The legislative package would allow asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda to await a decision on asylum. The law passed the lower house by a vote of 320–276. Next, the law will be considered by the upper house.
Britain's the lower house of the parliament has voted in favor of the so-called Rwanda law. The package of laws is a conservative prime minister Rishi Sun too attempt to reduce the number of asylum seekers heading to Britain.
In its simplicity, the legislative package would allow asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda to await a decision on asylum. However, they would only be allowed to stay in Rwanda after a positive decision, not in Britain.
The conservative government has not sent any asylum seekers to Rwanda since the Supreme Court ruled last year that it was illegal.
The law passed the House of Commons of the British Parliament by 320–276 votes. Next, the law is scheduled to be considered by the upper house.
The vote above, Sunak faced a small-scale rebellion in his own ranks, when two vice-presidents of the Conservative Party resigned in protest.
by Lee Anderson and by Brendan Clarke-Smith felt that the Rwanda law package did not become harsh enough even with the proposed changes they supported. The two resigned after they, together with 60 other party colleagues, proposed blackmail into the law without success.
According to the opposition Labor Party, the departures of Anderson and Clarke-Smith show that even high-ranking decision-makers in the Conservative Party do not believe in their party's chances of success.
– Rishi Sunak is too weak to lead his party and too weak to lead the country, said the campaign coordinator of the Labor Party Pat McFadden For The Guardian.
The House of Commons members debated the legislative package for several hours on Tuesday and voted numerous proposals for changes to the legal package. The members of the conservative party representing the right wing wanted, among other things, that the bill should include a note that international agreements or Britain's own laws would not have been used to prevent or delay the sending of a person to Rwanda.
The main purpose of the law is to enable asylum seekers arriving in Britain to be sent to Rwanda. According to the government, the purpose is to create a deterrent and thus reduce the number of asylum seekers in the country.
However, the legal package is not as simple as it might seem on the surface.
If the legal package is approved, it could mean that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would be involved in the Rwandan decision-making process. The Rwandan authorities would therefore decide whether the asylum seekers would be granted asylum or not.
In the legal package there is even an absurd attempt to change the prevailing reality: the British government seeks to establish Rwanda as a so-called safe state by law. This despite the fact that the country's Supreme Court ruled in its judgment that asylum seekers can be returned or sent to unsafe countries while they are in Rwanda. According to the law, Rwanda therefore violates the principle known as non-refoulement.
If the package of laws came into effect in its current form, the courts would not even be allowed to hear cases involving Rwanda's status as a safe country. However, if the case were to be heard, the courts would have to follow the definitions dictated by the government regarding Rwanda's security. This was also the case in those cases where there would be indisputable evidence of Rwanda's insecurity.
By the beginning of December, Britain had already paid the subordinate of the University of Oxford Migration Observatory including 240 million pounds or about 279 million euros for Rwanda. However, no asylum seekers have been sent to Rwanda so far.
The autocratic president of Rwanda Paul Kagame comment For the Guardian bill by describing it as a British problem. According to Kagame, the money already paid to Rwanda is to be used for the costs of asylum seekers arriving in the country.
– If they don't come, we can return the money, Kagame said during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
– There is a limit to how long the situation can continue, the frustrated authoritarian leader said, referring to the parliamentary process.
#Britain #House #Commons #approved #sending #asylum #seekers #Rwanda
