Open Borders Forever: Labour Vows to Keep Boat Migrant Route Open

The UK Labour Party — very likely the next government — remains philosophically dedicated to open borders to illegal migration, a Conservative critic decries as the party says it will kill the Rwanda deportation plan if and when it gains power.

Britain is experiencing record levels of immigration and has been for several years, under the watch of its Conservative-in-name-only government. While the vast majority of these arrivals are ‘legal’ migrants, permitted by extremely lax rules introduced by the Tories, a considerable minority of arrivals are illegals, who cross the UK’s borders without permission in order to claim asylum, or else vanish into the black market.

The Tories have at least made a show of trying to slow this migrant route, which can see thousands arrive by small boat across the English Channel a month, instituting the Rwanda plan to relocate boat migrants to East Africa for processing and, in some cases, permanent resettlement. The government insists the knowledge that coming to Britain illegally by boat could result in chancers being deported to Rwanda should be a disincentive to try, and there are some indications this is belatedly starting to work.

But the Conservatives have been in power for 14 years and, by all accounts, that time is soon to come to an end. Polling and fallout from Thursday’s local elections suggest UK Labour will form the next government, probably this winter, and they have now made clear they wish to dispense with even the relatively milquetoast Rwanda scheme’s deterrent.

This, says Miriam Cates — an emerging authentically conservative voice in an otherwise not very conservative Tory Party — proves Labour have zero interest in trying to control migrant arrivals and their alternative plans have already been tried and don’t work.

Labour would, The Times reports, allow small boat migrants to enter the asylum system, and a Labour government wouldn’t book aircraft to use to expatriate migrants to Rwanda, with which the government has a resettlement treaty. A party spokesman cited by the paper said rather than trying to dissuade boat migrants, the most important act is to deal with the backlog of undecided asylum cases.

They are reported to have said: “The most important thing is that we speed up the way in which claims are being processed, the way in which we then have returns agreements in place and deal with the backlog that there is. The thing that is unsustainable at the moment is the amount of the backlog that there is within the system.”

Labour decried the “perma backlog” and said they wanted to “let those with genuine claims who have fled persecution get on, rebuild their lives and start contributing to our economy and society”, making clear it was keen to open a route for illegal migrants to get the right to live and work in Britain in perpetuity.

Labour leader Keir Starmer — if all told comes true, the likely next Prime Minister — said: “I know we have to stop the boats. I want to get going with our plan. Stop the boats on day one, which requires us to stop the gangs that are running this vile trade or to work with law enforcement across the borders to make sure that people are not getting the boats in the first place.”

The claim that a left-wing government would “stop the boats on day one” is a bold one. Suggesting that if such things were so simple it would have already been done by the present government, Tory Cates retorted:

Starmer has suggested that he would scrap the [Rwanda] scheme even if it works, betraying an ideological objection to the idea of creating an effective deterrent that would stop people choosing to get into small boats and cross the Channel from France… Yet Starmer has now all but admitted that he doesn’t want a deterrent. In pretending that the problem can be solved by stopping people getting on the boats (as if this hasn’t been tried) or by processing claims faster (which is already being done) Starmer reveals that, at its heart, Labour is still the party of open borders.

Of course, the truth of the matter is not quite as either of Britain’s leading political parties would have it, assuming the experience of Australia dealing with its own migrant boat problem isn’t exceptional to itself. Like Europe and the United Kingdom, over a decade ago Australia received relatively large numbers of boat migrants and the accompanying humanitarian disasters that always align with the callous people smugglers who arrange the passages, with tragic deaths by drowning.

Accepting that a half-open, half-closed approach to border control that provides a rich market for people smugglers is a political choice, Australia took robust legal advice and launched Operation Sovereign Borders, and was uncompromising in turning back absolutely all migrant boats, and making clear that those who attempt to enter Australia illegally once are then banned for life.

Hard nosed as it may seem, the policy had the intended outcome of preventing further migrant deaths from drowning, and saw the nation’s borders respected. As reported in 2017, Australia had gone 900 days without a single migrant boat making landfall. Critics make claims that these actions are not compatible with international law, but the Australian government did not agree and the policy was ultimately successful while applied.

The British Conservative government has had five and a half years since Channel migrant crossings were declared a “major incident” in 2018 to enact such policies, but has not, choosing instead to engage in lengthy bouts of shadow boxing with the European Court of Human Rights instead.

The deadly consequences of soft border control were tragically underlined in the English Channel last month when five people were killed onboard a migrant boat. Remarkably it appears after dragging the bodies of the deceases from the craft — including the mortal remains of a seven-year-old girl, crushed to death by the other illegal migrants aboard — French Police then allowed the boat to continue its journey to Britain.

Far from fleeing a warzone, seven-year-0ld Sara Alhashimi’s family had already been in Europe 14 years. Her father said he feared being deported back to Basra in Iraq, which the Swedish government says is safe.

Ahmed Alhashimi said he’d paid people smugglers to take his family to the United Kingdom by boat, but described how at the last minute the craft was suddenly rushed by a large group of men who jumped aboard, not caring they were crushing people to death. The Guardian report on the rush stated:

He begged those around him, including a young Sudanese man who had been among those to join the boat at the last moment, to move aside to let him grab his youngest child. “I just wanted him to move so I could pull my baby up,” Alhashimi said. He punched the man, but even that was ignored.

“That time was like death itself,” Alhashimi said. “We saw people dying. I saw how those men were behaving. They didn’t care who they were stepping on – a child, or someone’s head, young or old. People started to suffocate. I could not protect her. I will never forgive myself. But the sea was the only choice I had.”