Rwanda plan

[AdamRyan]

Was just reading Suella Bravermans thoughts on how to make the Rwanda plan work, which involve sending staff there to review claims and pulling out of all human rights and refugee conventions.

The plan has cost £140m to Rwanda so far, plus £££££ in legal fees and so far we've sent no-one and found out its illegal. I'm very baffled as to why the government are pursuing it, I keep hearing that "most people" support it. So I thought I'd ask:

IABU: It's a priority as it will deter immigration and the government should spend whatever money and time it takes to deliver this

IANBU: The government should focus time/money on other priorities instead.

Can I share this podcast I listened to yesterday - it features an intelligent discussion with an academic whose area of expertise is migration, the impact on economies and the political debate around migration.

It's a real eye opener - about the utter dishonesty of the political debate on immigration, from both ends of the political spectrum.

https://megaphone.link/PMO6655791557

My personal view about the Rwanda scheme is that I think many people aren't aware of the fact that it only involves sending small numbers (and taking refugees from Rwanda in return) and that the government is pinning their hope that it will work as a deterrent without any hard evidence that it will do so. It's not honest to compare it to the Australia scheme, which works in a completely different way (and is also cruel). There's statistically only a very tiny chance that a migrant arriving on our shores will be sent to Rwanda, even when/if the scheme is up and running, and these are desperate people with nothing to lose.

FWIW I also wonder why people think that Rwanda is equipped to deal with refugees but the UK can't possibly accommodate them, when Rwanda has twice the population density of the UK, 5 times our unemployment rate, and half the population are living on less than a dollar a day.

FWIW I also wonder why people think that Rwanda is equipped to deal with refugees but the UK can't possibly accommodate them, when Rwanda has twice the population density of the UK, 5 times our unemployment rate, and half the population are living on less than a dollar a day.

For some people I think that is exactly why they think refugees should be sent to Rwanda.

Would also add that the loudest voices raised saying the UK shouldn't be accommodating migrants are also the same voices shouting for a reduction in public spending on foreign aid and arguing against net zero.

Because it you think current levels of asylum seeking are troubling, just give it another 20 years. The impact of climate change is likely going to create huge, huge conflict in equatorial regions.

We want people to stay in their own countries maybe we should be investing in supporting their economies and tackling climate change.

I'm witnessing utter hate directed at migrants online. It scares me. :-(

Everyone in every public sector services bellows for more money. We are currently highly taxed. The higher taxed jobs are shifting away from London. It’s all very well wanting more of everything, but there’s a cost. The better off pay the most. They might have more left at the end of the month but if we don’t allow this, we cut out the reason for promotion, doing a good job and stifle growth. So we stagnate even more.

The idea that settled asylum seekers will get council homes over local people will never ever go down well. We are not that compassionate. Neither do we like a nhs that’s failing. The Brit’s want everything but don’t want to pay for it. The Brexit ERG will whip people up against the EU courts, and although Labour might win, as yet, we’ve no idea on actual policies and costs.My bet is their manifesto will gloss over details too. Mainly because solution is elusive. Plus where will the cuts will be on other services. Asking the hard pressed to pay even more isn’t going to help any political party. Plus we have all
the covid debt on top of the banking crisis debt. No one has the answer to this.

That is the aim of Sunak, Braverman and others with their dog whistles. I understand it is to distract from their utter failings to do anything positive for the country.

The interesting thing to me is we have higher taxes exactly because the government from 2010 systematically cut services which is such a false economy it is laughable.

@jgw1 Frankly. That’s rubbish. The Conservatives were elected to get the economy back into shape after the banking crisis. Paying out more and more on the public sector (but only some of it) is what’s happened. Mainly because need has increased, eg nhs, universal credit etc. All the money that goes to the public sector has to be earned. Mostly by others.It doesn’t pay for itself. Of course public workers pay tax but they don’t pay company tax and do get better pensions paid for by the state than nearly everyone else.
We have to strike a balance between what we want and how much tax is reasonable. Over tax and we stagnate. The economy has no need to expand because no one has any spare money. If you don’t invest in business snd it doesn’t grow. We need it to grow to fund everything else. It’s utterly one sided to think people will accept high taxation for shoddy services. Lots of people are thinking we need a much deeper evaluation of value for money in the nhs. It’s a bloated service at the moment that is a money pit.

Could you be clearer on which part of what I said was rubbish.

Am I wrong that the government systematically cut services from 2010?
Am I wrong that we have higher taxes than in 2010?

Lets take policing as an example. There are roughly the same number of police officers now as there were in 2010. In the intervening years the government decided to cut police numbers and then increase them. Are you seriously trying to tell me that is more cost effective than keeping the numbers constant?

I said some services had not had money whilst other areas demonstrably have. It’s not been cuts cuts cuts for every area of public spending. If we want to keep spending we need to earn that money. We cannot borrow more. It’s not fair on the young for a start. I get it that people want everything. I’m sure people don’t like fewer police but I’ve not seen a difference because we didn’t see them anyway! My argument is we need to have our services working smarter for the financial input. Which by any terms, is huge.

