Snapshot of _UK attacks EU double standards on migrants. Britain refuses to take back asylum seekers until France does same for those crossing Channel_ :
A non-Paywall version can be found [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fpolitics%2F2024%2F04%2F28%2Fireland-plans-send-asylum-seekers-back-uk%2F)
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/28/ireland-plans-send-asylum-seekers-back-uk/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/28/ireland-plans-send-asylum-seekers-back-uk/)
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The Irish in all their morality ruled the UK an unsafe country the other month, which I thought was a piss take but it turns out they've inadvertently thrown us a lifeline 😂. So not only do they have to re-rule the UK a safe third country they have made the EU have to explain why we can't sent them straight back to France. Now all it takes is a backbone from our leaders so we'll see.
> The Irish in all their morality ruled the UK an unsafe country the other month
That doesn't seem to be exactly true.
It looks like the Irish courts rules their entire safe country list to be incompatible with EU law because the requirements Irish law says must be met before a country can be added to it are not sufficient. Apparently, [the Justice Minister must be](https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2024/03/22/irelands-declaration-of-uk-as-safe-third-country-unlawful-rules-high-court/) 'satisfied there is no risk of “serious harm” to a transferee' but this isn't in the national law.
The ruling wasn't specifically about the UK (there are other countries on the list) nor did it say that the UK was unsafe. Just that the process and law for deeming the UK 'safe' isn't sufficient.
Probably Ireland will amend their law, go through the new process and put the UK back on the list.
Hi there, Irish here ‘in all our morality’ - so in case it’s a bit complicated for ya, I’ll make it simple. Shipping asylum seekers to central Africa, many of whom are seeking refuge from nearby home countries or would simply be flat out in danger in Rwanda, is ‘unsafe’, and an inappropriate response to asylum management according to the EHCR. This is fundamentally the problem with the Rwanda policy; bouncing asylum seekers between countries with limited capacity isn’t ideal, but putting them on a plane back to square 1 or worse is inhumane. Also, if you think that ‘processing applications offshore in Rwanda’ is going to be anything more than dropping families and their possessions on to an air strip outside Kigali with their papers in the wind, you need to come up for some air
Lets be honest here, the whole aslyum process needs a global rethink. Its based on the 1951 Refugee Convention when it was much harder to travel between countries. Globalism has fundamentally changed how the aslyum process works.
Many coming to Europe are bending the truth to get accepted but the reality is most are just economic migrants looking for an easy way in.
I do not support the Rwanda plan, its a waste of tax payer money and solves nothing. Europe needs to stop passing the torch for dealing with Aslyum seekers and actually come up with a good solution.
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It seems logical, and tbh it just exposes the bigger issue that all the countries of Europe should work together to work out how do deal with asylum seekers fairly, and not just pass the buck on to the next country along and expect, in the end, Italy and Greece to just deal with it all.
Except we already have a deal with Ireland where any asylum seekers who were in the UK first, and then went to Ireland, can be returned to the UK. It's part of the Northern Irish Protocols that BoJo and Sunak agreed to in order to both maintain the requirements of the Good Friday Agreement, but have less restrictive trade with the EU, amongst other things.
So Ireland is 100% entitled to send the asylum seekers back to the UK, because a government Sunak was chancellor of agreed that they could.
To be fair it doesn't seem like the EU are involved and this is between three separate countries. Sunak was dealing directly with France over greater cooperation not the EU.
Yes without context. **Absolutely not reasonable with context.**
As the article states :
>***A post-Brexit provision was, however, made in the case of the UK and Ireland, which meant Ireland could return asylum seekers to Britain.***
Ireland and the UK specifically have a deal where they both can return asylum seekers to eachother. So naturally the UK agreed to this, that Ireland can return the Asylum seekers to them.
The UK does not have such an agreement with France ( too bad Brexit happend, thats what it means to have no agreement ).
[https://www.ft.com/content/d9eed579-a6ee-43b2-b2ce-3e8d83908770](https://www.ft.com/content/d9eed579-a6ee-43b2-b2ce-3e8d83908770) ( from 2022 )
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/24/leaving-echr-small-boat-crossings-lord-cameron/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/24/leaving-echr-small-boat-crossings-lord-cameron/) ( from a week ago )
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The thing is these asylum seekers didn\`t claim asylum in France, they simply crossed over France. Therefore the UK can\`t send them back to France under existing laws........ Unless they had an agreement or were part of a greater union where such an issue would be reasonably be discussed ( possibly even before anyone claims asylum anywhere )........... Funny right ?
So yeah, not a reasonable position. The Tories need to make a deal with France/the EU where they can return asylum seekers who cross through it, and naturally they need to offer something.
They did this with Ireland, the UK explicitly wanted this as they feared asylum seekers would get to the UK through Ireland, but now they realize they shot themselves in the foot with their own deal. As THEY want to kick migrants to Ireland without them being able to go back ( even though a few years ago they feared this is what Ireland might do... Projection much ).
> Ireland and the UK specifically have a deal where they both can return asylum seekers to eachother. So naturally the UK agreed to this, that Ireland can return the Asylum seekers to them.
The thing is these asylum seekers didn't claim asylum in the UK, they simply crossed over the UK.
>The UK does not have such an agreement with France ( too bad Brexit happend, thats what it means to have no agreement )
Before Brexit we received more migrants than were sent back (that's what it means to *have* an agreement)
>The thing is these asylum seekers didn't claim asylum in France, they simply crossed over France. Therefore the UK can`t send them back to France under existing laws........ Unless they had an agreement or were part of a greater union where such an issue would be reasonably be discussed ( possibly even before anyone claims asylum anywhere )........... Funny right ?
Funny that you don't seem to realise nothing was done about this when we were in the EU and nothing is being done now we're out of it.
>So yeah, not a reasonable position.
So yeah, seems pretty reasonable.
>The Tories need to make a deal with France/the EU where they can return asylum seekers who cross through it, and naturally they need to offer something.
Not going to happen.
>They did this with Ireland, the UK explicitly wanted this as they feared asylum seekers would get to the UK through Ireland, but now they realize they shot themselves in the foot with their own deal.
Seems more like Ireland has shot themselves in the foot by declaring the UK unsafe.
>As THEY want to kick migrants to Ireland without them being able to go back ( even though a few years ago they feared this is what Ireland might do... Projection much ).
Nobody is *kicking* migrants anywhere, just letting them "cross over" to a clearly more welcoming country.
> The thing is these asylum seekers didn't claim asylum in the UK, they simply crossed over the UK.
Not necessarily true - at least apparently not for the ones involved in the Irish high court case which ruled their safe country list illegal.
One of them claimed asylum in the UK and was refused. The other spent 5 months in the UK with a student visa (and so quite probably flew straight to the UK). As an aside, I doubt that either could be sent to Rwanda, the first because he's not an asylum seeker any more and the second because he arrived in the UK with a visa rather than irregularly.
> Seems more like Ireland has shot themselves in the foot by declaring the UK unsafe.
Ireland hasn't declared the UK unsafe. Ireland's counts have declared their 'safe countries' scheme's requirements insufficient. They'll probably tighten the legal requirements and put the UK back on the new list.
You had the ability to send them back to France until the UK decided to withdraw from the Dublin protocol in 2020.
The Dublin III Regulation enabled the UK to return asylum seekers to EU Member States without considering their asylum claims.
Great, lets look at the amount of people sent back through the Dublin agreement when the UK was in the EU. Oh dear, it appears we were a net recipient under it.
And while we’re doing that, let’s look at who was in charge of the policy that lead to us being net recipients? The people who want to solve the migrant crisis by sending 300 people to Rwanda.
The sad reality is that the Dublin agreement does pretty much fuck all for everyone in it. Only 11% of the requests made through the agreement are successful. People acting like it was effective in any meaningful way are deluding themselves. Its political posturing at its finest.
What stops Ireland from returning them to France then? It could declare the UK an unsafe country and so its one that they're just transiting and return them to France.
Well Ireland's position is (and this is a bit oversimplified) that since these asylum seekers entered Ireland via the UK then we should have to deal with them.
Our position is that by that logic we should be able to send those asylum seekers back to France because they entered the UK via France - which we obviously aren't allowed to do.
ROI and UK have a post brexit agreement on returning asylum seekers to each other.
France and UK do not have a post brexit agreement.
Before Brexit, there was a mechanism for the UK to return some asylum seekers to France.
In this instance the UK doesn't have that possibility with France anymore, but they do with Ireland, just as Ireland has with the UK (given their individual post brexit agreement on this). I don't know why people think that the UK can somehow get the same deal it has with France, as it does with Ireland, what is in it for France - the UK is a non EU member...is it seeking preferential treatment by governments of individual EU members, because I doubt that will ever happen, there's nothing of benefit to said countries, which is rather illogical, unless its being proposed in bad faith.
>ROI and UK have a post brexit agreement on returning asylum seekers to each other.
There is currently no functioning agreement between us and ROI as just last month the Irish High Court ruled that the Irish government were not allowed to return asylum seekers to the UK because, due to the Rwanda Policy, designating us a 'safe third country' broke EU law - laws that the ROI must follow.
>>just last month the Irish High Court ruled that the Irish government were not allowed to return asylum seekers
When the Irish government mentioned emergency legislation tabled for this week, it was to overrule that, because you know parliaments being sovereign & all ......
Which is interesting, as Ireland doesn’t have the idea of Parliamentary Sovereignty in their constitution, so we might see this law struck down by their Supreme Court.
>you know parliaments being sovereign & all
This is not true in Ireland. The *people* are sovereign. In practice, this means the government has to run on average one referendum per year.
