Nigel Farage Predicts Rwanda Migrant Scheme ‘Will Not Work’, Despite High Court Victory

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage addresses members of the media near Dover Port in Dover,
ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Brexit leader Nigel Farage has warned that despite Tory claims of victory following the High Court move to approve the Rwanda migrant resettlement scheme, it is still years away from being implemented, if ever.

Though Rishi Sunak’s government and some in the establishment conservative commentariat in Britain have hailed this week’s ruling by the High Court that the plan to relocate clandestine migrants to the East African nation of Rwanda while their asylum claims are processed is legal, Nigel Farage predicted that the plan has potentially years of legal challenges ahead of it. With it likely to be bogged down in the courts for the rest of this parliament, it will — Farage believes — do little to mitigate the record waves of illegals pouring across the English Channel.

On Monday, the High Court found that the policy in itself of sending migrants to Rwanda was legal and that it did not breach rekeavant laws including the United Nations Refugee Convention or the European Convention on Human Rights. The judges in the case went on to say they believed that asylum claims would be able to be “properly determined” in the African country, and that it was correct for the UK government to take the Rwandan government at its word, The Times of London reported.

In response to the ruling, Nigel Farage mocked: “It’s legal, hooray, huge victory for the government! After 45,000 crossed the Channel this year.”

“This will be appealed, it will go all the way up to the Supreme Court then it could even go to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg because we are still signed up to it,” he explained, as legal appeals from pro-mass migration charities, such as Care4Calais, and others are already reportedly in the works.

The Rwanda scheme, crafted by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel, was first thrown into doubt when the ECHR intervened at the last minute to block a deportation flight to Africa in June. Though the UK left the European Union, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government did not remove Britain from the European court, which is technically a separate institution from the EU, despite sharing the same anthem, flag, and is based in the same “European Quarter’ campus in Strasbourg, France.

Mr Farage went on to predict that “it will be at least two years before we get any closer legally to this happening, and then case by case, people will either use the Modern Slavery Act or the Human Rights Act to fight each individual decision.”

The United Kingdom is due to have its next general election in two years’ time, one at present trends the left may very well be expected to win. With the Rwanda plan safely kept in endless challenges and appeals until then, it seems unlikely it will ever remove a single clandestine migrant.

The Human Rights Act was implemented by the Labour government of Tony Blair in 2000, enshrining the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, which was drafted in the wake of the Second World War and established the creation of the European Court of Human Rights.

Conservative Party governments all the way back to David Cameron have promised to overturn the law, however, as with pledges to reduce immigration, this has failed to materialise.

There have also been concerns that criminals from Albania have been using the Modern Slavery Act to skirt deportation, though last week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the government would be clamping down on such practice.

Concluding his analysis on the still pending Rwanda plan, Mr Farage said: “This isn’t going to work, it sounds great, it sounds wonderful, but it’s not the solution to our problems.”

Nevertheless, Home Secretary Suella Braverman took the decision as a victory, claiming that the government had been “thoroughly vindicated” and that her department would seek to begin deportations to Rwanda “as soon as possible”.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, for his part, said: “It’s not going to be easy and we’re not going to be able to do it overnight — but I’m confident that with the steps I laid out [last week], we really can get to grips with illegal migration, because I think what we all want to see and what I want to deliver is a system whereby if you come to the UK illegally, you will not have the right to stay and we will be able to return you to your own country if it’s safe, or a safe alternative like Rwanda.”

The decision by the High Court comes in the wake of yet another deadly incident in the English Channel, in which four boat migrants, including a teenager, drowned to death in the frigid waters. This came just over a year after 27, including an infant, tragically lost their lives in the same waterway.

Following the latest tragedy last week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak laid out his plan to deal with the growing migrant crisis in which over 45,000 illegals have landed on British shores this year, alone. The crux of the plan was to speed up deportations, particularly to Albania, which has become one of the main countries of origin for illegal migration.

However, Sunak’s plan failed to include any notion of actually sending the boats directly back to France, meaning that with the Rwanda scheme still a distant prospect, the deadly people smuggling trade will likely continue.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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