The British government has accused the EU of double standards after Ireland promised to send asylum seekers to Britain despite France’s refusal to take back migrants crossing the Channel.
The row erupted after Irish ministers said they would prepare emergency legislation to send back refugees from Britain to avoid deportation to Rwanda.
But Conservative ministers have dismissed the proposal as a ‘losing proposition’ because they are unable to send asylum seekers arriving in small boats across the Channel back to France.
A British government source told The Telegraph: “We will not accept the return of asylum seekers from the EU via Ireland until the EU recognises that we can send them back to France. We are fully focused on implementing our Rwanda plan and will continue to work with the French to stop boats crossing the Channel”.
Yesterday the Daily Mail reported that international students, workers and visitors were seeking asylum to stay in the UK through the ‘back door’.
Figures obtained by the newspaper show that 21,525 asylum claims were made by visa holders in the year to March 2023, an annual increase of 154 per cent.
London-Paris readmission deal invalid
On Monday, the Home Office will begin detaining asylum seekers for deportation to Rwanda. The government hopes the first flights will take place in the summer.
Last week, Foreign Secretary David Cameron said a readmission deal with France to help crack down on people-smuggling gangs and stop people making the dangerous journey across the Channel would be “impossible” after Brexit.
According to the minister, the current situation means that the agreement in place when he was Prime Minister, which saw migrants returned to France on arrival in the UK, cannot be repeated.
Ireland: Asylum claims rise because of Rwanda plan
Last week, Irish Deputy Prime Minister Michael Martin said that the UK’s Rwanda policy was affecting Ireland “because people are afraid to stay in the UK and are seeking asylum in Ireland instead”.
Following Harris’ comments, Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee appeared on national broadcaster RTE on Sunday to discuss the plan to send asylum seekers back to Britain.
Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris has asked for the proposals to be put to his cabinet this week as he faces mounting public pressure over rising immigration figures.
Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, is expected to meet senior Irish officials on Monday to clarify London’s position.
Pre-Brexit asylum structure no longer in place
Before Brexit, the return of migrants to EU countries was governed by the Dublin Convention, under which migrants could be returned to a safe third country through which they had passed before reaching their destination.
This meant that asylum seekers travelling from the UK to Ireland or migrants arriving in the UK from France could be returned if it could be shown that they had passed through a safe third country, i.e. the UK or France.
However, the UK abandoned this practice when it left the EU and no follow-up agreement was signed during the Brexit negotiations, meaning that there is no formal readmission agreement between EU countries and the UK.
There was, however, a post-Brexit agreement between the UK and Ireland that allowed Ireland to return asylum seekers to the UK.
However, the Irish High Court ruled last month that the Irish government’s declaration of the UK as a ‘safe third country’ to which it could return asylum seekers was unlawful because of the Rwanda Bill. The government’s emergency bill seeks to overturn this ruling.