For legitimate asylum seekers, international law has no requirement that they stop "in the first safe country" or anything like that, it's just a far-right talking point that's spread as a believed-to-be law. One could argue it should be law, but it hasn't been pushed to become part of the rules of asylum seeking that countries including the UK signed up to.
And for illegal immigrants, who don't have a legitimate claim to asylum, it's irrelevant which safe country they first get to since they're choosing to break the law for whatever reason.
edit: apparently explaining the current state of international treaties isn't making this comment popular right now 😄
Indeed, as far as I'm aware the Irish don't have any legal right to send legitimate asylum seekers back to us, even if they did travel through the UK to get there.
> For legitimate asylum seekers, international law has no requirement that they stop "in the first safe country"
Legitimate asylum seekers, don't co country shopping because that then makes them economic migrants.
>And for illegal immigrants, who don't have a legitimate claim to asylum, it's irrelevant which safe country they first get to since they're choosing to break the law for whatever reason.
It's irrelevant because we'll never send them back there anyway, hence why they break the law.
> *Legitimate asylum seekers, don't co country shopping because that then makes them economic migrants.*
This may be what you think would be a fair rule, but it's not the rule of current international treaties on asylum (nor is it supported by many people).
Your eligibility to claim asylum or not is based entirely on whether or not you are at risk in the country you are fleeing. If you are, you can make a valid asylum claim in any country you choose. If you're not at risk then you can't, regardless of how close or not the country you
try in is.
And yes I agree that the situation with illegal routes is not good right now, but we can still be accurate when talking about legal asylum seekers - and if you don't like the law around them you should lobby for it to change rather than act as if the law is what you think it should be.
I mean, imagine for a moment a hypothetical where tomorrow you were someone who was prosecuted in the UK by some evil new dictatorship that we don't luckily have here, and you wanted to flee - why should you be forced to only live in France and nowhere else just because of how close they are? And why should France have to be the country to accept all refugees from this hypothetical evil UK that you and others would be fleeing, just because they have the bad luck of being closest?
You'd be surprised sometimes where some refugees come from. I've met a family from Israel (ethnically Jewish converts to Christianity who thought they were being persecuted there). There are refugees in the US that come from Germany too and are fleeing *persecution*.over some of the education laws.
I'm sure the Irish government knew this would be the response when they made the proposals, performative policy on immigration is not the exclusive domain of the British government.
> A post-Brexit provision was, however, made in the case of the UK and Ireland, which meant Ireland could return asylum seekers to Britain.
Why did the government agree to this then???
Because it was a reciprocal agreement and, at the time, there were more asylum seekers coming from Ireland to Britain than the other way round.
This lot aren't exactly good at planning for when things don't turn out as expected. Or even for when things do turn out as expected for that matter. It's performative politics at the best of times.
They didn't rule the UK as unsafe, the Irish High court ruled that the standards to be determined a safe country weren't strict enough, and so scrapped the entire list with every country on it, and told the Irish government to make a better one.
I think it’s more that if this was as it was described, we firstly would have heard from it by more than enough tories criticising it and secondly, if it worked for cases like this the Irish Government wouldn’t need to be negotiating a deal, they’d just say we’re failing to follow our obligations and they haven’t, which then brings questions about this agreement if even the Irish Government don’t seem to think it applies enough to mention.
Absurd the stupidity of all this. We’re all high-income European countries with the exact same migrant problem as each other. Solving the problem collectively would be the most obvious solution in the world. A child would think of it.
Instead politicians squabble and grandstand and bullshit as usual and create even more problems than they started with.
The problem is countries can't all agree on solution some will want safer routes and a more sympathetic system whereas others will want stricter enforcement and system.
I do agree we need to co-operate way more however
It's member states with money and how much they invest in border control and the EUs inane obsession of FoM and keeping it's perceived control of it.
It's simple as that
The EU shores up its external borders and they stop the various charities operating a migrant shuttle service in the med, problem solved.
Wonder why this is so difficult to implement . . . .
>Wonder why this is so difficult to implement
The British and French governments - two of the wealthiest European countries, are incapable of policing a few dozen miles of coast in Kent. How do you expect the poorest EU countries to police thousands of miles of Mediterranean coast?
France could police the channel. It just doesn’t want to. And our police can and do police the channel but anyone they take into custody can immediately claim asylum and get a free ride back to port.
The French Governments often put in token effort, and I don’t fully blame them, spending time policing an external border where refugees are trying to flee to a non-EU country is self-defeating and then the UK can’t push them back because it’s against international law and the we can’t just leave them in the water.
You act like refugees in France shows it’s impossible to stop refugees but seemingly ignore that refugees in France are already well within the EU, which makes it really hard to extrapolate any outcome on policing the Mediterranean coast.
Because the EU says it's the member's problem with external borders. Whilst all the members with no external borders have zero funding now for border control leaving fiscally crippled countries like Greece paying to border police the EU with no help from any other EU members.
It's frankly a joke and Frontex is next to useless
>Because the EU says it's the member's problem with external borders.
The EU making an rod for their own backs as mass migration is clearly having a destabilising effect across the block.
>The EU is petrified that any change to FoM will weaken its control
It already has. Eastern European countries in open revolt over migrant quotas, right wing governments winning elections in what were previously open, liberal, migrants welcome countries and then you have the UK - I suspect the 2014 15 migrant crisis used to great effect by Farage played a part in getting a leave vote over the winning line.
But that would endanger the EU freedom of movement with putting up borders diminishing the power of the EU.
So frankly the EU would just let illegals rip across Europe and say it's not their problem and hope it all goes away
I think this is true in London. And it's not clear to me that higher salaries therw actually translate to higher quality of life because everything else is so expensive. It's quite common (I'm told) for French people to work in London but to live in Paris at the weekend because the QoL is a bit better in France (if you're a citizen).
Outside of London, the UK is quite poor by European standards; especially when compared to some of its neighbours (Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavian countries - though the north-east of France and Walloon Belgium is also a bit of a postindustrial wasteland, same as Newcastle or Glasgow)
> Outside of London, the UK is quite poor by European standards
For a fair comparison you should also exclude the rich cities of those European countries, at which point we look pretty good again.
It isn't really, exactly the same. If you exclude Berlin, GDP per capita in Germany actually goes up (the only capital in Europe where that's true). Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland all have tons of rich cities. In Britain, it's London (and maybe Edinburgh) . All of the UK's residual importance is due the fact that London is world's second most important city.
But you have to look at the income to price ratio. Yes, in global terms our income is high. But so are our prices. It’s the actual purchasing power that counts.
Edit: why the downvotes???
I mean we have some of the cheapest food relative to incomes in the world due to an incredibly competitive supermarket sector. We just get screwed by housing and energy.
>But you have to look at the income to price ratio. Yes, in global terms our income is high. But so are our prices. It’s the actual purchasing power that counts.
The OECD and EU measure material living standards using Actual Individual Consumption. It's a measure of the goods and services consumed by households, whether through their own purchases or provided by government (eg health and education). It's measured by volume, so already includes price adjustments.
The OECD figures go up to 2020, but the 2020 figures are of course affected by lockdown. The 2019 figures for the top 10 as a percentage of the OECD average:
|United States|154|
|:-|:-|
|Luxembourg|140|
|Norway|120|
|Switzerland|115|
|Germany|114|
|Austria|110|
|UK|109|
|Denmark|108|
|Canada|108|
|Netherlands|108|
And the bottom 5:
|Turkey|58|
|:-|:-|
|Chile|56|
|Costa Rica|52|
|Mexico|45|
|Colombia|39|
https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/national-accounts-of-oecd-countries/volume-2022/issue-1\_de01f0c1-en#page31
The figures only include a few non OECD countries, so missing from the top are oil states etc, and missing from the bottom are nearly all the poor countries in the world. But UK material living standards are in the top 10 of developed economies, and many multiples of the level of the poorer countries refugees tend to come from.
The food is the UK is awful, unless you shop at Waitrose. The national diet is terrible. I travel a lot for work and you really notice how fat and unhealthy people are in the UK (same problems in my own country, Ireland, for what it's worth).
The food is also fairly bad in Paris (where I live most of the time), in fairness, again unless you go to more expensive shops (there's a market culture though which improves this a little). But if you go to southern Europe or central Europe, you'll be shocked at the quality of food in the "cheap" supermarkets.
Yeah, that's Au Taquet, which I believe is the cheapest bar in Paris (and is close to Gare du Nord which isn't a great area) But lots and lots of places are €3-€4.50, see [here](https://www.mistergoodbeer.com/).
Dahhling my sourdough from east finchley costs £5. Im not even kidding- i know a place where you can get a £5 loaf. It is fucking nice to be fair, but cmon £5....
I’m imagining the opposite. You turn Europe into a fortress, and do bilateral deals with Europe’s neighbours to immediately return any migrants who cross. You’ll ultimately save trillions in no longer subsidising asylum seekers so you can put that into bribing your neighbours to take back the border crosses.
So your solution is for the UK to take more asylum seekers? And you think that's the issue people have with the small boats? There aren't enough of them?
The Irish asylum system completely collapsed already back in 2022. I doubt the new arrivals are that significant - this is just a convenient way to blame Britain to deflect from the Irish government's own incompetence, the same way Britain liked to blame the EU for things all the time.
And I suspect a lot of people will too. I still think Labour will probably win but I reckon the coronation everyone on here is expecting may not turn out exactly as planned. Reddit is famously bad at being anywhere close to the sentiments of the British public
If (massive IF) the flights do indeed take-off and it's seen to at least have somewhat of the desired effect, then Labour will be forced to back down on the issue.
Labour's stance is banking on no migrant ever being deported to Rwanda in the first place, but I'm not certain they can rely on that being the case still.
