By Chris Muhizi for MCN Saturday July 1st/2023.
The UK Home Office may eventually deport more than 24,000 asylum seekers from about one-third of the world’s nations to Rwanda, despite the plan being declared illegal by the court of appeals on Thursday.
Between January 2021 and March 2023, 24,083 asylum seekers received letters from the Home Office informing them that they were under consideration for forced removal, according to information acquired through a freedom of information request.
After the Home Office rejects an asylum petition, a notice of intent letter is given. As a result of the asylum seeker’s prior passage through a secure nation before arriving in Britain, the case cannot be decided in the UK.
The person is to be sent to a secure third nation to have their claim decided there instead, according to the notice of intent. The only nation with which the UK has a deal to do this is Rwanda, however due to ongoing legal disputes, these cases are now included in the Home Office’s backlog of records.
Data from the Home Office show that 3,859 notifications of intent were issued for Albanians, the most common nationality. Iran, with 2,715, Eritrea, with 2,558 and Afghanistan, with 2,555, round out the top 10.
The UK and Rwandan governments claim that they are both committed to making the deal happen even though the court of appeals ruled that it is illegal. Following the ruling by the court of appeals, the administration declared on Thursday that it intended to request permission to appeal to the highest court.
Torture survivors from countries like Iran, Eritrea, Syria, and Sudan are waiting in the asylum system with little chance of being sent to Rwanda, according to Toufique Hossain of Duncan Lewis solicitors, who defended seven of the asylum seekers facing forcible removal to that country on Thursday. Living in such limbo has a dehumanizing effect, which is horrible.
Over two-thirds of the refugees we work with who have received Rwanda alerts have reported signs of modern slavery and torture, said to Steve Smith MBE, CEO of the refugee organization Care4Calais. It is terrible that the government has halted tens of thousands more refugee petitions after failing to process them quickly enough to create a record backlog. The survivors of torture and modern slavery will only experience further anguish as a result of this.
The UK government hopes to send as many people as possible to Rwanda after the legal case has been resolved, if it is resolved in the government’s favor. The Home Office declined to comment on the data, but it is understood that while all of those issued with notices of intent could not be moved there, the hope of the UK government is to fly as many people as possible there after the legal case has been resolved.
Source: The guardians News.
