{"id":38438,"date":"2024-04-29T19:03:49","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T19:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/29\/as-the-u-k-tries-moving-asylum-seekers-offshore-ireland-pushes-back\/"},"modified":"2024-04-29T19:03:49","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T19:03:49","slug":"as-the-u-k-tries-moving-asylum-seekers-offshore-ireland-pushes-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/29\/as-the-u-k-tries-moving-asylum-seekers-offshore-ireland-pushes-back\/","title":{"rendered":"As the U.K. Tries Moving Asylum Seekers Offshore, Ireland Pushes Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/29\/multimedia\/29uk-ireland-zqbl\/29uk-ireland-zqbl-facebookJumbo.jpg?resize=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"As the U.K. Tries Moving Asylum Seekers Offshore, Ireland Pushes Back\" title=\"As the U.K. Tries Moving Asylum Seekers Offshore, Ireland Pushes Back\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Britain\u2019s newly ratified plan to put asylum seekers on <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/23\/world\/europe\/uk-rwanda-policy-explained.html\" title=\"\">one-way flights to Rwanda<\/a> has drawn objections from human rights groups, British and European courts, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/22\/world\/europe\/uk-rwanda-deportation-bill-migrants.html\" title=\"\">the House of Lords<\/a> and even some members of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak\u2019s Conservative Party.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">To that list, add another aggrieved party: Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Irish government said last week that asylum seekers in Britain who fear being deported to Rwanda are instead <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/world-news\/2024\/04\/25\/asylum-seekers-deterred-by-rwanda-bill-entering-ireland\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">traveling to Ireland<\/a>. It is drafting emergency legislation to send them back to Britain, triggering a clash with its neighbor, which said it would refuse to accept them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Irish officials estimate that 80 percent of recent applicants for asylum crossed into the country via Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and with which the Republic of Ireland has an open border. That suggests that Britain\u2019s vow to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is already having something of a deterrent effect, which was Mr. Sunak\u2019s sales pitch for the policy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But it comes at the expense of Ireland, which is already struggling to absorb an influx of refugees from Ukraine and elsewhere, and has seen violent clashes over immigration erupt in small towns and major cities. On Sunday, Ireland\u2019s prime minister, Simon Harris, said, \u201cThis country will not in any way, shape or form provide a loophole for anybody else\u2019s migration challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cOther countries can decide how they wish to advance migration,\u201d said Mr. Harris, who <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/09\/world\/europe\/simon-harris-ireland-taoiseach.html\" title=\"\">became prime minister<\/a> earlier this month. \u201cFrom an Irish perspective, we intend to have a firm rules-based system where rules are in place, where rules are in force, where rules are seen to be enforced.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">British officials, however, countered on Monday that they would not accept any asylum seekers from Ireland, a European Union member, unless they had a broader agreement with the E.U. to return them to France, another E.U. member, from where many refugees set off for Britain in small boats across the English Channel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cOf course we\u2019re not going to do that,\u201d Mr. Sunak said to ITV News about accepting returnees from Ireland. \u201cI\u2019m determined to get our Rwanda scheme up and running because I want a deterrent.\u201d He added, \u201cI make absolutely no apology for doing everything I can to tackle illegal migration.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Rwanda policy has unexpectedly put the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic back in the spotlight, echoing the tensions between Britain and Ireland after Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016. The Republic of Ireland fought to keep an open land border with Northern Ireland, which necessitated complex negotiations between London and Brussels over trade arrangements in the North.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After years of friction, Mr. Sunak last year struck a deal with the European Union, known as the Windsor Framework, which finally seemed to defuse the issue. But Britain\u2019s abrupt cancellation on Sunday of a meeting between its home secretary, James Cleverly, and Ireland\u2019s minister for justice, Helen McEntee, added to the sense of a fresh diplomatic crisis. A meeting of lower-level British and Irish officials produced only a vague agreement to \u201cmonitor this issue closely.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s something that needs to be solved, and I don\u2019t see any easy solution,\u201d said Bobby McDonagh, a former Irish ambassador to Britain. \u201cIt clearly isn\u2019t workable if a very large number of refugees are going through the U.K. and coming down here through Northern Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The problem is, political pressures on both sides militate against resolving the issue. For Mr. Sunak, who lobbied for months against legal challenges to pass the Rwanda plan, the diversion of asylum seekers to Ireland is proof that his policy is working. Far from taking back these people, he has vowed to round up thousands of those still in Britain and put them on planes to Rwanda.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Harris, analysts in Dublin said, is under pressure to act firmly because the swelling numbers of asylum seekers, combined with Ireland\u2019s acute housing shortage, are causing social unrest. Last week, protesters in County Wicklow clashed with the police over proposed accommodations for refugees. A riot rooted in <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/11\/24\/world\/europe\/dublin-riots-police.html\" title=\"\">anti-immigrant hatred<\/a> convulsed parts of Dublin last fall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe protests have become increasingly ugly and violent, orchestrated by groups that see Ireland as fertile ground,\u201d said Diarmaid Ferriter, a professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin. \u201cThe politicians are under pressure to be seen as doing more, and they\u2019re trying to reduce the ground for anti-immigration forces.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The tensions are even altering Ireland\u2019s political landscape. For example, the poll ratings of the main opposition party, Sinn Fein, have fallen in recent months because of criticism that it is not hard-line enough on immigration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Sinn Fein\u2019s leader, Mary Lou McDonald, criticized the government for failing to level with residents about how immigration would affect their towns and cities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cYou need rules and regulations,\u201d Ms. McDonald said at a recent briefing for journalists in London. \u201cParticularly in more deprived areas, where services are poor, they feel the struggle all the more when they consider the people coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Sunak predicted that Britain\u2019s use of Rwanda to process asylum applications would be copied by other countries. But critics say that would pose a thorny challenge to the global legal system for protecting refugees. If more countries outsource the processing of asylum seekers, they may simply end up displacing the flow of refugees to their nearest neighbors, as Britain has.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Harris, moreover, faces some of the same legal obstacles that dogged Mr. Sunak in his quest to enact the Rwanda policy. Ireland\u2019s high court has ruled that the government cannot designate Britain as a \u201csafe third country\u201d and return asylum seekers there, because of the risk that Britain would send them to Rwanda.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Britain\u2019s Supreme Court struck down an earlier version of the Rwanda legislation because it determined that Rwanda was not a safe country. Mr. Sunak then signed a treaty with the Rwandan government and revised the legislation, essentially overruling the court. Parliament passed that law last week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Immigration experts in Ireland have expressed doubts about the government\u2019s claim that 80 percent of recent asylum applicants crossed the border from Northern Ireland. Some, they said, could have arrived at airports or seaports in the Irish Republic and not immediately applied for asylum status.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Still, said Nick Henderson, the chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council, \u201cIf people are moving to Ireland from the U.K. in numbers, it should be viewed in the context that the U.K. is not a safe country for people seeking protection.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/29\/world\/europe\/uk-ireland-asylum-seekers.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Britain\u2019s newly ratified plan to put asylum seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda has drawn objections from human rights groups, British and European courts, the House of Lords and even some members of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak\u2019s Conservative Party. To that list, add another aggrieved party: Ireland. The Irish government said last week that asylum [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/29\/multimedia\/29uk-ireland-zqbl\/29uk-ireland-zqbl-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2375,19620,28156,9360,4164,503],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38440,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38438\/revisions\/38440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}