UK Immigration Minister Resigns Over Bill Allowing to Send Asylum Seekers to Rwanda

© AP Photo / Kirsty WigglesworthBritain's Minister for Immigration, Robert Jenrick resigned on November 6, 2023
Britain's Minister for Immigration, Robert Jenrick resigned on November 6, 2023 - Sputnik Africa, 1920, 07.12.2023
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In April 2022, the United Kingdom and Rwanda signed an agreement, according to which illegal migrants, arriving in the UK, would be sent to Rwanda first, where their asylum claims would be processed. After a series of legal challenges, on November 15, 2023, the UK Supreme Court found the plan unlawful.
The Immigration Minister of the United Kingdom, Robert Jenrick, resigned due to "strong disagreements" over the government's "Safety of Rwanda Bill," allowing a scheme to send migrants and asylum seekers arriving in the UK to the East African country, according to the minister's post on social networks.

"I refuse to be yet another politician who makes promises on immigration to the British public but does not keep them," Jenrick said in a letter to the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, published on X, calling the draft law a "triumph of hope over experience," adding that the country needed stronger measures to "end the merry-go-rounds of legal challenges that risk paralyzing the scheme and negating its intended deterrent."

According to media reports, some parts of the Human Rights Act (HRA) are bypassed in the document, which is set to be urgently examined in the UK House of Commons. In addition, thanks to the draft bill, any orders from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) restraining the plan could be ignored.

"Our new landmark emergency legislation will control our borders, deter people taking perilous journeys across the [English] channel [and] end the continuous legal challenges filling our courts. [...] It is parliament that should decide who comes to this country, not criminal gangs," Sunak wrote on X about the bill.

Protesters stand outside the Supreme Court in London - Sputnik Africa, 1920, 16.11.2023
Sub-Saharan Africa
UK PM Seeks New Migration Deal With Rwanda After Red Light From Court
On Tuesday, British Home Secretary James Cleverly met the Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta in the capital of the East African country, Kigali, to sign a new treaty which reportedly concerned commitments regarding the treatment of asylum seekers and migrants sent there.
In June 2022, the deal signed between the UK and Rwanda in April 2022 regarding the deportation of asylum seekers and migrants from the UK to the East African country to process their cases was ruled by a London Court of Appeal to be a violation of Britain’s Human Rights Act. Then, the ECHR injunction blocked the first flight of migrants to Rwanda.
This November, the UK Supreme Court also found the scheme unlawful. The Rwanda plan is reportedly the central plan of Sunak's migration policy, which aims to combat migrants illegally crossing the English Channel in small boats.
The government's data show that in 2018-2023, over 111,500 migrants crossed the channel in small vessels.
In late November, UK Home Office Second Permanent Secretary Simon Ridley said that the UK government has no information on the whereabouts of over 17,000 undocumented migrants who arrived in the country but had their asylum claims withdrawn by authorities.
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