Tuesday’s vote by British MPs upheld the government’s proposal to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda for a one-way trip, maintaining a policy that has infuriated human rights organisations and cost the country at least $300 million—all without a single flight ever taking off.
By a vote of 313-269, the House of Commons approved the government’s Rwanda bill in principle and sent it for additional review. The outcome prevents a loss that would have destroyed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s credibility and left his government in shambles. While it gives Sunak some breathing room, it also sets up more arguments in the upcoming days and weeks.
The bill aims to overturn a decision made by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom that the plan to send migrants who arrive in Britain via the English Channel to Rwanada, where they would live forever, through boats is not legal.
The bill is the outcome of a new agreement that Rwanda and the UK signed on December 5.
The legally binding agreement, according to British Home Secretary James Cleverly, will “address all the issues” brought up by the UK Supreme Court’s decision last month to declare the contentious policy unconstitutional.
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, however, is being criticised by both Conservative hardliners on the right and centrists who believe it skirts around violating international law and doesn’t go far enough to guarantee that undocumented immigrants can be deported from the United Kingdom.
If the law is approved, the government will be able to “disapply” sections of UK human rights law in relation to Rwanda-related asylum claims.