The scale of Australian and European inward migration just aren't comparable, Australia had 25k arrive by boats in 2013, UK has around 30k to 40k p.a

Around 140k migrants try to get into EU each year via N. Africa and Turkey, ignoring the legal aspects, where on earth could they all be sent?

It would need to be at least 50% to act as a deterrent.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of off shoring, there isn't anywhere to send.

So you can't point to anything I said that was actually rubbish. Thanks for the clarification.

@izimbra - I entirely agree; it's easy for those at the top to imagine that racism does not exist in say the case of Braverman or Sunak who are privileged. But they are wrong. The racism of this debate will extend beyond "migrants" and become explicitly about skin colour, religion in reality.

What would happen to our former Home Sec if she encountered this for herself? Why she would want all help and decency she could get, and not be judged on her background or ethnicity. She would want that for her family, her children and her friends. However, she did not want to extend that logic to wider society.

I think it is important to remember what the purpose of the Rwanda policy is. It is clearly not to do anything to solve the dangers that those crossing the Channel in small boats face to get to the UK to make their legal asylum claims.
It is everything to do with whipping up hate by government to distract from their utter inability to do anything positive for the country.

Well no they’re not comparable anymore because Aus acted far earlier and the trend is only going one way.

It’s the only country (that I’m aware of anyway) that has resolved a very difficult issue and obviously won’t reverse that even with Labor in.

OK so the Australian solution is no longer suitable for Europe, i agree with you.

So whats the new plan?

That was a bit of a leap there..

No longer suitable is your view

Apologies, i thought you were agreeing with me.

So the original question stands, Where is suitable to send migrants for off shore processing?

😬 welcome

I don’t mind better than insults etc. I can debate if it’s civil

The Rwanda plan isn't about 'off shore processing'. It's about the UK discarding the responsibility to process the migrants sent to Rwanda at all. They become Rwanda's responsibility to process.

Any plan that is worth discussing has to focus on the reasons that there is so much migration and what be done to change that.

I would suggest that, needs some very serious and urgent action on climate change together with far greater support for poorer countries and efforts to reduce the huge inequalities that exist.

Really suggest you listen to the podcast I posted a link to.

The reason the right still allow high rates of legal immigration (while dog whistling over the very small minority of migrants who've entered by unconventional means and are claiming asylum) is because there's a strong link between high levels of immigration and stronger economic growth.

If we want economic growth we can't massively reduce the number of immigrants - we need their money and we need their skills.

The example he gives in the podcast is Japan, which has very very low levels of immigration and sluggish economic growth. Has done for years.

The Conservatives deliberately muddy the waters around types of migration in their rhetoric - making it seem like they're anti-migration because of all the tough talks about migrants claiming asylum.

The problem with all of these discussions around immigration is that it's become political poison to talk about the benefits of immigration. From the left you'll get 'immigrants drive down wages' and from the right you'll get 'immigrants dilute our culture'.

We need to have a more adult discussion about it, and maybe acknowledge the specific challenges of a big uptick in population growth within the context of a culture where NIMBY home owners won't accept the need for big housebuilding programmes, and where you have a government with an ideological antipathy towards well funded public services.

The economy was on the mend when the Conservatives took over in 2010. What did they do? Push through a hugely damaging hard BREXIT which had a big impact on growth and productivity. And the UK's gross consolidated debt has almost doubled since 2010

They didn't rein in public spending as savagely as they did (including a 40% real term cut to local government at a time of rising statutory need) because there was no other option. They did it because they're a party which is ideologically opposed to high public spending, particularly when that money can't be directed into private pockets via the wholesale contracting out of public services to the private sector, which is many cases has been an absolute and complete disaster, in terms of cost and quality of service.

As a proportion of GDP in 2019 we had the lowest rate of public spending of any country in Europe. It only increased slightly in 2020 - 2022 because of massive spaffing on corrupt PPE and covid related contracts for government cronies.

And BTW - NHS spending per head of population hasn't increased inline with growing costs and growing need, as has happened in other countries. That's why the NHS is in the sh*tter. That and an explosion of health inequality created by social precarity that's the result of Conservative changes to the benefit system, mental health services and and social care.

Unfortunately our wages have stagnated and we are paying more tax and with so many feeling the pinch, there isn’t more money. We cannot keep affording a Rolls Royce service on Mini money. We need to accept change.

Japan isn’t the uk. It’s one example. They are nearly twice the size of us. Of course we need immigration. Look how Tony Blair was blamed by nearly everyone for letting in Europeans! We just have huge numbers of people who don’t like immigrants until they need them. It appears we don’t want the work available and want others to dk
it. Except we don’t because they are immigrants! No one will ever win this battle . Unless we get much tougher on benefits - which we won’t.

I was cheering along with you until the last sentence.