The head of the British government is received at the Elysee Palace by Emmanuel Macron on Friday for a summit partly devoted to immigration and the question of migrant crossings.
The subject never ceases to occupy the British political class. The question of illegal crossings of the Channel by migrants must be addressed by Emmanuel Macron and Rishi Sunak, Friday March 10, on the occasion of a bilateral summit organized at the Elysee Palace between the French president and the British Prime Minister. British Home Secretary Suella Braverman announced on Tuesday a new law aimed at further tightening the law on illegal immigration, reports The Guardian*.
If the text is adopted by the Parliament of London, the migrants who cross the English Channel – and more widely those who arrive illegally on the coasts – will be returned from the United Kingdom, banned from territory for life and will no longer be able to apply for asylum or British nationality. In 2022, nearly 46,000 migrants had crossed the Channel to reach the English coast, according to figures from the BBC*. A record level since 2018. ‘The issue of small craft is a major policy issue for Labour, but especially for the Tories’points out to franceinfo Georgina Wright, specialist in the United Kingdom at the Institut Montaigne.
“Stop the boats” to go up in the polls
The bill is not the first attempt by the Conservatives to tackle the issue. In 2022, the government, then led by Boris Johnson, had already caused controversy, by signing an agreement with Rwanda to return asylum seekers from the United Kingdom to the territory of the African country, 6500 km away. But until the High Court of the country examines the appeal of associations, this agreement is not yet applied.
The Conservatives’ unpopularity with voters pushed the government to act on the subject. “The Prime Minister is very badly seated. In the polls, the Labor party is given 20 points above the Conservatives”, recalls Georgina Wright. A situation that prompted Rishi Sunak to mantra “stop the boats” (“stop them boats” in English) one of his promises to the British when he came to power last November. “I am determined to answer it. Make no mistake: if you come here illegally, you cannot stay here”he told the Daily Mail* Sunday. Also a way of “gather his camp on a measure shared by all deputies”adds the researcher.
A law that risks being “inapplicable”
The bill, revealed on Sunday, was immediately criticized by the opposition and associations. The project is “immoral, inefficient and very expensive”, denounced the Liberal Democrats party, quoted by the BBC *. The compatibility of the law with international law is also questioned. The legislation could in particular contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, signed by the United Kingdom and which the think tank Curator Policy Exchange* offers to leave. Otherwise, the text could be challenged in court. The government assumes. “We have pushed the limits of international law”thus flaunted Suella Braverman in the columns of the Daily Telegraph*.
Beyond legal considerations, the law simply risks being “inapplicable”in the words of Enver Solomon, leader of the NGO Refugee Council, in Financial Times* (subscriber only). The magazine notes that since Brexit, the United Kingdom has no agreement to return asylum seekers with the States of the European Union (EU). As a result, British detention centers are already full.
In 2022, 45,237 people were placed in detention centers without being deported, according to figures from the Refugee Council reported by The Guardian*. With the future law, and without further agreement, migrants arriving in the UK illegally would find themselves stuck there “permanently”worries the association, which denounces the financial cost of such a policy.
Paris being an essential partner of London on the subject of crossings of the English Channel, the British Prime Minister will be able to benefit from Friday “of an improvement in relations between [son pays] and France, after an agreement with the EU on the Northern Irish protocol and joint work on the war in Ukraine”, also underlines Georgina Wright. A few months ago, the two countries signed a cooperation agreement providing in particular for financial aid from the British to monitor French beaches and the dispatch of British observers to the French side.
* Links followed by an asterisk are in English.