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November 18, 2024 - 12:00pm
Donald Trump is reportedly the latest leader considering the Tories’ ill-fated Rwanda plan. Among the most controversial policies from the party’s last few years in power, this proposed to house would-be asylum seekers arriving in the UK in Rwanda while their claims were processed, with access only granted if the claim was approved.
Preparations for executing this plan saw Britain agree to pay £370m to Kigali, with part of the money used to fund construction of housing in Rwanda for the anticipated influx of asylum applicants. But the scheme caused considerable public debate and numerous legal challenges, and one of Keir Starmer’s first acts on taking office was to scrap it in favour of Labour’s preferred strategy of “smashing the gangs” — which is to say addressing the upstream people-smuggling infrastructure bringing people to the Channel. Those detained ahead of deportation were released back into the UK.
So far at least, Starmer’s change in approach seems to be having a noticeable effect on migrant arrival numbers, just not in the officially desired direction. This year has brought about a sharp rise in small boat arrivals to the UK relative to 2023, while the total number of arrests announced to date, in relation to this gang-smashing, is one. Meanwhile, the asylum seeker housing whose construction Britain funded in Kigali has remained empty.
Trump’s incoming administration is reportedly not the only one eyeing the facilities, and the associated “third-country” migrant processing proposal. In July Alexander Throm, a centre-right German parliamentarian, responded to news of Starmer’s abandonment of the scheme by calling for his own country to make use of the now-abandoned “capacity”. Speaking to a local paper at the time, Throm said: “We should stick to the plan and make use of the preparations our British partners made for it.” Similarly, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni issued a decree in October formalising a third-country migrant processing agreement with Albania, though this policy also found itself the immediate subject of legal objections.
Meanwhile, the larger issue of rising migration is likely to grow further in salience. Considerable institutional resources are already dedicated to enabling the international flow of people, while it is widely predicted that migrant numbers will rise further in the light of climate change. Just a few weeks ago, for example, at the COP 29 climate conference, the UN Refugee Agency launched a new “Refugees for Climate Action” network. It highlighted the issue of populations leaving their homes for more habitable areas in the wake of drought, flood, rising temperature and other climate-related difficulties.
It is reasonable to assume many such individuals would seek entry to the relatively temperate and wealthy polities in Europe and the Americas. It is also already manifestly clear that many existing citizens of these polities view this prospect with considerable alarm. But this overall trend, and the tensions it causes, remains under-discussed among mainstream politicians: former Tory home secretary Suella Braverman was widely criticised for her choice of language, for instance, when she broke the silence on this topic last year.
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SubscribeInteresting take but I don’t think what America does with its own migration issues is so great a determining factor in what Europe does. Europe might watch what the new Trump administration does with interest, but Europe is subject to an entirely different legal framework than the US is. I’m also willing to argue that Europeans have a whole different emotional and historical attachment to that legal framework than the Americans have to theirs – a big factor in how quickly and to what extent change will happen (there is no “if” about it).
And as we are no longer in the EU there is no real reason we should have to follow the lead of either America or Europe. If we chose to do so we could withdraw from any formal treaty that impinges on our right to self-determination. Yes, there would be knock-on effects: yes, the metro elite would squeal in pain; yes, some other countries (especially those unaffected!) would declare a loss of respect; yes, some regions would moan about the colonial past; but no more than they complained when we ended slavery across most of the world. Our government should do what is right for the people of this country, not what others unreasonably demand.
Always grates when someone says climate change.
I know what you mean, and mostly i’d be in agreement.
However, MH makes valid use of the term here. It’s changes to local climates – due to entirely natural processes – that have driven migrations throughout human history. Our original “Out of Africa” story was the search for new and more fertile lands. This is all established beyond reasonable doubt. I don’t think she’s using the term as a mere ‘dog-whistle’.
Almost all migration in the past occurred when the climate got colder, not warmer. As a general rule, cold brings drier conditions as well, although conditions can vary locally. Warming weather today has actually made the world 5% greener in the last 20 years, but I’m sure there’s some micro climates that have become drier.
I do think the author’s reference to climate change was a dog whistle. Why mention COP 29 otherwise?
The American way of removing immigrants has been around for a long time. Back in the 1950s they brought in seasonal labour from Mexico to pick the fruit in California. There was a plane crash flying people back home and Joan Baez wrote a song about it:
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
Adios mes amigos Jesus and Maria.
You won’t have a name when you fly the big airplane,
All they will call you will be deportees.
These things are not a big deal in the USA – it is just business. In the UK, everything is personalised which is good and humane but it means that each case has to be argued separately. Not very easy when the organisers are working from home.