News1 min ago
Rwanda Fiasco
Is the Tory government really going to pass a law in parliament that says Rwanda is a safe country in order to try and send refugees there?
To my mind their time would be better spent passing laws to say that the hospital waiting list for treatment is not at almost 8 million, over 13 million are not living in poverty, and around 2,500 people are not homeless (sleeping rough every night).
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.We can add to this, the larger dimension of multiculturalism which has been in the shadows for some time but since the brilliant speech of Suella Braverman (whom God preserve!) it's now out & on the table.
'With the Hamas atrocities exposing a deep social divide across the West, everyone suddenly sees the problem with multiculturalism. Increasingly the ‘D’ word, deportation, is on politicians’ lips, from Germany to the Nordic countries to the US. Decades of multiculturalism and mass migration have laid the tinder, with the Hamas-Israeli flashpoint now fuelling civic protests and violence across the globe...'
The Spectator Australia. Today
Since Brexit Sweden sent 1,050 Brits back to the UK. followed by Malta 115,France 95, Belgium 65 ,Denmark 40,Austria 10 and 875 from other EU member states..These Brits had not got the correct paperwork and had lost their rights to freedom of movement within the EU After Britain became a third Country since Brexit.
‘More than 2,250 British citizens were ordered to leave EU member states between the end of the Brexit transition period and September last year, according to figures from the bloc’s statistical office.
Quarterly data published late last month by Eurostat shows a total of 2,285 UK nationals were expelled from 1 January 2021, when British citizens lost their free movement rights within the EU, until the third quarter of last year.
Experts cautioned that the data did not specify why people were ordered to leave so not all expulsions may have been related to residency rules, but said the figures amounted to “the starkest possible reminder” of the consequences of Brexit.’
‘The Eurostat data, first reported by the Local, showed striking variations between EU member states, with Sweden accounting for nearly half (1,050) of all British citizens ordered to leave over the period and the Netherlands almost a third (615).
Malta told 115 UK nationals to leave its territory, France 95, Belgium 65, Denmark 40, Germany 25 and Austria 10, while some countries with large populations of British residents, including Spain, Portugal and Italy, reported no expulsion orders.’
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The greatest disaster for Europe as a whole isn't Brexit it was Schengen which should be revoked & all EU countries take back their borders. There are at the moment 100 thousand Brazilian illegal immigrants in Portugal, plus hundreds of thousands of the peoples of Africa in Spain, Greece, Germany & France, in fact all EU countries (except Hungary, thanks to V. Orban) all able to move seamlessly from one country to another.
'The Strange Death of Europe' is the right title of the book.
Wake up, wake up.
For once Hymie and I are singing from the same hymn sheet (NJ retires for a tranquiliser and a lie down 😊).
I said from the outset that this was a ridiculous scheme that was never likely to get off the ground. I still stand by that. As well as that, it only caters for very small numbers. I think it is 500 rather than the 200 Hymie quotes, but no matter; either of those numbers are insignificant when hundreds have arrived on a single day this year. As for being a deterrent, how can it be? Pure numbers alone would suggest that it is not. Over 23,000 have arrived this year and whether the Rwanda scheme’s capacity is 200 or 500, that shows there are pretty good odds against not being deported there. As well as that, as Hymie again has mentioned, the UK has signed up to accept refugees that Rwanda “cannot properly handle”, which they say are those with complex or serious health problems.
The government is bound by (principally as far as this problem goes) the 1951 UN Convention on the Treatment of Refugees. This has seen very loose (and in my view incorrect) interpretations by the courts (as far as those arriving “directly” from a place where they claim to be under threat). But the government, unless they withdraw from that convention, is stuck with those precedents. Another feature of the Convention is that refugees cannot be sent to a place where their safety is jeopardised. The Supreme Court spent some time assessing evidence of the safety (or otherwise) of Rwanda and concluded that it did dot fit the bill. What the government is now proposing is an Act of Parliament to declare Rwanda a safe place (despite the Supreme Court’s findings). This is ridiculous.
The government is attempting, by Act of Parliament, to force the acceptance of something they merely state to be true, to actually be true. The new Home Secretary (then in post for a whole four days) disagreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling and disagreed with Lord Sumption (a former Supreme Court judge) when he said that such a strategy was absurd. MPs have a habit of expecting people to believe what they say, but this is somewhat different. The people they have to persuade this time are senior judges (not to mention the other MPs, who are by no means certain to vote for the measure).
A good example of what happens following attempts to change the facts by edict can be found in the case of R. v Leavett in 1914. Mr Leavett was prosecuted for fishing without a licence. He responded by saying that the creatures he collected, winkles, were not fish. The local council replied that their fishing license terms stated that winkles were fish. The courts were not convinced and Leavett was acquitted on appeal. . Mr Justice Darling, in the course of counsel's argument, said they since they could not make a pig into a fish by including pigs in their fishing licences, they could not make a winkle into a fish by a similar method. He noted that The Bible called the whale that swallowed Jonah a fish, but the whale was not a fish. By declaring Rwanda to be safe the government is proposing just such a sleight of hand.
The only point on which I disagree with Hymie is that this is a party political issue. Yes, the Tories are in government and this shambles developed on their watch. But Labour has no more idea how to deal with the problem (or if it has, I must have missed their proposals). This situation has arisen because the UK government is bound by international legislation that is no longer fit for purpose and unless it derogates from those treaties the problem will endure.
The greatest disaster for Europe as a whole isn't Brexit it was Schengen which should be revoked & all EU countries take back their borders.
Absolutely agree. But Schengen and the Euro are seen by the Euromaniacs as their two crowning achievements. I don’t know which is the greatest folly but both are “fair weather” schemes – fine when everything is going smoothly but absolutely disastrous when problems arise. As well as that, adequate forewarning was provided when each was proposed. The Euro has suffered a number of crises and only just survived the fallout from the 2008 financial crash. It is unfit for purpose (except for Germany) and Schengen is now collapsing, with a number of its members imposing border controls with their neighbours. But hey-ho, “Brexit has been a disaster”. Yeah, right.