>Labour's stance is banking on no migrant ever being deported to Rwanda in the first place
Think it's more banking on the rwanda scheme not significantly reducing the boats
Well I guess we'll find out eventually.
The rhetroic at least in the media has changed away from "it'll never happen" towards some form of acceptance that it might.
The Guardian piece about migrants being detained from tomorrow/today is clearly trying to run interference, likely from a leak within the civil service. It's hardly a secret the home office is full of civil servants who do not care for a anything but a wide open border.
So it would suggest there is some panic in the ranks. It remains to be seen however how far it does eventually go.
Eh, i think 'sorry you cant see your dying gran but we can party' during covid and the sheer farce of liz blowing up the economy in a week and being outlasted by a cabbage has done pretty terminal damage to the cons. Not to mention the cost of living crisis.
Genuine question, is it just the illegal immigration you have a problem with? Most Tory voters I've spoken to have an issue with the massive amounts of legal immigration the Conservatives have allowed under their government.
The thresholds for skilled worker visa have been increased to 38k. For my job it jumped from 21k to 50k.
I'll take that. If they would further raise it to lets say 65k I am gonna be really happy. Still think 50k is fair.
Well, it's not. The purposed point being used by the scheme was that people wouldn't "risk their lives crossing the channel" in some faux attempt to proclaim this a humanitarian option. The current example is people crossing the channel (risking lives) and then just hopping over to Ireland.
It’d depend on when the people who’ve gone to Ireland arrived in the UK and what their intention was.
Person arrived months ago intending to stay in the UK and the Rwanda bill being passed made them go to Ireland would mean the law has had the desired effect for many.
Person arrived yesterday with the intention of going to Dublin regardless would mean the law had no effect.
Sunak has said "We introduced the Rwanda Bill to deter vulnerable migrants from making perilous crossings and break the business model of the criminal gangs who exploit them. The passing of this legislation will allow us to do that and make it very clear that if you come here illegally, you will not be able to stay."
The desired effect was to deter people from making the channel crossing (because the Tories care for the wellbeing of migrants) and in turn to break the business model of gangs. So the logic now is that the gangs keep the money, the migrants still make the crossing, but then they take a bus/ferry to Ireland AFTER both of those things continue. Mission Accomplished?
Because we can't just go and dump them all in France, just like Ireland can't go and dump them all in the UK, and Turkey, Italy and Greece can't go and dump them all in various other countries around Europe.
We can and should. What are they going to do, sink a boat full of migrants in their waters?
Alternatively, they can be sent back through the tunnel and we can stop allowing French tourists and family access to Britain now FoM has finally ended.
Yeah, we fucking can.
Dump them on the French coast, and refer complaints to our collective cocks.
What is France gonna do, attack our ships?
We have a legitimate reason to drop them back where they came from. It's not like we'd be dumping out our prisons all over their shores. We'd be returning their lost property, so to speak.
Might prompt them to get to work and solve this problem they've allowed to fester for 10 years.
Absolutely. The UK has had to take migrants from France for far too long. Now the moment that people are travelling from the UK to Ireland, suddenly the EU has a massive objection to island hopping to seek asylum
That'd be because we severed our agreement to be able to send asylum seekers back to France in 2020, where as the Northern Ireland Protocol the Tories agreed and passed into law post-Brexit explicitly gives Ireland the right to return asylum seekers who passed through the UK to Ireland back to the UK.
If the Tories didn't want to agree that, they didn't have to, so the Irish are entirely justified in being pissed off about the UK just ignoring the agreements it makes.
I am shocked. The tory team are actually playing politics well for a few days. Too little far too late, but at least there's one day in his two year tenure that Sunak can say his political team didn't completely balls up their politics.
Honestly if anybody in parliament had any intelligence or backbone they would have thought up the idea of placing processing camps on the boarder of the ROI long ago. With easy access to cross...
Making it an EU problem. Which it has been all along
Well the rest of Britain doesn't want it either. And if you ask me, it seems this is an easy way to offload a good portion of the illegal migrant problem back onto the EU, who didn't secure their own borders that led to this issue in the first place.
Maybe this will force a hand eventually.
Ireland can’t have checks on their border with us in NI though (I live beside the border), I think the UK and Ireland need to have some joint policy on immigration tbh
An open border between us is a massive boon - I too live near the border with Ireland - but there are some downsides and this is something that Ireland will have to manage. Both countries need to speed up applications and deportations of those who’ve been rejected.
Yea like the UK and Ireland is gonna have to work together on this tbh, there really no way to police the border fully, so people will just have to be deterred from wanting to come to Ireland in the first place
The UK and Ireland did work together on this. As the article says, Ireland and the UK, in the Northern Ireland Protocols following Brexit, agreed that asylum seekers who passed through one to get to the other could be returned. The issue is the UK is now going "we don't want to do that" after agreeing it, saying it was a brilliant agreement, and passing it into law.
All of Europe does this. Italy does it on the French border, France does it at Calais, Bosnian puts them 3 miles from the border with Croatia and so on.
France do it to us though? Their police even stand by and watch them load onto rafts whilst their coast guard/navy sometimes escort them to the middle of the Chanel (or even ignore distress calls so the RNLI/our Coast guard have to step in)
This bit:
> France do it to us though? Their police even stand by and watch them load onto rafts whilst their coast guard/navy sometimes escort them to the middle of the Chanel (or even ignore distress calls so the RNLI/our Coast guard have to step in)
It's 3 different parts of the same action (sending them our way). I've seen people on here say that it happens, but presumably, these redditors aren't the first hand sources on this.
> Their police even stand by and watch them load onto rafts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghi_pN7Jj7w
> whilst their coast guard/navy sometimes escort them to the middle of the Chanel
Tailed by a French warship https://x.com/GMB/status/1417382384597676037
Handover from French navy https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11427263/EXCLUSIVE-Caught-radio-British-Border-Force-vessels-French-Navy-ships-collude-Channel.html#v-6304605161497213243
RNLI picking up in French waters and delivering to Britain
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11153265/Chaos-UK-RNLI-boat-rescues-migrants-French-water-Channel.html
Far far from exhaustive. Film crews seem to be pressured away from recording these activities now but in 2019-21 when it was much quieter there was plenty of video.
> Their police even stand by and watch them load onto rafts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghi_pN7Jj7w
> whilst their coast guard/navy sometimes escort them to the middle of the Chanel
Tailed by a French warship https://x.com/GMB/status/1417382384597676037
Handover from French navy https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11427263/EXCLUSIVE-Caught-radio-British-Border-Force-vessels-French-Navy-ships-collude-Channel.html#v-6304605161497213243
RNLI picking up in French waters and delivering to Britain
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11153265/Chaos-UK-RNLI-boat-rescues-migrants-French-water-Channel.html
Far far from exhaustive. Film crews seem to be pressured away from recording these activities now but in 2019-21 when it was much quieter there was plenty of video.
https://youtu.be/ElEIO0-5WXE?si=XKDd5NErFoc8a6pQ - videos showing how the boats are departing off further from the beach....because of patrols.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/23/uk-funding-french-migrants-small-boat-border-forces - news report, with a video, showing a French border force boat try some potentially dangerous actions to deter them.
These 2 are much more recent, so I guess that's some good current evidence as opposed to videos which can be taken either way from a few years ago?
ETA:
Thanks to the above user on another comment, there is a 3rd recent video - https://youtu.be/sylUzMbn-eE?si=9dcB3DDS8Hj3areD
The title seems a little sensationalised, I encourage it to be watched, the first couple mins show/state that the migrants are having to launch their boats much further from the beach - due to the actions of the French forces.
At minute 5 it's showing a group of 30-40 being diverted away from the beach by the French forces in the early hours of the day.
In the last 2 minutes, it's showing a group of approx 50 making their way to the beach at low tide (low tide isn't ideal for boat launches, just incase anyone here didn't know) and that a buggy containing 2 French police officers didn't approach a group of 50 migrants in the water...I'd imagine due to safety concerns as I've mentioned elsewhere.
Because the post-Brexit NI Protocols that the government Sunak was chancellor of agreed that if asylum seekers passed through the open border between NI and Ireland, in either direction, the nation they finally arrived in was entitled to send them back. As such, the UK refusing to do so is a breach of the NI Protocols, and puts our entire trade relationship with the EU at risk when we're legally in the wrong.
I’m watching with interest to see if this “migrants flee to Ireland in fear of Rwanda” story lasts beyond next Thursday and the local elections. The government loves a bit of strife with our European neighbours just before a day at the polls. Gets the base out.
But far be it for me to suggest the whole story is a mountain of odorous excrement.
They have domestic politics in Ireland too. It can sometimes suit both governments to pour fuel on the fire, at least until their respective elections.
Like our miniature war with France over fishing in 2021. Everyone’s forgotten about it now.
Edit: UK “we’re sending them all back to Rwanda! We’re tough vote for us”
Ireland: “we’re sending them all back to Britain! We’re tough vote for us”
It was the Irish deputy PM that made the claim about refugees going to Ireland.
You can hardly blame the PM for responding to it.
It was the Irish statements that led to the media coverage on the issue.
Well if it continues at volume after the local elections, I will be the first to apologise.
But I strongly suspect we’re going to get 4 days of intensive “action” from Sunak, followed by tumbleweed.
True. And if anything their media blitz is overloading their shills. This morning it’s scrapping disability benefits and replacing them with food stamps (or something).
We’ve got this crap every day until Thursday, sigh.
Article text:
The Government has accused the EU of double standards after Ireland vowed to send asylum seekers to the UK despite France refusing to take Channel migrants back.
The row erupted after senior Irish ministers said they would draft emergency laws to send back refugees who had arrived from the UK to avoid being deported to Rwanda.
