The UK government’s plan to send boat migrants to Rwanda is failing to deter illegals from coming to the country, MPs have claimed.
A number of MPs have concluded that there is little evidence that the government’s plan to send illegal migrants to Rwanda is effective at deterring the number of illegal migrants making the journey to Britain.
It comes as thousands of migrants continue to make the perilous journey from France to Britain using small boats, with the country’s Home Office announcing that it had detected over 100 people making the crossing on Sunday alone.
According to a report released by MPs who make up the Home Affairs Committee, despite the whole point of the Rwanda relocation plan being to dissuade more migrants from coming to Britain, there is little evidence that the plan has had such an effect so far.
In fact, the committee notes that there has been a rise in the number of migrants arriving illegally in the country since the plan was announced, which it possibly attributes to people smugglers pressuring migrants into making the crossing sooner rather than later so as to avoid when the plan actually comes into effect.
“There is no clear evidence that the policy will deter migrant crossings — numbers have significantly increased since it was announced in April, but one explanation for this may be attributed to scaremongering from people traffickers that because of new regulations coming in across the Channel it will be much harder to access the UK in future so they had better get on with it,” the report reads.
Concern was also raised in the report as to how expensive the plan will end up being, with comparisons to a similar scheme in place in Australia leading MPs to conclude that the plan could end up costing as much as £1.38 million per migrant, with the paper citing a former Public Accounts Committee chairman as describing the Australia plan as “eye-wateringly expensive”.
As MPs warn that the current plan is not working, migrants continue to pour over the English Channel, with Home Office statistics released on Monday revealing that at least 154 more migrants made the dangerous journey to Britain on Sunday.
Not only is such migration dangerous, but costly to the British taxpayer, with reports over the weekend revealing that over £38,000 ($46,000) of public funds was spent on buying illegals takeaway pizza from a single Domino’s Pizza restaurant.
Despite the continuing crisis though, the Home Affairs Committee was also keen to emphasise how the illegal migrant crisis is completely dwarfed by legal arrivals, even if the estimated 60,000 migrants do arrive in the country this year.
“To put the Channel crossings into context, around 1,000,000 visas enabling extended stays in the UK were issued in the last 12 months: those who arrived irregularly in 2021, without a visa, via small boats across the Channel represent less than 3 per cent in addition to that total, although their number looks likely to rise during 2022,” the report summary reads.
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