The Illegal Immigration Bill introduced on Tuesday March 7 is not the first attempt by a British Conservative government to crack down on immigrant boats crossing the English Channel illegally, but it is probably the most controversial to date. from today. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has tabled new legislation in the House of Commons allowing anyone arriving on the shores of Kent in an inflatable boat to be denied the right to seek asylum in the UK: the ministry recorded 45,000 passages in these fragile boats in 2022. The text raises many moral, legal and practical questions.

With the sole exception of minors and the very ill, new arrivals will be detained and then sent back to their country of origin, if necessary. ” sure “or to a third country also considered “safe” by London, such as Rwanda, with which the UK signed an already hotly contested deal to outsource its asylum claims by 2022. Attempts to invoke protective laws: the UK’s modern slavery law Kingdom, for example, will only be considered once the person has been deported.

“It is unfair that people who have traveled through a whole series of safe countries and then arrived in the UK illegally are abusing our asylum system. This must stop”Suella Braverman judged. The minister, herself the daughter of immigrants of Indian origin, has become an advocate of a supposed anti-immigrant policy and is regularly criticized by Labor and NGOs for her provocative rhetoric; she qualified as“invasion” inflatable boat arrivals in 2022.

the bill is “difficult but necessary”, also estimated Rishi Sunak, during a press conference on Tuesday. Considered a moderate, the British conservative prime minister, also of Indian origin, has made the fight against the English Channel crossings one of his priorities. He is responding to a pressing request from elected officials in his camp, concerned that one of the main promises of Brexit (to “take back control” of the borders) has not been delivered. In fact, the crossings have increased by more than twenty in four years (in 2019 there were less than 1,900 crossings).

The leader hopes that migration will be one of the major issues at the Franco-British summit, which will take place on Friday, March 10 in Paris. Unlike the French, who would prefer to insist on a moment of reconciliation – the first of its kind since 2018 – after years of tensions exacerbated by the excesses of Boris Johnson, then prime minister.

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