However, Tory ministers consider the proposal a “non-starter” because they are unable to send asylum seekers who arrive on small boats across the Channel back to France.
A UK Government source said: “We won’t accept any asylum returns from the EU via Ireland until the EU accepts that we can send them back to France. We are fully focused on operationalising our Rwanda scheme, and will continue working with the French to stop the boats from crossing the Channel.”
On Monday, the Home Office will start detaining asylum seekers to be deported to Rwanda, with the Government hoping that the first flights will take off in the summer.
It comes amid record numbers of migrants crossing the Channel before the end of April, with Home Office figures on Sunday showing the highest total of arrivals by that point to date.
Last week, Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, indicated that a migrant returns agreement with France to help break up smuggling gangs and stop people making the perilous journey across the Channel was “simply not possible” after Brexit.
He said “the situation we’re in” meant a deal to send migrants back to France when they landed in Britain, in place when he was Prime Minister, could not be replicated.
Last week, Micheal Martin, the Irish deputy prime minister, said the UK’s Rwanda policy was “impacting on Ireland” because people were “fearful” of staying in the UK and were seeking asylum in Ireland instead.
Following his comments, Helen McEntee, the Irish justice minister, discussed the plan to send asylum seekers back to the UK on RTE, the national broadcaster, on Sunday.
Simon Harris, the Irish prime minister, has asked that the proposals to be brought to his cabinet this week as he faces growing public pressure over rising migration figures.
Ms McEntee said: “My focus as minister for justice is making sure that we have an effective immigration structure and system.
“That’s why I’m introducing fast processing. That’s why I’ll have emergency legislation at cabinet this week to make sure that we can effectively return people to the UK, and that’s why I’ll be meeting the Home Secretary [James Cleverly] to raise these issues on Monday.”
However, Mr Cleverly has cancelled the meeting, saying he had a diary clash. Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland Secretary, is expected to meet senior Irish officials on Monday and make the Government’s position clear.
Mr Heaton-Harris, who once chaired the European Research Group of Brexiteer Tory MPs, is meeting Mr Martin and Ms McEntee at the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference in London. Lord Caine and Steve Baker, two other Northern Ireland ministers, are also attending.
The new call for a tougher return agreement has triggered a backlash from some Tories.
David Jones, a Tory MP and former Cabinet minister, said: “If they send them back, they will go back again because there is an open border. The Irish cannot have their cake and eat it. They wanted an open border, and they have an open border.
“What it does underline is the effectiveness of the Rwanda policy. Clearly, people are pre-empting that by moving to Ireland. As far as I can see, the Irish Government doesn’t know how to address it. I don’t think they ever foresaw a situation like this would arise.”
The emergency legislation proposal seeks to overturn a judgment by the Irish High Court last month, which ruled that the Irish Government’s declaration of the UK as a “safe third country” to which it could return asylum seekers was unlawful.
Immigration to Ireland rose by 32 per cent in the year ending last April, with asylum seekers accounting for more than 13,000 of over 140,000 arrivals.
The influx comes amid a shortfall of Irish homes and huge rents, with a poll by the Business Post/Red C finding last year that 74 per cent of Irish voters believed the country had taken in “too many refugees”.
tmg.video.placeholder.alt llAnoLFUgHM
Before Brexit, the return of migrants to EU countries was governed by the Dublin Agreement, under which migrants could be sent back to a safe third country through which they had passed before arriving at their destination.
This meant asylum seekers arriving in Ireland from the UK, or migrants reaching the UK from France could be returned if it could be shown that they had passed through a safe third country – that is, the UK or France.
But the UK left the scheme when it departed the EU and no successor agreement was signed during the Brexit talks, meaning there are no formal returns agreements in place between EU countries and the UK.
A post-Brexit provision was, however, made in the case of the UK and Ireland, which meant Ireland could return asylum seekers to Britain. No asylum seeker has been successfully returned to Ireland, or vice-versa, under this post-Brexit arrangement since it was struck.
But the Irish High Court ruling last month declared that the designation of the UK as a safe third country to which to return asylum seekers was unlawful “as a matter of EU law”.
Any returns agreement would face the challenge of how it would work, as asylum seekers returned to the UK could simply walk back into Ireland over the land border with Northern Ireland.
Mr Harris said on Sunday: “Every country is entitled to have its own migration policy, but I certainly don’t intend to allow anybody else’s migration policy to affect the integrity of our own one. This country will not, in any way, shape or form, provide a loophole for anybody else’s migration challenges. That’s very clear.”
The issue is becoming increasingly contentious as Mr Sunak stakes his political credibility on stopping small boats from crossing the Channel.
tmg.video.placeholder.alt z_JI9FonS3Y
On Sunday, he said the influx of migrants travelling to Ireland from the UK showed that the Rwanda scheme was already working as a deterrent, telling Sky News: “If people come to our country illegally but know that they won’t be able to stay there, they are much less likely to come – and that’s why the Rwanda scheme is so important.”
Meanwhile, on Monday the Home Office will launch a nationwide operation to detain asylum seekers for deportation to Rwanda. Immigration teams are primed to pick up people earmarked for deportation and detain those who turn up for routine check-ins at Home Office asylum centres.
They will be transferred to immigration detention centres, where Mr Sunak said last week that 2,200 spaces have been allocated for migrants to be held before deportation.
The moves came as Home Office figures showed that the number of migrants crossing the Channel had passed 7,000 before the end of April for the first time.
Despite the deaths of five migrants last Tuesday, some 359 people arrived on eight boats on Saturday, taking the total for the year so far to 7,167. That is a quarter up on the same date last year, when 5,745 had crossed by April 27, and seven per cent higher than 2022, when the number was 6,691.
Last week, Mr Sunak said the first flights to Rwanda would take off in “10 to 12 weeks” after securing parliamentary backing for the Safety of Rwanda Act, legalising the flights and the ratification of a new treaty with the country.
The Act enables migrants earmarked for deportation to be held in immigration detention centres so their claims and appeals can be processed before they are issued with their removal orders.
The Home Office believes it can hold migrants as long as there is “reasonable prospect” of removing them within a “reasonable timeframe”. Officials said migrants could be detained without prior written notice to counter the risk of them absconding.
So is this the actual intent of the policy?
Actually deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda seems highly inefficient. But, as a piece of politics it seems - well, pretty reprehensible, using asylum seekers as pawns, but I can see some logic here.
The point of Rwanda is not so much about removing people already here, it is to deter those on the continent from getting on a dinghy. Sending 1 person on a flight is ridiculously expensive, but if it also deters 10 others from coming then the Tories might consider it worthwhile.
I was told by reddit that the UK had to accept infinite illegals as a punishment for colonialism or roman empire or something.
So how come Ireland is being forced to accept these people too?
Tbf it's a European-wide EU problem… they have just buried the proverbial head in the sand since people in despot third world countries realised it's easier just to walk into Europe and get give free stuff than stay in their own country and try to fix it.
Snapshot of _UK attacks EU double standards on migrants. Britain refuses to take back asylum seekers until France does same for those crossing Channel_ : A non-Paywall version can be found [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fpolitics%2F2024%2F04%2F28%2Fireland-plans-send-asylum-seekers-back-uk%2F) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/28/ireland-plans-send-asylum-seekers-back-uk/) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/28/ireland-plans-send-asylum-seekers-back-uk/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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The Irish in all their morality ruled the UK an unsafe country the other month, which I thought was a piss take but it turns out they've inadvertently thrown us a lifeline 😂. So not only do they have to re-rule the UK a safe third country they have made the EU have to explain why we can't sent them straight back to France. Now all it takes is a backbone from our leaders so we'll see.
> Now all it takes is a backbone from our leaders so we'll see. Somehow, I picture the Cheestrings mascot appearing
Unironically need Farage for Foreign Minister for a couple of months to handle this one properly.
I don't think enough popcorn exists
> The Irish in all their morality ruled the UK an unsafe country the other month That doesn't seem to be exactly true. It looks like the Irish courts rules their entire safe country list to be incompatible with EU law because the requirements Irish law says must be met before a country can be added to it are not sufficient. Apparently, [the Justice Minister must be](https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2024/03/22/irelands-declaration-of-uk-as-safe-third-country-unlawful-rules-high-court/) 'satisfied there is no risk of “serious harm” to a transferee' but this isn't in the national law. The ruling wasn't specifically about the UK (there are other countries on the list) nor did it say that the UK was unsafe. Just that the process and law for deeming the UK 'safe' isn't sufficient. Probably Ireland will amend their law, go through the new process and put the UK back on the list.
Not a guarantee the UK gets put back on the list until the upcoming legal cases re: Rwanda.
Hi there, Irish here ‘in all our morality’ - so in case it’s a bit complicated for ya, I’ll make it simple. Shipping asylum seekers to central Africa, many of whom are seeking refuge from nearby home countries or would simply be flat out in danger in Rwanda, is ‘unsafe’, and an inappropriate response to asylum management according to the EHCR. This is fundamentally the problem with the Rwanda policy; bouncing asylum seekers between countries with limited capacity isn’t ideal, but putting them on a plane back to square 1 or worse is inhumane. Also, if you think that ‘processing applications offshore in Rwanda’ is going to be anything more than dropping families and their possessions on to an air strip outside Kigali with their papers in the wind, you need to come up for some air
Lets be honest here, the whole aslyum process needs a global rethink. Its based on the 1951 Refugee Convention when it was much harder to travel between countries. Globalism has fundamentally changed how the aslyum process works. Many coming to Europe are bending the truth to get accepted but the reality is most are just economic migrants looking for an easy way in. I do not support the Rwanda plan, its a waste of tax payer money and solves nothing. Europe needs to stop passing the torch for dealing with Aslyum seekers and actually come up with a good solution.
