Britain’s Asylum Policy Is a Gift to Smugglers

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government is frequently on the verge of collapse over a doomed quest to subcontract their asylum system to the government of Rwanda. The U.K. has signed a deal with the east African state to receive its unwanted migrants on a one-way ticket, insisting that it will destroy the business model of human smuggling groups that brought around 30,000 people to the U.K. by inflatable boat from Europe last year. The policy is more likely to ensure that smugglers continue to dominate access to Britain. Other governments would be wise not to make the same mistakes.

Rather than efficiently process asylum claims, the U.K. is paying at least $360 million to the authoritarian regime of Rwandan President Paul Kagame to host their rejected migrants. Without evidence, the government asserts that the threat of being detained, denied access to asylum, and being flown 4,000 miles away would disincentivize future U.K.-bound asylum seekers. In a blow to Sunak’s government, last year the U.K. Supreme Court ruled the scheme unlawful. The subsequent attempt to rush through legislation to circumvent the court’s decision has led to a vicious internal party rebellion. Meanwhile, not a single migrant has been sent to Rwanda.

While cracking down on “unlawful” migration, the British government extols the virtue of its “safe and legal routes,” which are “some of the most generous anywhere.” Yet in recent years the U.K. has closed routes for Syrian refugees, families seeking to be reunited, and unaccompanied children stranded in Europe. A government report on safe and legal routes published last week contained zero proposals to open any new ones. An increase in irregular migration should be no surprise.

Ukrainians do not arrive in the U.K. huddled in small boats, nor do Hong Kongers. That’s because they are the beneficiaries of bespoke resettlement schemes allowing them to fly to the country in a safe, legal and dignified manner. Understaffed and poorly managed programs for Afghan refugees—including those that fought the Taliban alongside British forces—have stalled. Relatedly, Afghans are one of the top nationalities that now arrive on small boats. In 2023, aside from those three nationalities, the U.K. resettled just 700 people—an unserious number.

It is impossible to submit asylum applications outside of the U.K., so people must run a global obstacle course with routes set by smugglers in order to put their feet on the territory and plead their case. There are around 100,000 people currently languishing in dysfunctional U.K. bureaucracy awaiting an asylum decision, most of whom paid several thousand dollars to get to the country. Britain’s hostile policy creates the market for smuggling gangs and ensures that they sustain astronomical profits.

Britain is not alone in its immigration theatre. Around the world most politicians’ claims of stopping illegal immigration rarely stand up to scrutiny. Restrictive policies frequently just shift routes rather than stop the phenomenon. Until recently, the U.K. didn’t have a small boats problem, but as border officials have quietly admitted, tightened controls at French ports led smugglers to swap trucks and parking lots for dinghies and beaches. In Australia, successive governments have boasted of “stopping the boats” by sending seaborne migrants to horrific prison islands in the Pacific Ocean, only for airports to register a significant increase in people claiming asylum upon arrival. The European Union has spent billions on building fortifications and bribing dictators and militia to prevent migration, yet 2023 saw the highest number of people arriving irregularly since the 2016 refugee crisis.

Britain’s Rwanda gambit is another example of backfiring immigration policy and irresponsible statecraft. Not only will it facilitate more smuggling to the U.K., it will encourage it elsewhere. If migrants are deported to Rwanda, many will seek to continue their journey to Europe, and smuggling operatives will accordingly forge new routes through Africa. In the 2010s, Israel conducted a similar arrangement to send unwanted migrants to Rwanda. All subsequently left or were removed. Worse still, the policy means the U.K. ignores a brewing conflict. The United States has called for Rwanda to cease its support for the M23 armed group accused of recruiting child soldiers and unspeakable atrocities in neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the grimmest of ironies, a country hired to relieve the U.K. of its refugees may be the cause of a regional refugee crisis.

Politicians benefit from cynically dramatizing irregular immigration, but it doesn’t have to be this way. The Biden administration’s recent measures, like humanitarian parole, gave order and predictability to the arrivals of nationalities that previously came irregularly, as well as cut out the smuggling middlemen. A return to blanket restrictions will just increase border chaos and cartel profits. If asylum seekers could begin a screening process online from anywhere in the world, successful applicants would enter legally, by plane, in a managed process. If labor migrants were able to move back and forth between borders in a regulated way, fulfilling market demand, they would eschew smuggler-dominated paths and not be forced to remain undocumented in the underground economy for years.

Countries have the right to decide the level of migration according to their need and humanitarian obligations. Pretending that this level can be zero merely cedes control of entry to smugglers.

Andrew Connelly is a writer, journalist, and consultant focusing on politics, migration, and conflict.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.