What will Rishi Sunak becoming the the new prime minister mean for immigration and asylum policies?

Rishi Sunak has a political and professional background almost exclusively in business and finance.

But he made what he called his “plan for illegal immigration” core to his first run to become prime minister in the summer and has suggested no deviation from the ideas.

Hinting at economically driven policy, Sunak issued a written proposal saying he would make “aid, trade, and visas conditional” on countries’ willingness to accept returned asylum seekers and foreign offenders.

Forcing asylum seekers back to countries where they claim to be at risk is a breach of international law and international governments are likely to resist such conditions on trade deals.

In a polished campaign video released in July, Sunak called immigration the “second emergency” to tackle - then behind the NHS backlog - and repeated Priti Patel’s language on the “broken system” and out-of-control borders.

While speaking out against scapegoating and calling the issue “morally complex”, he backed a series of hardline policies and vowed to make the troubled Rwanda scheme happen.

“Our Rwanda policy is the right idea but only if it’s done properly,” Mr Sunak said. “I will make the Rwanda policy work. It is essential that anyone considering trying to sneak into Britain knows that their journey will end in Kigali, not King’s Cross.”

Three months on, that vow is looking increasingly hard to keep. Four legal challenges relating to the Rwanda deal are underway, no flights have taken off and asylum seekers selected for deportation have been freed from detention.

High Court battles have promoted a series of government disclosures, which showed that the Foreign Office and UK High Commissioner to Rwanda had advised against any agreement over the country’s human rights record and corruption allegations.

The costs are extortionate, with £140m already handed over in up-front payments and ministers refusing to disclose how much the UK will pay for each person flown to Kigali and supported to claim asylum there instead.

In his July video, Sunak did hint at discomfort over how the unprecedented scheme was drawn up behind closed doors and away from parliament, saying choices must not be “kept away from public scrutiny and debate”.

But he said small boat crossings were a “genuine emergency and must be addressed”, describing them as “boat after boat full of illegal migrants coming from safe European countries, with our sailors and coastguard seemingly powerless to stop them”.

“This must stop and if I become your prime minister it will stop,” Sunak said. “This is not just hot air or rhetoric.”

Priti Patel’s vow to make Channel crossings “unviable” became a political liability as numbers continued to break new records despite her attempt to start push-backs and claim that using Royal Navy patrols would be a deterrent.

Her successor Suella Braverman made no impact on the phenomenon during her short six weeks in office, while new home secretary Grant Shapps had been in post less than a day when Liz Truss quit.

He is expected to remain in the role under the new prime minister, who previously outlined a “10 point plan” to tackle Channel crossings and said he would invite all political parties to join forces on the issue.

It included a pledge to “reform our broken asylum laws”, including by “tightening our definition of who qualifies for asylum in the UK” and enhanced powers to “detain, tag, and monitor illegal migrants”.

Braverman had triggered work looking at changes to how the Human Rights Act and Refugee Convention apply to asylum seekers, with a view to enforcing the Rwanda scheme and deportations, but the policy was in the early stages of development when she resigned for breaching the ministerial code.

Sunak also wants to create a cap on the number of refugees accepted “via safe and legal routes”, but the resettlement schemes he was referring to already account for a tiny fraction of overall asylum applications.

British law dictates that people must be physically present in the UK to claim asylum, but there is no visa to reach the country for that purpose.

Sunak’s plan vowed that “no adult who enters the UK illegally will have a route to remain in the UK”, but Channel crossings by asylum seekers only became a criminal offence this summer. He has said he would deliver “thousands of new beds” for asylum seekers to stop the costly use of hotels, without giving details of how.

As chancellor, he was reported to have proposed the use of empty cruise ships during the coronavirus pandemic but the plan was not taken forward for a range of legal and financial reasons.

The new prime minister’s 10-point plan for Channel crossings did contain some more practical proposals, including increasing the number of asylum caseworkers to speed up the processing of claims amid record backlogs.

Mr Sunak said he would be “commissioning work to look at more fundamental Home Office and Border Force reform”, but such efforts may be less of a priority than dealing with known challenges.

Recent reviews have made numerous recommendations for improvement after finding the government’s response to small boat crossings had been “both ineffective and inefficient”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/news-analysis/rishi-sunak-prime-minister-immigration-rwanda-asylum-b2209370.html

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