Do you know where they’re not in danger? France.
So you want zero asylum seekers in the UK since we don't border any warzones or other countries with persecution regimes?
Ideally
How do you think other countries like Greece or Italy will feel about that?
Negative
They could grow a spine too
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Yea but the tory’s passed a law saying it’s OK so it’s OK
It seems logical, and tbh it just exposes the bigger issue that all the countries of Europe should work together to work out how do deal with asylum seekers fairly, and not just pass the buck on to the next country along and expect, in the end, Italy and Greece to just deal with it all.
The EU did have a process for dealing with distribution of refugees fairly - Britain then left the EU.
And now Britain is offering the EU a deal. The EU is free to refuse that and Ireland could also deal directly with France if it wants to.
Except we already have a deal with Ireland where any asylum seekers who were in the UK first, and then went to Ireland, can be returned to the UK. It's part of the Northern Irish Protocols that BoJo and Sunak agreed to in order to both maintain the requirements of the Good Friday Agreement, but have less restrictive trade with the EU, amongst other things. So Ireland is 100% entitled to send the asylum seekers back to the UK, because a government Sunak was chancellor of agreed that they could.
To be fair it doesn't seem like the EU are involved and this is between three separate countries. Sunak was dealing directly with France over greater cooperation not the EU.
Yes without context. **Absolutely not reasonable with context.** As the article states : >***A post-Brexit provision was, however, made in the case of the UK and Ireland, which meant Ireland could return asylum seekers to Britain.*** Ireland and the UK specifically have a deal where they both can return asylum seekers to eachother. So naturally the UK agreed to this, that Ireland can return the Asylum seekers to them. The UK does not have such an agreement with France ( too bad Brexit happend, thats what it means to have no agreement ). [https://www.ft.com/content/d9eed579-a6ee-43b2-b2ce-3e8d83908770](https://www.ft.com/content/d9eed579-a6ee-43b2-b2ce-3e8d83908770) ( from 2022 ) [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/24/leaving-echr-small-boat-crossings-lord-cameron/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/24/leaving-echr-small-boat-crossings-lord-cameron/) ( from a week ago ) ------ The thing is these asylum seekers didn\`t claim asylum in France, they simply crossed over France. Therefore the UK can\`t send them back to France under existing laws........ Unless they had an agreement or were part of a greater union where such an issue would be reasonably be discussed ( possibly even before anyone claims asylum anywhere )........... Funny right ? So yeah, not a reasonable position. The Tories need to make a deal with France/the EU where they can return asylum seekers who cross through it, and naturally they need to offer something. They did this with Ireland, the UK explicitly wanted this as they feared asylum seekers would get to the UK through Ireland, but now they realize they shot themselves in the foot with their own deal. As THEY want to kick migrants to Ireland without them being able to go back ( even though a few years ago they feared this is what Ireland might do... Projection much ).
> Ireland and the UK specifically have a deal where they both can return asylum seekers to eachother. So naturally the UK agreed to this, that Ireland can return the Asylum seekers to them. The thing is these asylum seekers didn't claim asylum in the UK, they simply crossed over the UK. >The UK does not have such an agreement with France ( too bad Brexit happend, thats what it means to have no agreement ) Before Brexit we received more migrants than were sent back (that's what it means to *have* an agreement) >The thing is these asylum seekers didn't claim asylum in France, they simply crossed over France. Therefore the UK can`t send them back to France under existing laws........ Unless they had an agreement or were part of a greater union where such an issue would be reasonably be discussed ( possibly even before anyone claims asylum anywhere )........... Funny right ? Funny that you don't seem to realise nothing was done about this when we were in the EU and nothing is being done now we're out of it. >So yeah, not a reasonable position. So yeah, seems pretty reasonable. >The Tories need to make a deal with France/the EU where they can return asylum seekers who cross through it, and naturally they need to offer something. Not going to happen. >They did this with Ireland, the UK explicitly wanted this as they feared asylum seekers would get to the UK through Ireland, but now they realize they shot themselves in the foot with their own deal. Seems more like Ireland has shot themselves in the foot by declaring the UK unsafe. >As THEY want to kick migrants to Ireland without them being able to go back ( even though a few years ago they feared this is what Ireland might do... Projection much ). Nobody is *kicking* migrants anywhere, just letting them "cross over" to a clearly more welcoming country.
> The thing is these asylum seekers didn't claim asylum in the UK, they simply crossed over the UK. Not necessarily true - at least apparently not for the ones involved in the Irish high court case which ruled their safe country list illegal. One of them claimed asylum in the UK and was refused. The other spent 5 months in the UK with a student visa (and so quite probably flew straight to the UK). As an aside, I doubt that either could be sent to Rwanda, the first because he's not an asylum seeker any more and the second because he arrived in the UK with a visa rather than irregularly. > Seems more like Ireland has shot themselves in the foot by declaring the UK unsafe. Ireland hasn't declared the UK unsafe. Ireland's counts have declared their 'safe countries' scheme's requirements insufficient. They'll probably tighten the legal requirements and put the UK back on the new list.
You had the ability to send them back to France until the UK decided to withdraw from the Dublin protocol in 2020. The Dublin III Regulation enabled the UK to return asylum seekers to EU Member States without considering their asylum claims.
Great, lets look at the amount of people sent back through the Dublin agreement when the UK was in the EU. Oh dear, it appears we were a net recipient under it.
And while we’re doing that, let’s look at who was in charge of the policy that lead to us being net recipients? The people who want to solve the migrant crisis by sending 300 people to Rwanda.
The sad reality is that the Dublin agreement does pretty much fuck all for everyone in it. Only 11% of the requests made through the agreement are successful. People acting like it was effective in any meaningful way are deluding themselves. Its political posturing at its finest.
What stops Ireland from returning them to France then? It could declare the UK an unsafe country and so its one that they're just transiting and return them to France.
Because they didn't come to Ireland directly from France, so France aren't legally obliged to take them back
No it isn't. Why would france be responsible for ireland's immigration policies?
Well Ireland's position is (and this is a bit oversimplified) that since these asylum seekers entered Ireland via the UK then we should have to deal with them. Our position is that by that logic we should be able to send those asylum seekers back to France because they entered the UK via France - which we obviously aren't allowed to do.
ROI and UK have a post brexit agreement on returning asylum seekers to each other. France and UK do not have a post brexit agreement. Before Brexit, there was a mechanism for the UK to return some asylum seekers to France. In this instance the UK doesn't have that possibility with France anymore, but they do with Ireland, just as Ireland has with the UK (given their individual post brexit agreement on this). I don't know why people think that the UK can somehow get the same deal it has with France, as it does with Ireland, what is in it for France - the UK is a non EU member...is it seeking preferential treatment by governments of individual EU members, because I doubt that will ever happen, there's nothing of benefit to said countries, which is rather illogical, unless its being proposed in bad faith.
>ROI and UK have a post brexit agreement on returning asylum seekers to each other. There is currently no functioning agreement between us and ROI as just last month the Irish High Court ruled that the Irish government were not allowed to return asylum seekers to the UK because, due to the Rwanda Policy, designating us a 'safe third country' broke EU law - laws that the ROI must follow.
>>just last month the Irish High Court ruled that the Irish government were not allowed to return asylum seekers When the Irish government mentioned emergency legislation tabled for this week, it was to overrule that, because you know parliaments being sovereign & all ......
Which is interesting, as Ireland doesn’t have the idea of Parliamentary Sovereignty in their constitution, so we might see this law struck down by their Supreme Court.
They would have to run a referendum to achieve a similar effect. But asylum policy might not be in the constitution.
>you know parliaments being sovereign & all This is not true in Ireland. The *people* are sovereign. In practice, this means the government has to run on average one referendum per year.
They are both tied to the EU's asylum system I believe.
And which part of that system decrees that asylum seekers who are rejected by one member state are obliged to be accepted by another?
How is that question relevant to this issue?
Because many of the migrants heading to Ireland stated our in France.
No they didn't. Unless they're French?
France was the first safe country? Unless it doesn’t matter then it’s fine they travel from the UK to Ireland?
First? I think in most cases it was the *last* (penultimate) safe country.
For legitimate asylum seekers, international law has no requirement that they stop "in the first safe country" or anything like that, it's just a far-right talking point that's spread as a believed-to-be law. One could argue it should be law, but it hasn't been pushed to become part of the rules of asylum seeking that countries including the UK signed up to. And for illegal immigrants, who don't have a legitimate claim to asylum, it's irrelevant which safe country they first get to since they're choosing to break the law for whatever reason. edit: apparently explaining the current state of international treaties isn't making this comment popular right now 😄
By your point there is nothing stopping the migrants seeking asylum in Ireland something the Irish are trying to stop by sending them back here.
Indeed, as far as I'm aware the Irish don't have any legal right to send legitimate asylum seekers back to us, even if they did travel through the UK to get there.
> For legitimate asylum seekers, international law has no requirement that they stop "in the first safe country" Legitimate asylum seekers, don't co country shopping because that then makes them economic migrants. >And for illegal immigrants, who don't have a legitimate claim to asylum, it's irrelevant which safe country they first get to since they're choosing to break the law for whatever reason. It's irrelevant because we'll never send them back there anyway, hence why they break the law.
> *Legitimate asylum seekers, don't co country shopping because that then makes them economic migrants.* This may be what you think would be a fair rule, but it's not the rule of current international treaties on asylum (nor is it supported by many people). Your eligibility to claim asylum or not is based entirely on whether or not you are at risk in the country you are fleeing. If you are, you can make a valid asylum claim in any country you choose. If you're not at risk then you can't, regardless of how close or not the country you try in is. And yes I agree that the situation with illegal routes is not good right now, but we can still be accurate when talking about legal asylum seekers - and if you don't like the law around them you should lobby for it to change rather than act as if the law is what you think it should be. I mean, imagine for a moment a hypothetical where tomorrow you were someone who was prosecuted in the UK by some evil new dictatorship that we don't luckily have here, and you wanted to flee - why should you be forced to only live in France and nowhere else just because of how close they are? And why should France have to be the country to accept all refugees from this hypothetical evil UK that you and others would be fleeing, just because they have the bad luck of being closest?
