I know, why don't we send them all to Rwanda?

[Weighnow]

Does anyone else think this sounds like a suggestion someone made as a joke, to liven up a dull or fraught meeting and somehow, someone decided to run with it?

LilacFatball
Prof Thom Brooks of Durham University

This Tom Brooks?

Thom Brooks is an active member of the UK’s Labour Party. He is the founding Director of the Labour Academic Network, an independent global network of leading academics supporting the Labour Party’s front bench.

If people want a reduction that looks like Aus it’ll take similar policies

So? I thought your logic was that anywhere is better than Iran? None of them are in Iran so what difference does mode of transport make?
(Ps. Not all asylum seekers come on dinghies.)

This Tom Brooks?

Correction - Thom Brooks

Sunak has a few months left in office. Starmer will ditch the scheme. For that reason alone, it is going to deter no-one.

Even if Sunak and co. were not about to get booted out, the fact that Rwanda will only be taking 200 asylum seekers a year means that many will still take their chances.

At the very best, Sunak will manage to send a few asylum seekers to Rwanda out of spite before he fucks off to California.

I can't believe people are actually cheering this on. Perhaps they enjoy seeing their taxes flushed down the toilet.

@Hartley99

Yes I think you may have a point

Used to be so much nicer in the UK

https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/24/australia-to-move-last-refugee-from-offshore-processing-on-nauru-but-its-cruelty-and-cost-is-not-over

this is Australia’s policy that hasn’t really worked. And even if it did, we are not proposing to send anywhere near the same numbers to Rwanda so it’s not comparable. All the other countries that considers this policy abandoned it pretty quickly because if nothing else, its costs way more. Let alone the inhumane treatment that most were offered.

The UK courts would likely do this as well;

2023
The Netherlands has been stopped from sending asylum seekers back to Italy because there is a real risk they could end up living on the streets and that would contravene their human rights...

The court previously ruled that refugees cannot be returned to Croatia, Greece and Malta for similar reasons.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/04/refugees-cant-be-sent-back-to-italy-on-human-rights-grounds-court/

What do you mean by ‘hasn’t worked’?

The graph in pp shows sharp reduction in numbers from
high to negligible

To add there is no other country i know of anyway with that sudden drop. Most are battling with rising numbers each year

As I said arrivals in Australia actually increased after they started sending refugees to Nauru.

Numbers only dropped after the pushbacks were introduced. Admittedly the numbers dropped very quickly after that. However, pushbacks requires international waters, which we don't have in the Channel and it has been assessed as too dangerous to carry out. Boats used by asylum seekers trying to reach Australia being proper vessels built to withstand many days at sea rather than the basic dinghies used in the Channel.

Even though numbers held on Nauru dropped dramatically it still cost the Government 1.7 billion Aus dollars just between Nov 2017 to Jan 2021.
1.1 billion of that money went to Canstruct - a company which also donated money to the Liberal party although the company strenuously denied any link between that and being awarded the contracts.

This is aside from the 70 million Australian dollars paid in compensation after Australia’s detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island was ruled unconstitutional and the detention of people there illegal.

The one tiny flaw with Pritti Vacant’s plan was that she forgot that the Americans, who operate a tracking station there, get a veto over pretty much anything that happens on Ascension.

I don’t think there’s an easy way to get that drop in that chart.

People will at some point need to decide whereabouts they want numbers to fall.

But those saying ‘of course I want the crossings to stop’ that aren’t many options that work to get that drop

I think dumb is shoving the issue under the carpet and pointing the finger at white people. I am guessing that you didn't see Brexit coming, up there in your ivory tower?

Plenty of other options have been proposed. None as catchy as "send them back", "to Rwanda", "pop the dinghies" perhaps.

Like what? What solutions have been proposed?

Safe and legal routes, processing claims faster, better managed/increased foreign aid... I'm sure there's more.
Not sure why sending 200 people to an autocracy is somehow more sensible than any of that..

There really isn’t anything that works as the Aus approach does

Hence multiple countries seeing rising numbers and trying to figure out how to deal with it

It will be expanded very quickly once it’s started. There is no upper limit.

Of course there's an upper limit. Rwanda doesn't have endless capacity for our cast offs. They can barely handle their own population and existing refugees.
The conservatives are of course going to be unwilling to vocalise the draw backs to their daft "plan"

There is, Rwanda won't take indefinite numbers, and that's a good job at £1.4m each

The same reason the EU isn’t just putting in safe routes across the Med

Look at the Oxfam and other response in pp

Good point. £1.4m x infinite is more money than we've got.

None of which means this "plan" will work either...

Yes of course. Let's pretend that Rotherham didn't happen, ignore those Asians men plying children with drugs and alcohol, trafficking them for sex, raping them, beating them up and threatening their parents. The cultural issues and differences should be minimised because we have some white rapists too.

The only thing that has worked is Aus

So if you want that fine but it’s very far from safe routes or processing quickly