The British Government is desperately clinging to any demonstration that its efforts to deport irregular migrants to Rwanda are both legal and viable. According to the newspaper The Suna first person has already made that trip that humanitarian organizations and human rights lawyers had conspired to prevent.
In exchange for compensation of around 3,500 euros ($3,740), a man of African origin has taken advantage of the voluntary displacement program that Sunak’s Executive launched at the beginning of this year. Although the case has nothing to do with the program of forced deportations that the Prime Minister has announced will begin in July, Downing Street has celebrated it, and has taken pains to present it as “proof of concept”, evidence that the system designed to send migrants to Rwanda is viable. The first deportee, whose asylum request was rejected at the end of last year, made the journey on a commercial flight.
Over the next few days, the search and retention of more than 5,700 asylum seekers who remain in the United Kingdom, whose applications had already been denied by the British administration, will begin. They are the first selected for the moment when flights begin to take off regularly. Most of them had accommodation in one of the hotels arranged by the Ministry of the Interior, and received approximately 57 euros per week (61 dollars) for their maintenance and food. Under normal circumstances, the claim of the hotel and the payment served to have some control over the whereabouts of these people. Since word began to spread that flights to Rwanda were going to start taking off, at least 3,500 of those candidates for deportation have proven impossible to locate. Many of them had also changed their address in recent months and the letter informing them that they were going to be transferred has not reached its destination.
The first arrests should be made this May 1, and the selected immigrants will be transferred to one of the seven detention centers set up by the Ministry of the Interior.
“We are not surprised that the Government has lost contact with those it wants to deport to Rwanda. We know that you have had computer problems with the management of the asylum seekers’ address, and we also know, from our daily work with people who have fled war and persecution, that they are currently under stress and anguish regarding the deportation plan that will probably lead them to avoid contact with the authorities,” explained Enver Solomon, the executive director of the humanitarian organization UK Refugee Council.
A small pre-election ‘victory’
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Sunak faces municipal elections across England next Thursday in which polls predict a new defeat for the Conservatives. If the expected setback is of great magnitude, it could unleash an internal rebellion by the hard wing of the party against the prime minister, and even force the advancement of the general elections, scheduled for next fall.
That is why the prime minister forced Parliament last week to remain in session until early morning and push forward the Rwanda Security Law that finally allowed flights with deportees to begin taking off. Also achieving, one day before the municipal elections, that a first immigrant has been sent to the African country could be a sign, for the conservative electorate, that Sunak is achieving his goal. Irregular immigration remains a priority issue for right-wing British voters.
“This whole extortion trick prior to the elections is going to cost the taxpayer an average of two million pounds (2.3 million euros, 2.5 million dollars) for each person [enviada a Ruanda]”, denounced the Immigration spokesperson for the opposition Labor Party, Yvette Cooper. “We had already been warned by former conservative interior ministers that it was about getting some sample planes to take off before the elections. “Now we know what they intended,” Cooper said.
In addition to the 585 million euros ($624 million) that the Sunak Government has committed to paying Rwanda over the next five years, the Oxford University Migration Observatory has calculated that, if A total of 300 immigrants are deported to that country before the general elections at the end of the year, the cost of each forced transfer will be two million pounds.
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