“I’m sorry to announce ladies and gentlemen that your scheduled flight to Rwanda has been cancelled indefinitely” is probably one of the few times passengers have been glad to hear such a message. This week and last, we have been treated to a “will they, won’t they” scenario regarding the planned deportation of 130 illegal immigrants to Rwanda. Priti Patel said they were good to go, and the High Court agreed. But the flight was delayed and the case taken to the Court of Appeal which also agreed with the Home Secretary. In the end it transpired that only seven migrants were due to be deported, but at the time of writing they are still here, because those meddling menaces at the European Court of Human Rights have said they can’t go. And even if this new obstacle can be obviated, it remains possible that the Border Farce staff may refuse to do their job. When pushed on this issue on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this week, Mark Serwotka General Secretary of the PCS Union which represents Border Force staff refused to comment. Yet it is clear where he stands on the issue; needless to say, he is against it. Instead, he said we need a legal route for people who are refugees to enter the UK. It had clearly slipped his mind that we have one: the asylum system, which his members operate.
Nothing new in all this; it has always been very hard to load illegal migrants onto a plane and send them anywhere and I must accept, in a democratic society where the rule of law still prevails, that legal challenges are appropriate, and the proceedings of the courts must be respected. Perhaps the Home Office could have played things a bit smarter and loaded the plane to Rwanda prior to the High Court hearing and as soon as the positive verdict was in hailed ‘chocks aways’ and off into the blue horizon with them.
What has been notable, as with everything around the issue of illegal migrants, is the lunatics that it flushes out into the open to express views that are, on the one hand, simply wrong and, on the other hand, do not reflect what most British people want. These are the people suffering from BDS (Border Derangement Syndrome). First there is the conflation of all migrants, legal and illegal; the clue is in the labels. Legal means you have entered legally and after due process have been granted the right to stay. Illegal means that you have entered illegally, you have broken British law and you should leave at the earliest possible opportunity, whether you like it or not. In reality, however, illegal entry means you have earned the right to free accommodation from which you can leg it into the English countryside at the first opportunity.
Then we have the ‘let them all in’ brigade who seriously believe that there should be unimpeded entry without limit on the numbers into the UK. These include Paul Lincoln who used to run UK Border Force who reckoned: “Bloody borders are just such a pain in the bloody arse.” Makes you wonder what he did all day or maybe it explains why thousands turn up illegally on our shores, impeded only by the number of sugars they’d like in their tea. Of course, Archbishop Justin Welby is against sending illegal migrants to Rwanda; he seems keen to flood the country with young mainly Muslim men whose primary allegiance will never be to the UK no matter what we provide for them. Apparently, politically neutral Prince Charles thinks the policy of sending illegal migrants to Rwanda is appalling, but it is not clear in which of his copious and capacious stately homes he intends to house them all. What the UK without borders brigade have in common is that none of them will ever have to meet an illegal migrant, be shoved down a housing list because a migrant is being preferentially accommodated or lose their job because an illegal migrant will do it for less. No, that is a problem for the working classes and who cares about them?
Many bleeding heart commentators, including Mark Serwotka of the PCS, refer to the war torn countries from which illegal migrants emanate and about the dangers they are fleeing. Forgive me, but the last time I checked there was no war in France from whence all the ones arriving illegally on our shores hail. That said, the UK government must see that there is some lack of logic in their argument about sending illegal migrants to Rwanda. They cannot, on the one hand, say that this will be a deterrent to people risking their lives on flimsy dinghies crossing La Manche and also advertise as they do on the GOV.UK web page under paragraph 1.1.7 of their guidance that:
In 2016, the Rwandan government made 4 commitments with regards refugees:
- To facilitate camp-based refugees to move from assistance programmes and in to work.
- To issue valid refugee ID cards to all eligible persons.
- To integrate refugee students into the national education system.
- To provide urban refugees access to the national health insurance system
What’s not to like about that? And the sun shines there all year round. If we really want to deter illegal migrants, we should threaten to send them to Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