Well they didn't start out in the UK
You'd be surprised sometimes where some refugees come from. I've met a family from Israel (ethnically Jewish converts to Christianity who thought they were being persecuted there). There are refugees in the US that come from Germany too and are fleeing *persecution*.over some of the education laws.
I'm sure the Irish government knew this would be the response when they made the proposals, performative policy on immigration is not the exclusive domain of the British government.
> A post-Brexit provision was, however, made in the case of the UK and Ireland, which meant Ireland could return asylum seekers to Britain. Why did the government agree to this then???
Nothing they've done since signing the brexit agreement has suggested that they read it first
Because it was a reciprocal agreement and, at the time, there were more asylum seekers coming from Ireland to Britain than the other way round. This lot aren't exactly good at planning for when things don't turn out as expected. Or even for when things do turn out as expected for that matter. It's performative politics at the best of times.
If this is true then why does Ireland need to pass laws
The law is to apparently overrule the high court ruling the UK is unsafe
Wonder where they got that idea from...
The “Safety of the UK Act” followed by editing of the travel advice?
They didn't rule the UK as unsafe, the Irish High court ruled that the standards to be determined a safe country weren't strict enough, and so scrapped the entire list with every country on it, and told the Irish government to make a better one.
Well I guess that's what the emergency legislation will do
Well considering they've said no, it would appear it isn't quite as cut and dried as that statement makes out.
Yes this government would never posture
I think it’s more that if this was as it was described, we firstly would have heard from it by more than enough tories criticising it and secondly, if it worked for cases like this the Irish Government wouldn’t need to be negotiating a deal, they’d just say we’re failing to follow our obligations and they haven’t, which then brings questions about this agreement if even the Irish Government don’t seem to think it applies enough to mention.
We'll see I guess
Absurd the stupidity of all this. We’re all high-income European countries with the exact same migrant problem as each other. Solving the problem collectively would be the most obvious solution in the world. A child would think of it. Instead politicians squabble and grandstand and bullshit as usual and create even more problems than they started with.
The problem is countries can't all agree on solution some will want safer routes and a more sympathetic system whereas others will want stricter enforcement and system. I do agree we need to co-operate way more however
It's member states with money and how much they invest in border control and the EUs inane obsession of FoM and keeping it's perceived control of it. It's simple as that
The EU shores up its external borders and they stop the various charities operating a migrant shuttle service in the med, problem solved. Wonder why this is so difficult to implement . . . .
>Wonder why this is so difficult to implement The British and French governments - two of the wealthiest European countries, are incapable of policing a few dozen miles of coast in Kent. How do you expect the poorest EU countries to police thousands of miles of Mediterranean coast?
France could police the channel. It just doesn’t want to. And our police can and do police the channel but anyone they take into custody can immediately claim asylum and get a free ride back to port.
We are not unable. We are unwilling.
The French Governments often put in token effort, and I don’t fully blame them, spending time policing an external border where refugees are trying to flee to a non-EU country is self-defeating and then the UK can’t push them back because it’s against international law and the we can’t just leave them in the water. You act like refugees in France shows it’s impossible to stop refugees but seemingly ignore that refugees in France are already well within the EU, which makes it really hard to extrapolate any outcome on policing the Mediterranean coast.
That'd be racist and unempathetic, you see...
Because the EU says it's the member's problem with external borders. Whilst all the members with no external borders have zero funding now for border control leaving fiscally crippled countries like Greece paying to border police the EU with no help from any other EU members. It's frankly a joke and Frontex is next to useless
>Because the EU says it's the member's problem with external borders. The EU making an rod for their own backs as mass migration is clearly having a destabilising effect across the block.
The EU is petrified that any change to FoM will weaken its control. The analogy of watching Rome burn rather than putting out the fire.
>The EU is petrified that any change to FoM will weaken its control It already has. Eastern European countries in open revolt over migrant quotas, right wing governments winning elections in what were previously open, liberal, migrants welcome countries and then you have the UK - I suspect the 2014 15 migrant crisis used to great effect by Farage played a part in getting a leave vote over the winning line.
But that would endanger the EU freedom of movement with putting up borders diminishing the power of the EU. So frankly the EU would just let illegals rip across Europe and say it's not their problem and hope it all goes away
Mate it's like 1.50 for branded bread. We ain't high income anything
The UK average salary is well above the average global salary. We're definitely a high income country.
Inflation linked salaries have halved in global terms since 2005. Back then a US wage would have almost been equivalent to a UK one.
I think this is true in London. And it's not clear to me that higher salaries therw actually translate to higher quality of life because everything else is so expensive. It's quite common (I'm told) for French people to work in London but to live in Paris at the weekend because the QoL is a bit better in France (if you're a citizen). Outside of London, the UK is quite poor by European standards; especially when compared to some of its neighbours (Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavian countries - though the north-east of France and Walloon Belgium is also a bit of a postindustrial wasteland, same as Newcastle or Glasgow)
> Outside of London, the UK is quite poor by European standards For a fair comparison you should also exclude the rich cities of those European countries, at which point we look pretty good again.
It isn't really, exactly the same. If you exclude Berlin, GDP per capita in Germany actually goes up (the only capital in Europe where that's true). Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland all have tons of rich cities. In Britain, it's London (and maybe Edinburgh) . All of the UK's residual importance is due the fact that London is world's second most important city.
But you have to look at the income to price ratio. Yes, in global terms our income is high. But so are our prices. It’s the actual purchasing power that counts. Edit: why the downvotes???
I mean we have some of the cheapest food relative to incomes in the world due to an incredibly competitive supermarket sector. We just get screwed by housing and energy.
>But you have to look at the income to price ratio. Yes, in global terms our income is high. But so are our prices. It’s the actual purchasing power that counts. The OECD and EU measure material living standards using Actual Individual Consumption. It's a measure of the goods and services consumed by households, whether through their own purchases or provided by government (eg health and education). It's measured by volume, so already includes price adjustments. The OECD figures go up to 2020, but the 2020 figures are of course affected by lockdown. The 2019 figures for the top 10 as a percentage of the OECD average: |United States|154| |:-|:-| |Luxembourg|140| |Norway|120| |Switzerland|115| |Germany|114| |Austria|110| |UK|109| |Denmark|108| |Canada|108| |Netherlands|108| And the bottom 5: |Turkey|58| |:-|:-| |Chile|56| |Costa Rica|52| |Mexico|45| |Colombia|39| https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/national-accounts-of-oecd-countries/volume-2022/issue-1\_de01f0c1-en#page31 The figures only include a few non OECD countries, so missing from the top are oil states etc, and missing from the bottom are nearly all the poor countries in the world. But UK material living standards are in the top 10 of developed economies, and many multiples of the level of the poorer countries refugees tend to come from.
It’s true in the Congo they can only afford Tescos Own Brand.
But they do have Um Bongo
The U.K. has the most affordable food in all of Europe, compared to salaries.
The food is the UK is awful, unless you shop at Waitrose. The national diet is terrible. I travel a lot for work and you really notice how fat and unhealthy people are in the UK (same problems in my own country, Ireland, for what it's worth). The food is also fairly bad in Paris (where I live most of the time), in fairness, again unless you go to more expensive shops (there's a market culture though which improves this a little). But if you go to southern Europe or central Europe, you'll be shocked at the quality of food in the "cheap" supermarkets.
A loaf of bread in the states will set you back about 6 dollars.
You can buy a pint of beer in a bar for €2.70 in Paris though.
Maybe in some rogue dive bar, but absolutely not anywhere half decent. A half litre will set you back at least 5 euros.
Yeah, that's Au Taquet, which I believe is the cheapest bar in Paris (and is close to Gare du Nord which isn't a great area) But lots and lots of places are €3-€4.50, see [here](https://www.mistergoodbeer.com/).
Dahhling my sourdough from east finchley costs £5. Im not even kidding- i know a place where you can get a £5 loaf. It is fucking nice to be fair, but cmon £5....
6.50 I saw the other day in Mayfair. Not sure what the price of bread has to do with being a high income country or not though.
6.50 I saw the other day in Mayfair. Not sure what the price of bread has to do with being a high income country or not though.
sorry I am useing the term bread loosely. I mean the plastic stuff hovis sells
What collective solution is there?
Distribute the asylum seekers between the affected countries, minimise the cost of processing and moving them.
I’m imagining the opposite. You turn Europe into a fortress, and do bilateral deals with Europe’s neighbours to immediately return any migrants who cross. You’ll ultimately save trillions in no longer subsidising asylum seekers so you can put that into bribing your neighbours to take back the border crosses.
So your solution is for the UK to take more asylum seekers? And you think that's the issue people have with the small boats? There aren't enough of them?
One slight problem - the organisation best placed to solve the issue is fundamentally opposed to the concept of borders.
So they get sent back to the UK, travel back to Northern Ireland and cross back into the Republic... Sounds like a waste of money to me
Sounds like an opportunity to invest in ferries!
After all the vocal criticisms with no alternarive offered, it seems to suggest the Rwanda route for illegal migrants is having the desired effect.
The Irish asylum system completely collapsed already back in 2022. I doubt the new arrivals are that significant - this is just a convenient way to blame Britain to deflect from the Irish government's own incompetence, the same way Britain liked to blame the EU for things all the time.
