Ferry Biedermann
It just beggars belief at this point, how consistently and madly the issue of migration continues to twist politics and international relations. The latest example being the, overblown and largely manufactured, row between the UK and Ireland over the return of asylum seekers from the Republic to the UK. Dublin is claiming to have seen an increase in the number of asylum seekers crossing the open border from Northern Ireland in the wake of the new British Rwanda law. That piece of legislation could see asylum seekers flown to that East-African country, ostensibly for ‘processing’ but in effect for expulsion; none will be allowed back into the UK. The whole affair brings together some of the worst elements of Brexit: anti-migration sentiment and it being used as a political football, destabilisation of UK-Irish relations and thus the Good Friday agreements, and bickering between the UK and the EU.
Why the latter? Because the Prime Minister, possibly keeping an eye on the local elections and the right-wing Reform UK party,, has intervened quite bluntly and seemingly prematurely by warning Ireland that the UK was not going to take back asylum seekers. He said that as France did not take anybody back who “illegally” crossed the Channel, the UK would not accept any from Ireland. “We’re not going to accept returns from the EU via Ireland when the EU doesn’t accept returns back to France where illegal migrants are coming from,” he said on ITV. This shows a staggering disregard of the actual situation, where the border between the UK and France is effectively ‘closed’, while the border with Ireland is open, and for a reason. The Republic and the UK are in a Common Travel Area of their own while most of the rest of the EU is part of the free-travel Schengen agreement. The CTA, by the way, includes provisions for the return of asylum seekers who cross from the UK into Ireland and vice versa. The importance of keeping the UK-Irish border open as part of the Good Friday agreements, has already led to a huge amount of political manoeuvring and diplomatic wrangling over the Northern Ireland protocol. It’s quite astonishing that, just when the dust appeared to be settling, the British government is once again stoking that particular fire.
Or is it the Irish who are fanning the flames this time around? After coming out with what appear to be guesses over the number of asylum seekers arriving via the land border with the UK, 80 per cent of total arrivals was the claim, Dublin has been rowing that back somewhat. These numbers were not ‘statistical’, it appears. Yet the Irish government maintains that crossings have increased since the British Rwanda Law has been in the works. That claim too, is being challenged by research and at the very least, the correlation is uncertain. What does seem certain is that there is increased tension in the Republic over migration, which might very well correlate with the newfound focus on arrivals from the UK. While anti-migrant riots, such as in Dublin in November last year, might be an aberration, anti-migration marches, with people carrying slogans such as ‘Ireland is full’ and ‘Irish lives matter’, have become more frequent. The issue has consequently become more political, with government ministers and the opposition Sinn Féin party trading barbs.
In general, politics, rather than hard facts, seems to dominate the migration debate in the UK, Ireland and the EU. Irish anti-migration sentiment seems to be fanned, among others, by pressures over the cost-of-living and especially the lack of affordable housing. These same factors probably allowed Geert Wilders to ride to victory last year in the Netherlands. It’s very clear in the Netherlands that asylum seekers are not a major contributing factor to the lack of affordable housing, and I’d be very surprised if the same wasn’t true in Ireland. Despite opinion polls showing contradictory attitudes towards migration, politicians seem to have latched onto the issue as a vote-winner or -loser, in the wake of such results as Brexit and Wilders. On the other hand, there have been plenty of defeats for equally hard-right, anti-migrant campaigns and parties in Europe. Still, the anti-migrant banner offers politicians several valuable assets: something to unite around that gives the impression that they have ‘vision’, care for the ‘common folk’ and are not ‘woke’ or ‘wishy washy’. Of course, it’s a con, a cheap marketing strategy for the otherwise charisma- and vision-challenged.
It’s also a role that Sunak seems to be embracing. He could have ditched the Rwanda plan, which he inherited from serial populist Boris Johnson, and confronted the weird-right wing of his party. Instead, he adopted it and made it a flagship policy in the absence of any other substance to his term in office. He has ignored both the exorbitant cost of the scheme, its inhumanity and its illegality. When the British Supreme Court ruled that Rwanda wasn’t a safe third country, he simple legislated that it was safe, which surely must count as one of the most Kafkaesque laws ever implemented in a democracy. Or is it Orwellian? Possibly both. The same goes for a lot of the Orwellian ‘newspeak’ surrounding the asylum debate. When Sunak talks about “illegal migrants” coming from France, he disregards the fact that these people are not illegal as long as they apply for asylum and are in the application process. They might become ‘illegal’ if their asylum plea is rejected, but even that’s a grey area.
All this might make one suspect that the PM’s firm stand is more about posturing than what’s actually happening on the ground. And that would be confirmed by the very different message coming from the Northern Ireland secretary. Chris Heaton-Harris, speaking after his boss’s tv appearance, said that London feels “comfortable” with new Irish legislation aiming to circumvent that country’s High Court’s decision that the UK was no longer a safe country to send asylum seekers back to in the wake of the Rwanda plan legislation. The Irish government has even said that it will not send back asylum seekers to the UK that arrived originally from Europe, rendering Sunak’s remarks even less relevant. It wouldn’teven do to call such grandstanding over the backs of a vulnerable group unseemly. It’s once more fanning the flames of populism and xenophobia for short term political gain, in which the Irish government isn’t entirely blameless either.
Centre for Brexit Studies Blog 