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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Yvette Cooper’s Post-Rwanda Immigration Plans

The new Labour Government should abandon all of the failed hostile approaches to migration and asylum pursued by its predecessors, argues Zoe Gardner

The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. Photo: PA Images / Alamy

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In the wake of the Labour Government’s first King’s Speech and the new Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s first statement to Parliament, we are beginning to get some real detail on their immediate priorities for changing the asylum and immigration system in the UK.

The picture so far is mixed, with some welcome decisions and some concerning signals already coming out of Government. Here’s what we’ve learned so far.


The Good

The positive parts of the new Government’s agenda are well-known. First, they have scrapped their predecessors’ deal with Rwanda to send refugees there instead of processing their claims here. Cooper revealed on Monday that a cool £10bn had been put aside for the operation of that scheme over the next five years, on top of the £700m already spent.

But the potential monetary savings pale in comparison to the moral considerations – the Rwanda scheme was fundamentally wrong and should never have been considered. Never again must the UK wield its economic power to bribe a poorer country to take in vulnerable human beings, least of all one that is demonstrably unsafe. No such plan will ever work, but it does cause immense harm to people fleeing persecution. The UK has always and must always be a country of sanctuary to a small minority of the world’s refugees and all attempts to wash our hands of that responsibility are immoral and doomed to fail.

More positives come from repealing elements of Suella Braverman’s Illegal Migration Act that prevent us from processing claims of people crossing the Channel. Restarting asylum decision-making will allow people to be recognised as refugees, get out of asylum accommodation, gain the right to work, and begin to rebuild their lives. The end of limbo for asylum seekers is extremely welcome, again primarily morally, but also in terms of efficiency and cost.

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The Bad

So far, the good news ends there. The new Government’s emphasis so far has been on small boats, rather than non-asylum migration routes where there are huge issues of exploitation of migrant workers, absurd family migration requirements, and a legacy of failed hostile migration policies. This is a reflection of the distorted priorities of the last government clouding the judgment of the new one. Contrary to the coverage they have received, teh truth is that migrants in the dysfunctional points-based system far outnumber asylum seekers on boats by around eight to one.

Migrant worker protections are the first glaring omission from the new Government’s agenda. Plans to introduce a Single Enforcement Body for labour standards enforcement systems are positive, but have been pushed back to a later date. We don’t yet know what it will ultimately look like, including, crucially, whether it will finally be adequately resourced and kept separate from immigration enforcement to ensure everyone can safely report. We have yet to hear more about promises to assess drivers of exploitation of migrant care workers, or the planned review of the points-based system as a whole, let alone any initiatives for migrant farm workers, or the needs of families with No Recourse to Public Funds. 

Measures such as more reasonable, shorter and affordable routes to settlement, and more accessible pathways to citizenship have received no attention at all. The very least that must be done as a matter of urgency is to recommit to the recommendations of the Windrush Lessons Learned Review, abandoned by Suella Braverman. “Hostile Environment” policies targeted at migrants who cannot easily demonstrate their status caused the Windrush scandal, but were never repealed and continue to cause further injustices to this day. These policies are arguably the most pernicious legacy of failed Conservative anti-migrant policies and should be prioritised.

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The Ugly

Unfortunately, there are already some measures being adopted by the new Government that are actively harmful.

A lot of what we know about the forthcoming Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill suggests that its main purpose will be performative. A “Border Security Command” does not need a statutory footing, and nor does reviving fast-track asylum decisions. Meanwhile, introducing counter-terrorism powers to tackle smuggling sounds very tough, but is unlikely to have much practical impact. What we know of smuggling operations is they’re often diffuse, cross-border networks consisting of migrants, their families and contacts, relatively unlike terrorist cells. Regardless, domestic legislation will have little impact on a cross-border issue, especially without addressing the need for smuggler services by introducing safe alternative routes.

The new Government knows this tough talk won’t produce much in terms of results, at least in the short term, so it has fallen back on the same old play-book of pushing essentially useless cruelty to consolidate some “quick wins”. This includes announcing a summer “blitz” of immigration raids in the anti-migrant Sun newspaper.

People working without authorisation in the UK are victims of exploitation and abuse who usually lost their immigration status through no fault of their own. High profile raids, detention and deportation operations impact the poorest and most vulnerable, tearing families apart. This is an expensive misuse of resources that fails to address the systemic causes of undocumented and exploitative work. Dragging away workers to detention and deportation only enriches the private companies running those services, but does not remove the need for labour that is driving the endless cycle of migration and anti-migrant enforcement. By assisting workers to regularise their stay instead, we’d keep the workforce we clearly need and empower workers instead of their exploiters.

A similarly wrong-headed distribution of resources is proposed in the asylum system. Cooper made much of the drop in deportations over the last years of Conservative rule, but even when the rate of removals was higher, it was still a performance, not a credible response to the scale of the issue. Returning to a slightly higher number of removal flights per year will score headlines, but do nothing to address the immigration system failings that drive people into undocumented status year on year at a rate much higher than these raids can compete with.

Talk of fast-track asylum decisions is focused in the wrong direction too. Over half the people trapped in the asylum backlog are from countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Iran and Eritrea that have high grant rates when processed. The backlog could be most effectively reduced by a fast-track to grant protection to those groups. Accelerated processes should never be used to refuse protection to those coming from countries with lower grant rates. These are precisely the cases where individual and complex vulnerabilities impact the case, needing expert assessment and legal support to determine the outcome. These are the cases the Government should be taking time on, not pursuing – at great cost – their removal as quickly as possible, which just forces people into expensive appeal processes and ultimately feeds the undocumented population.


The Cruelty Trap

Overall, the Labour Government is in danger of trapping itself in the same rhetorical cul-de-sac as their predecessors. By promising big and unrealistic results in terms of reduced numbers, they are setting themselves up to fail. In the face of that failure they risk pivoting immediately to targeting the lowest hanging fruit or most vulnerable – the most maligned asylum seekers and those trapped in illegal employment. Pursuing these groups is very costly and does not address the systemic problems that force them into these situations in the first place. It also risks creating further suffering and hardship, the impact of which ripples throughout our wider communities.

Intense focus over recent years on the highly visible and highly vulnerable minority crossing the Channel has created a false impression among the public that migrants arriving through irregular routes make up a significant proportion of recent high net immigration figures, driving distrust in the system and hostility towards foreigners, while leaving the majority without the functional system they both need and deserve.

The challenge for Labour now is to finally break that cycle and restore compassion and proportion to the system.


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