UK POLICY ON REFUGEES

1. Context

2. The political context for the Bill

• Policies to regulate immigration, specifically of undocumented workers and asylum seekers, have always been a sensitive political issue in the U.K., as in other developed economies.
• With the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments fuelling some aspects of the Brexit campaign, which became a reality on January 31, 2020, the U.K. conservative party has been a strong advocate for tighter immigration policies.
• This is purportedly aimed at protecting U.K. jobs or shifting the focus to skilled workers arriving through legal routes.
• However, through the recent years of the pandemic and the economic distress it has caused across developing countries, as well as the displacement of certain communities in countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq, ever greater numbers of asylum seekers have been arriving on the shores of the U.K., prompting closer scrutiny of the policy response in this regard.

3. Proposals of the Bill

• The Bill, when passed into law by the U.K. Parliament, will require that the Home secretary detain and remove those arriving in the U.K. illegally, either to Rwanda or another "safe" third country.
• It would deny migrants the right to bail or judicial review for the first 28 days of their immigration detention.
• To block such migrants from returning to the U.K. or seeking British citizenship going forward.
• The bill would also seek to cap the number of refugees permitted to settle in the U.K. through "safe and legal routes".
• This currently only applies to people from Afghanistan and Ukraine or British National status holders in Hong Kong.

4. What was the 'UK-Rwanda Asylum Plan'?

• The UK and Rwanda Migration and Economic Development partnership or the Rwanda Deal is a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the two governments.
• Under this deal, Rwanda will commit to taking in asylum seekers who arrive in the UK on or after January 1, 2022, using illegally facilitated and unlawful cross-border migration.
• Rwanda will function as the holding center where asylum applicants will wait while the Rwanda government makes decisions about their asylum and resettlement petitions in Rwanda.
• Rwanda will, on its part, accommodate anyone who is not a minor and does not have a criminal record.

5. Is the bill consistent with human rights laws? 

• This is most salient in the concept of non-refoulment, an idea encapsulated in the Refugee Convention as well as the ECHR, to which the U.K. is a signatory, that refugees should not be returned to a country where they face threats to life and liberty.
• There was more than a 50% chance that the new bill is incompatible with international law.
• In this context, it is expected that the bill will be challenged in the courts and might fail on the grounds of inconsistency with human rights laws.
• However, the U.K. High Court recently ruled that the Rwanda deportation plan did not violate any human rights conventions.

6. United Nations Refugee Convention, 1951

• It is a United Nations Multilateral treaty that defines who is a refugee and sets out the rights of individuals who are granted asylum and the responsibilities of nations that grant asylum.
• It also set out which people do not qualify as refugees, such as war criminals.
• It grants certain rights to people fleeing persecution because of race, religion, nationality, affiliation to a particular social group, or political opinion.
• The Convention also provides for some visa-free travel for holders of travel documents issued under the convention.
• The 1967 protocol included refugees from all countries as opposed to the 1951 convention which only included refugees from Europe.
• India is not a member of this convention.

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