Rishi Sunak’s future hinges on Rwanda route for illegal immigrants

Immigration — both legal and illegal — has become an albatross around the neck of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, so much so that it is threatening to sink his leadership of the Conservatives long before the general elections next year.

The Tory Party is yet again descending into chaos over trying to reduce immigration, stop asylum seekers flooding into the country in small boats from across the English Channel and deporting them to Rwanda. Various wings of the party are simply not on the same page as to how far they need to go on immigration in order to convince voters.

Ever since 2010, each successive Conservative government has had reducing migration into the UK from lakhs to thousands as one of its main election promises. In its 2019 election manifesto, the Tories pledged they would reduce net migration to below its pre-Brexit level of 2,26,000. On becoming prime minister last year, Sunak promised he was committed to achieving the 2019 pledge. Ironically not only has he not achieved this, official figures published last month showed net immigration reached a staggering 7,45,000 in 2022, the highest figure ever recorded.

Last week James Cleverly, the new Home Secretary, unveiled what the government called “the biggest clampdown on legal migration ever”. The package overturned the post-Brexit migration system, which led to the numbers of migrants from Europe plummeting while those from outside the European Union — particularly India — soaring to fill vacancies in the workforces.

Indian migrants

Official statistics showed that Indians dominate the numbers of skilled workers, medical professionals and students from overseas entering the UK. In the health and care workers visa figures, Indians registered a 76 per cent rise in the year ending September 2023 from the previous year.

In the skilled worker route, Indian applicants saw a small decline of 11 per cent from 2022 showing that 18,107 visas had been given out this year. In the student visa category, Indian nationals continue to be the largest group of students granted leave to remain in the UK on the post-study graduate visa route, representing 43 per cent of grants. On the dependent visa, Indian nationals had the second highest number of dependents after Nigeria, increasing to a whopping 43,445 in the year ending September 2023 from just 2,127 in the previous year.

The new measures to bring down immigration include a higher salary threshold for foreign workers to access skilled visas and a curb on bringing dependents with them. Employers will now have to pay skilled workers a minimum salary of GBP 38,700 per annum instead of the previous GBP 26,200, acting as a financial deterrent to sponsor employees from abroad.

Workers on health and care visas will no longer be allowed to bring family members with them according to the new rules. Earlier in May, the Sunak government banned international students from bringing dependent family members with them unless they were on a postgraduate research programme.

Impact on Indians

Cleverly claimed that these measures, which will come into effect from the first half of 2024, will mean that around three lakh fewer people will be coming into the country. As Indians dominate all the categories, then the impact of the new rules will be that much greater on them than workers or students from other countries.

Having dealt with legal immigration, Cleverly set off for Rwanda in the hope of making the government’s plan to ‘Stop the boats’ work and curb illegal immigration. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s controversial Rwandan deportation policy was unlawful as it was unsafe because of the risk that asylum seekers sent there from Britain could be returned to their home countries and then persecuted. In an attempt to get the policy back on track, Cleverly quickly signed a treaty in Kigali last week, guaranteeing that migrants relocated from the UK to Rwanda will not be sent back to their home country.

However, instead of setting things right, Sunak’s government plunged into further crisis when Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, quit just hours after the prime minister tabled the bill to save his Rwanda deportation policy. Jenrick resigned arguing that he didn’t believe that he could guide the proposed legislation successfully through parliament.

Jenrick’s resignation came just weeks after the Indian-origin Suella Braverman was sacked by Sunak from her post of home secretary because of her sustained goading of the prime minister over the Rwanda policy. In a damning leaving letter, Braverman accused Sunak of “wishful thinking” to “avoid having to make hard choices” on immigration.

Tory war

MPs on the Tory Right expressed grave concerns about the bill considering that the minister with the responsibility for helping to deliver the new immigration measures had instead decided to quit. Deeply unhappy with the bill, some Tory MPs called it “fatally flawed”. Sunak’s critics said the new legislation still left the possibility that individual asylum seekers would be able to challenge their deportation orders and thereby prevent planes from taking off for Rwanda. “It will be bogged down in the courts for months and months. And it won’t stop the boats. It is a further betrayal of Tory voters,” said a Conservative MP.

Sunak, on his part vowed that “through this new landmark emergency legislation, we will control our borders, deter people taking perilous journeys across the Channel, and end the continuous legal challenges filling our courts. And we will disapply sections of the Human Rights Act from the key parts of the bill, specifically in the case of Rwanda, to ensure our plan cannot be stopped.”

The Prime Minister defended the new bill arguing that it was “the toughest piece of legislation ever put forward by a UK government”, but ignoring the courts entirely would have meant Rwanda pulling out of the scheme altogether. “There would be no point in passing a law that would leave us with nowhere to send people to,” said Sunak. The bill will be taken up for debate in parliament from Tuesday (December 12) before it is put to the vote.

If Sunak is successful in getting the bill passed before parliament breaks up for Christmas on December 19, then he will have bought himself a temporary reprieve. If not, then the clamour for him to step aside from within his own party will get louder.