(LONDON) The British Conservative government of Rishi Sunak will present a new bill against illegal immigration on Tuesday, aiming in particular to ban people arriving by the Channel on small boats from seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, several newspapers report. .
Despite Brexit promises to ‘take back control’ of borders, the UK is facing a huge uptick in arrivals, with a record of over 45,000 people reaching the country’s shores in this way last year , and pressure is mounting on the Prime Minister to curb the phenomenon.
Expected for weeks, this text provides for measures to facilitate the detention and deportation “as soon as reasonably possible” of asylum seekers who have arrived in the United Kingdom illegally, indicate in particular the Times and the DailyMail in their editions dated Monday.
The government intends to send them back to Rwanda, under a law already passed but which could never be applied due to legal action, or to another country considered safe. And people who arrived illegally will be banned for life from returning to the UK.
According to TimesLondon plans in parallel to develop new “legal and safe” routes for asylum seekers, without giving more details.
“Our measures will be simple in principle and application: the only path for the United Kingdom will be a safe and legal path”, defended Sunday in the newspaper The Sun Interior Minister Suella Braverman, holding a firm line on the subject, like the Prime Minister.
Questioned on Sunday on Sky News, the minister responsible for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, also indicated that the United Kingdom intended to have “appropriate exchanges” with France and other European countries to ensure that asylum seekers “stay in the first safe country they arrive in”.
Rishi Sunak is notably expected in Paris on Friday for a bilateral summit with French President Emmanuel Macron.
“Stopping the boats” of irregular migrants is one of the five priorities set by the British Prime Minister between now and the next general election in less than two years, for which the Labor opposition is given the winner in the polls.
The arrival of these migrants, accommodated in hotels during the examination of their asylum application, has created tensions in certain cities of the country with anti-refugee demonstrations, such as Saturday in Dover.