qualify for political asylum, they cannot return to the UK, they must remain in Rwanda. It just seems that young people will be sent to Rwanda.
While there are people who are happy with this idea and would like to send Ukrainian refugees to Rwanda as well, many criticize this decision due to the costs (around ÂŁ30,000 per person plus the ÂŁ150 million annually given to Rwanda) and not compliance with international political refugee laws.
Australia, for example, has an island where it keeps asylum seekers in practice, but if they were really political refugees, then they could go and live in Australia, which was a rarely used failure now. With this system they cannot live in the UK. It is very harsh when one asks for political asylum in the UK because they have relatives living in this country and are instead being sent back on their own to Rwanda. There is also a cultural problem, and the largest refugee groups now are Syrians, Ukrainians and Afghans. None of these have a particular cultural connection with Rwanda.
Boris Johnson wants to start sending migrants to Rwanda by the end of next month. However, there will be problems, both those who oppose it and the legal challenge that has already begun.