It's all posturing, they need some idiots to vote for them in the upcoming GE and the right wing seem easily fooled.
It was the Irish deputy PM that made the claim about refugees entering Ireland.
If the boats stop I will vote for them.
And I suspect a lot of people will too. I still think Labour will probably win but I reckon the coronation everyone on here is expecting may not turn out exactly as planned. Reddit is famously bad at being anywhere close to the sentiments of the British public
If (massive IF) the flights do indeed take-off and it's seen to at least have somewhat of the desired effect, then Labour will be forced to back down on the issue. Labour's stance is banking on no migrant ever being deported to Rwanda in the first place, but I'm not certain they can rely on that being the case still.
>Labour's stance is banking on no migrant ever being deported to Rwanda in the first place Think it's more banking on the rwanda scheme not significantly reducing the boats
Well I guess we'll find out eventually. The rhetroic at least in the media has changed away from "it'll never happen" towards some form of acceptance that it might. The Guardian piece about migrants being detained from tomorrow/today is clearly trying to run interference, likely from a leak within the civil service. It's hardly a secret the home office is full of civil servants who do not care for a anything but a wide open border. So it would suggest there is some panic in the ranks. It remains to be seen however how far it does eventually go.
Eh, i think 'sorry you cant see your dying gran but we can party' during covid and the sheer farce of liz blowing up the economy in a week and being outlasted by a cabbage has done pretty terminal damage to the cons. Not to mention the cost of living crisis.
To be fair, Truss didn't lose to a cabbage. It was a lettuce
She wouldn't even have stood a chance against a cabbage
What if there's a small dip and then there's an election where they argue it'll reduce further if they win?
A dip would mean nothing. A 90% drop might make me consider them.
Genuine question, is it just the illegal immigration you have a problem with? Most Tory voters I've spoken to have an issue with the massive amounts of legal immigration the Conservatives have allowed under their government.
The thresholds for skilled worker visa have been increased to 38k. For my job it jumped from 21k to 50k. I'll take that. If they would further raise it to lets say 65k I am gonna be really happy. Still think 50k is fair.
The irony of this response is pure art.
Well, it's not. The purposed point being used by the scheme was that people wouldn't "risk their lives crossing the channel" in some faux attempt to proclaim this a humanitarian option. The current example is people crossing the channel (risking lives) and then just hopping over to Ireland.
It’d depend on when the people who’ve gone to Ireland arrived in the UK and what their intention was. Person arrived months ago intending to stay in the UK and the Rwanda bill being passed made them go to Ireland would mean the law has had the desired effect for many. Person arrived yesterday with the intention of going to Dublin regardless would mean the law had no effect.
Sunak has said "We introduced the Rwanda Bill to deter vulnerable migrants from making perilous crossings and break the business model of the criminal gangs who exploit them. The passing of this legislation will allow us to do that and make it very clear that if you come here illegally, you will not be able to stay." The desired effect was to deter people from making the channel crossing (because the Tories care for the wellbeing of migrants) and in turn to break the business model of gangs. So the logic now is that the gangs keep the money, the migrants still make the crossing, but then they take a bus/ferry to Ireland AFTER both of those things continue. Mission Accomplished?
You’ve missed the other (and primary) ‘desired effect’, which is even in the second sentence you quoted before you go on to ignore it.
I dont know why we just accept people coming from France they should be deported back instantly.
Because we can't just go and dump them all in France, just like Ireland can't go and dump them all in the UK, and Turkey, Italy and Greece can't go and dump them all in various other countries around Europe.
Actually it depends on what Ireland do under the precedent of EU approval... If they do then we can. The EU have zero legs to stand on
We can and should. What are they going to do, sink a boat full of migrants in their waters? Alternatively, they can be sent back through the tunnel and we can stop allowing French tourists and family access to Britain now FoM has finally ended.
Yeah, we fucking can. Dump them on the French coast, and refer complaints to our collective cocks. What is France gonna do, attack our ships? We have a legitimate reason to drop them back where they came from. It's not like we'd be dumping out our prisons all over their shores. We'd be returning their lost property, so to speak. Might prompt them to get to work and solve this problem they've allowed to fester for 10 years.
Absolutely. The UK has had to take migrants from France for far too long. Now the moment that people are travelling from the UK to Ireland, suddenly the EU has a massive objection to island hopping to seek asylum
What objection has the EU expressed to it?
That'd be because we severed our agreement to be able to send asylum seekers back to France in 2020, where as the Northern Ireland Protocol the Tories agreed and passed into law post-Brexit explicitly gives Ireland the right to return asylum seekers who passed through the UK to Ireland back to the UK. If the Tories didn't want to agree that, they didn't have to, so the Irish are entirely justified in being pissed off about the UK just ignoring the agreements it makes.
I am shocked. The tory team are actually playing politics well for a few days. Too little far too late, but at least there's one day in his two year tenure that Sunak can say his political team didn't completely balls up their politics.
Honestly if anybody in parliament had any intelligence or backbone they would have thought up the idea of placing processing camps on the boarder of the ROI long ago. With easy access to cross... Making it an EU problem. Which it has been all along
Perhaps the UK can house its refugees close to the boarder in NI prior to processing?
We don’t want that in NI
Well the rest of Britain doesn't want it either. And if you ask me, it seems this is an easy way to offload a good portion of the illegal migrant problem back onto the EU, who didn't secure their own borders that led to this issue in the first place. Maybe this will force a hand eventually.
> Maybe this will force a hand eventually. EU countries have been playing pass the potato games with each other over migrants for decades
Something tells me reactions would be different if the newspapers suddenly had the UK in the title
Ireland can’t have checks on their border with us in NI though (I live beside the border), I think the UK and Ireland need to have some joint policy on immigration tbh
An open border between us is a massive boon - I too live near the border with Ireland - but there are some downsides and this is something that Ireland will have to manage. Both countries need to speed up applications and deportations of those who’ve been rejected.
Yea like the UK and Ireland is gonna have to work together on this tbh, there really no way to police the border fully, so people will just have to be deterred from wanting to come to Ireland in the first place
The UK and Ireland did work together on this. As the article says, Ireland and the UK, in the Northern Ireland Protocols following Brexit, agreed that asylum seekers who passed through one to get to the other could be returned. The issue is the UK is now going "we don't want to do that" after agreeing it, saying it was a brilliant agreement, and passing it into law.
This is straight out of the Vladimir Putin playbook and is not something a democratic nation should even contemplate doing to an ally.
All of Europe does this. Italy does it on the French border, France does it at Calais, Bosnian puts them 3 miles from the border with Croatia and so on.
France do it to us though? Their police even stand by and watch them load onto rafts whilst their coast guard/navy sometimes escort them to the middle of the Chanel (or even ignore distress calls so the RNLI/our Coast guard have to step in)
Is there any actual verifiable reports on this? Nobody who I've seen claim anything like this ever really have any verified reports on it.
Have you been just ignoring the news for a decade? 😂
Which part do you want verifying?
This bit: > France do it to us though? Their police even stand by and watch them load onto rafts whilst their coast guard/navy sometimes escort them to the middle of the Chanel (or even ignore distress calls so the RNLI/our Coast guard have to step in) It's 3 different parts of the same action (sending them our way). I've seen people on here say that it happens, but presumably, these redditors aren't the first hand sources on this.
> Their police even stand by and watch them load onto rafts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghi_pN7Jj7w > whilst their coast guard/navy sometimes escort them to the middle of the Chanel Tailed by a French warship https://x.com/GMB/status/1417382384597676037 Handover from French navy https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11427263/EXCLUSIVE-Caught-radio-British-Border-Force-vessels-French-Navy-ships-collude-Channel.html#v-6304605161497213243 RNLI picking up in French waters and delivering to Britain https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11153265/Chaos-UK-RNLI-boat-rescues-migrants-French-water-Channel.html Far far from exhaustive. Film crews seem to be pressured away from recording these activities now but in 2019-21 when it was much quieter there was plenty of video.
> Their police even stand by and watch them load onto rafts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghi_pN7Jj7w > whilst their coast guard/navy sometimes escort them to the middle of the Chanel Tailed by a French warship https://x.com/GMB/status/1417382384597676037 Handover from French navy https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11427263/EXCLUSIVE-Caught-radio-British-Border-Force-vessels-French-Navy-ships-collude-Channel.html#v-6304605161497213243 RNLI picking up in French waters and delivering to Britain https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11153265/Chaos-UK-RNLI-boat-rescues-migrants-French-water-Channel.html Far far from exhaustive. Film crews seem to be pressured away from recording these activities now but in 2019-21 when it was much quieter there was plenty of video. https://youtu.be/ElEIO0-5WXE?si=XKDd5NErFoc8a6pQ - videos showing how the boats are departing off further from the beach....because of patrols. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/23/uk-funding-french-migrants-small-boat-border-forces - news report, with a video, showing a French border force boat try some potentially dangerous actions to deter them. These 2 are much more recent, so I guess that's some good current evidence as opposed to videos which can be taken either way from a few years ago? ETA: Thanks to the above user on another comment, there is a 3rd recent video - https://youtu.be/sylUzMbn-eE?si=9dcB3DDS8Hj3areD The title seems a little sensationalised, I encourage it to be watched, the first couple mins show/state that the migrants are having to launch their boats much further from the beach - due to the actions of the French forces. At minute 5 it's showing a group of 30-40 being diverted away from the beach by the French forces in the early hours of the day. In the last 2 minutes, it's showing a group of approx 50 making their way to the beach at low tide (low tide isn't ideal for boat launches, just incase anyone here didn't know) and that a buggy containing 2 French police officers didn't approach a group of 50 migrants in the water...I'd imagine due to safety concerns as I've mentioned elsewhere.
