An unspecified number of illegal boat migrants who landed on Britain’s shores from France on Wednesday have been detained pending their exchange, one-for-one, for other migrants from France under the terms of a new Anglo-French treaty.
The British government says it has detained boat migrants ahead of their planned processing and deportation to France under a new treaty for the first time. 155 migrants came on two boats on Wednesday, and the government has declined to reveal how many of those were detained, but given reports the scheme will initially only be able to handle some 50 migrants a week for the time being, the number involved is not likely to be large.
Those chosen for removal will be held in immigration removal centres, a government statement on how the system will work states, while London notifies Paris with a referral. France is then “expected to respond within 14 days” on which migrants they agree to take back. In return for those, under the system’s one-in-one-out rule, the United Kingdom will then take one migrant from France in an exchange.
The UK government said it was launching a “hard-hitting campaign” warning migrants that the exchange system is now live, and that they should not “risk their money or their life” on the chance they could be selected to be returned to France.
On the face of it, unless the information campaign is wildly successful in deterring migrants from coming at all the scheme won’t meaningfully reduce the number of migrants in the UK as it merely exchanges boat migrants for pre-approved migrants flown from France. Yet it will allow the government to portray a narrative to the public that it has reduced illegal migration, even if it is doing so by moving the man count from the illegal ledger to the legal migration one.
The British taxpayer is picking up the cost of the scheme, including the cost of returning migrants who made it to the UK — in most cases with the assistance of UK government ships performing escort duty in the English Channel — and the cost of bringing in the new migrant in exchange. The Times reports the plan will privilege the importation of migrant applicants in France from certain countries, including “Eritrea, Somalia, or Afghanistan”.
Labour party government Home Secretary Yvette Cooper heralded the deal as “ground-breaking” and said it “sends a message” to “every migrant currently thinking of paying organised crime gangs to go to the UK that they will be risking their lives and throwing away their money if they get into a small boat.”
“These are the early days for this pilot scheme, and it will develop over time”, she said, but nevertheless insisted the government is “strengthening our borders through the Plan for Change.”
The left-leaning Guardian newspaper reports concern over the Anglo-French treaty being “confusingly worded” in places, leaving space open for illegal migrants to launch legal challenges against their deportations.
At first, the scheme is starting small and is thought to have the capacity to detain just 50 migrants a week this year. The potential impact of the treaty on the decision-making process and risk assessment of would be boat migrants must be considered alongside actual boat migrant arrivals this year, which is at record levels and trending towards 26,000 arrivals so far.
As things stand, an average of some 800 migrants have come to Britain by illegal boat crossing a week so far.
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