Some asylum seekers crossing the Channel to the UK will be sent to Rwanda under plans set to be confirmed by the Government on Thursday.
Home Secretary Priti Patel is expected to sign a deal with the African nation during a visit today, with the Prime Minister expected to unveil the full plans today.
Boris Johnson is set to argue that action is needed to combat the “vile people smugglers” turning the ocean into a “watery graveyard”.
Ms Patel is then expected to set out further details of a “migration and economic development partnership” with Rwanda, during a visit to the capital of Kigali.
The scheme will see people arriving in the UK by any means deemed "illegal" by the Government sent to Rwanda while their claims are assessed "offshore".
This will include many asylum seekers undertaking the perilous crossing of the Channel in inappropriate dinghies and boats.
The East African nation will be paid an initial £120 million under the trial scheme.
READ MORE: Asylum seeker vulnerability checks ‘not up to par’ during lockdown
The plans have been blasted by refugee charities as a "cruel and nasty decision", with opposition parties also strongly criticising the scheme.
Asylum seekers who remain in the UK while their claims are considered could be housed in stricter reception centres under the plans.
The first will reportedly open in the village of Linton-on-Ouse, in North Yorkshire.
Labour accused Boris Johnson of trying to distract from being fined for breaching coronavirus laws with “unworkable, unethical and extortionate” plans.
Human rights campaigners have described the Government’s plan as “barbaric”, “cowardly” “shockingly ill-conceived”.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said that the African nation had a “dismal human rights record”.
In a statement to the PA news agency, Mr Valdez-Symonds said: “Sending people to another country – let alone one with such a dismal human rights record – for asylum ‘processing’ is the very height of irresponsibility and shows how far removed from humanity and reality the Government now is on asylum issues.
“The Government is already wrecking our asylum system at huge cost to the taxpayer while causing terrible anxiety to the people stuck in the backlogs it has created.”
“But this shockingly ill-conceived idea will go far further in inflicting suffering while wasting huge amounts of public money.”
Another refugee advocacy group issued a withering assessment of the scheme, calling it a “grubby cash-for-people plan” that was “cowardly” and “barbaric”.
The chief executive of Refugee Action Tim Naor Hilton accused the Government of “offshoring its responsibilities onto Europe’s former colonies instead of doing our fair share to help some of the most vulnerable people on the planet”.
He added that the UK should have learnt from “Australia’s horrific experiment” of sending refugees “thousands of miles away” to camps where they experienced “rampant abuse” as well as “rape, murder and suicide”.
“This grubby cash-for-people plan would be a cowardly, barbaric and inhumane way to treat people fleeing persecution and war,” Mr Naor Hilton said.
“Ministers seem too keen to ignore the reality that most people who cross the Channel in flimsy boats are refugees from countries where persecution and war are rife and who just want to live in safety.”
In a speech later today, Mr Johnson will say that the number of people making the perilous crossing of the Channel could reach 1,000 a day within weeks, after around 600 arrived on Wednesday.
“I accept that these people – whether 600 or one thousand – are in search of a better life; the opportunities that the United Kingdom provides and the hope of a fresh start,” he is expected to say.
“But it is these hopes – these dreams – that have been exploited. These vile people smugglers are abusing the vulnerable and turning the Channel into a watery graveyard, with men, women and children drowning in unseaworthy boats and suffocating in refrigerated lorries.”
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