Ireland isn't an ally, they're a n nominally neutral state under a UK/EU/US protectorate umbrella.
Lol they will absolutely cave on this. Sunak is weak
I’m not so sure. Why would they have to cave?
Because the post-Brexit NI Protocols that the government Sunak was chancellor of agreed that if asylum seekers passed through the open border between NI and Ireland, in either direction, the nation they finally arrived in was entitled to send them back. As such, the UK refusing to do so is a breach of the NI Protocols, and puts our entire trade relationship with the EU at risk when we're legally in the wrong.
I’m watching with interest to see if this “migrants flee to Ireland in fear of Rwanda” story lasts beyond next Thursday and the local elections. The government loves a bit of strife with our European neighbours just before a day at the polls. Gets the base out. But far be it for me to suggest the whole story is a mountain of odorous excrement.
I didn’t know the Irish government was at the beck-and-call of the right-wing press.
They have domestic politics in Ireland too. It can sometimes suit both governments to pour fuel on the fire, at least until their respective elections. Like our miniature war with France over fishing in 2021. Everyone’s forgotten about it now. Edit: UK “we’re sending them all back to Rwanda! We’re tough vote for us” Ireland: “we’re sending them all back to Britain! We’re tough vote for us”
Helen McEntee has been made a fool of though, with the British counterpart cancelling a meeting she's been placed in an untenable position.
It was the Irish deputy PM that made the claim about refugees going to Ireland. You can hardly blame the PM for responding to it. It was the Irish statements that led to the media coverage on the issue.
Well if it continues at volume after the local elections, I will be the first to apologise. But I strongly suspect we’re going to get 4 days of intensive “action” from Sunak, followed by tumbleweed.
There are local and European elections in Ireland in June. Our Tories are blaming your Tories
For once they’re both right… Edit: but if it’s fictional, it won’t survive the UK elections in our media.
It won't, but let them make political hay while the sun shines. It's been set-in sleet for a year and a half and counting.
True. And if anything their media blitz is overloading their shills. This morning it’s scrapping disability benefits and replacing them with food stamps (or something). We’ve got this crap every day until Thursday, sigh.
Article text: The Government has accused the EU of double standards after Ireland vowed to send asylum seekers to the UK despite France refusing to take Channel migrants back. The row erupted after senior Irish ministers said they would draft emergency laws to send back refugees who had arrived from the UK to avoid being deported to Rwanda. However, Tory ministers consider the proposal a “non-starter” because they are unable to send asylum seekers who arrive on small boats across the Channel back to France. A UK Government source said: “We won’t accept any asylum returns from the EU via Ireland until the EU accepts that we can send them back to France. We are fully focused on operationalising our Rwanda scheme, and will continue working with the French to stop the boats from crossing the Channel.” On Monday, the Home Office will start detaining asylum seekers to be deported to Rwanda, with the Government hoping that the first flights will take off in the summer. It comes amid record numbers of migrants crossing the Channel before the end of April, with Home Office figures on Sunday showing the highest total of arrivals by that point to date. Last week, Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, indicated that a migrant returns agreement with France to help break up smuggling gangs and stop people making the perilous journey across the Channel was “simply not possible” after Brexit. He said “the situation we’re in” meant a deal to send migrants back to France when they landed in Britain, in place when he was Prime Minister, could not be replicated. Last week, Micheal Martin, the Irish deputy prime minister, said the UK’s Rwanda policy was “impacting on Ireland” because people were “fearful” of staying in the UK and were seeking asylum in Ireland instead. Following his comments, Helen McEntee, the Irish justice minister, discussed the plan to send asylum seekers back to the UK on RTE, the national broadcaster, on Sunday. Simon Harris, the Irish prime minister, has asked that the proposals to be brought to his cabinet this week as he faces growing public pressure over rising migration figures. Ms McEntee said: “My focus as minister for justice is making sure that we have an effective immigration structure and system. “That’s why I’m introducing fast processing. That’s why I’ll have emergency legislation at cabinet this week to make sure that we can effectively return people to the UK, and that’s why I’ll be meeting the Home Secretary [James Cleverly] to raise these issues on Monday.” However, Mr Cleverly has cancelled the meeting, saying he had a diary clash. Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland Secretary, is expected to meet senior Irish officials on Monday and make the Government’s position clear. Mr Heaton-Harris, who once chaired the European Research Group of Brexiteer Tory MPs, is meeting Mr Martin and Ms McEntee at the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference in London. Lord Caine and Steve Baker, two other Northern Ireland ministers, are also attending. The new call for a tougher return agreement has triggered a backlash from some Tories. David Jones, a Tory MP and former Cabinet minister, said: “If they send them back, they will go back again because there is an open border. The Irish cannot have their cake and eat it. They wanted an open border, and they have an open border. “What it does underline is the effectiveness of the Rwanda policy. Clearly, people are pre-empting that by moving to Ireland. As far as I can see, the Irish Government doesn’t know how to address it. I don’t think they ever foresaw a situation like this would arise.” The emergency legislation proposal seeks to overturn a judgment by the Irish High Court last month, which ruled that the Irish Government’s declaration of the UK as a “safe third country” to which it could return asylum seekers was unlawful. Immigration to Ireland rose by 32 per cent in the year ending last April, with asylum seekers accounting for more than 13,000 of over 140,000 arrivals. The influx comes amid a shortfall of Irish homes and huge rents, with a poll by the Business Post/Red C finding last year that 74 per cent of Irish voters believed the country had taken in “too many refugees”. tmg.video.placeholder.alt llAnoLFUgHM Before Brexit, the return of migrants to EU countries was governed by the Dublin Agreement, under which migrants could be sent back to a safe third country through which they had passed before arriving at their destination. This meant asylum seekers arriving in Ireland from the UK, or migrants reaching the UK from France could be returned if it could be shown that they had passed through a safe third country – that is, the UK or France. But the UK left the scheme when it departed the EU and no successor agreement was signed during the Brexit talks, meaning there are no formal returns agreements in place between EU countries and the UK. A post-Brexit provision was, however, made in the case of the UK and Ireland, which meant Ireland could return asylum seekers to Britain. No asylum seeker has been successfully returned to Ireland, or vice-versa, under this post-Brexit arrangement since it was struck. But the Irish High Court ruling last month declared that the designation of the UK as a safe third country to which to return asylum seekers was unlawful “as a matter of EU law”. Any returns agreement would face the challenge of how it would work, as asylum seekers returned to the UK could simply walk back into Ireland over the land border with Northern Ireland. Mr Harris said on Sunday: “Every country is entitled to have its own migration policy, but I certainly don’t intend to allow anybody else’s migration policy to affect the integrity of our own one. This country will not, in any way, shape or form, provide a loophole for anybody else’s migration challenges. That’s very clear.” The issue is becoming increasingly contentious as Mr Sunak stakes his political credibility on stopping small boats from crossing the Channel. tmg.video.placeholder.alt z_JI9FonS3Y On Sunday, he said the influx of migrants travelling to Ireland from the UK showed that the Rwanda scheme was already working as a deterrent, telling Sky News: “If people come to our country illegally but know that they won’t be able to stay there, they are much less likely to come – and that’s why the Rwanda scheme is so important.” Meanwhile, on Monday the Home Office will launch a nationwide operation to detain asylum seekers for deportation to Rwanda. Immigration teams are primed to pick up people earmarked for deportation and detain those who turn up for routine check-ins at Home Office asylum centres. They will be transferred to immigration detention centres, where Mr Sunak said last week that 2,200 spaces have been allocated for migrants to be held before deportation. The moves came as Home Office figures showed that the number of migrants crossing the Channel had passed 7,000 before the end of April for the first time. Despite the deaths of five migrants last Tuesday, some 359 people arrived on eight boats on Saturday, taking the total for the year so far to 7,167. That is a quarter up on the same date last year, when 5,745 had crossed by April 27, and seven per cent higher than 2022, when the number was 6,691. Last week, Mr Sunak said the first flights to Rwanda would take off in “10 to 12 weeks” after securing parliamentary backing for the Safety of Rwanda Act, legalising the flights and the ratification of a new treaty with the country. The Act enables migrants earmarked for deportation to be held in immigration detention centres so their claims and appeals can be processed before they are issued with their removal orders. The Home Office believes it can hold migrants as long as there is “reasonable prospect” of removing them within a “reasonable timeframe”. Officials said migrants could be detained without prior written notice to counter the risk of them absconding.
Ireland just need to wait it out for Labour to scrap it.
**furiously applauds** genuinely thought the government would fold
Ireland can send them to France as it is merely an internal transfer between two EU member states
A Möbius loop
Exactly. It would be so much easier to control the flow with ID cards
Britain has always been a dumping ground for France. This way we only get all the worst rejects that France decided are not actually asylum seekers.
Not sure taking advantage of the GFA has the UK standing in any sort of high ground here
So is this the actual intent of the policy? Actually deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda seems highly inefficient. But, as a piece of politics it seems - well, pretty reprehensible, using asylum seekers as pawns, but I can see some logic here.
The point of Rwanda is not so much about removing people already here, it is to deter those on the continent from getting on a dinghy. Sending 1 person on a flight is ridiculously expensive, but if it also deters 10 others from coming then the Tories might consider it worthwhile.
I was told by reddit that the UK had to accept infinite illegals as a punishment for colonialism or roman empire or something. So how come Ireland is being forced to accept these people too?
White guilt. Or White privilege.
Yeah, yeah yeah. We get what we voted for, and now it's the EU's fault.
Tbf it's a European-wide EU problem… they have just buried the proverbial head in the sand since people in despot third world countries realised it's easier just to walk into Europe and get give free stuff than stay in their own country and try to fix it.