Everything is as surreal as a Dali painting. The British Conservative Government has started detaining asylum seekers for deportation to Rwanda, but a considerable number of applicants, as they could see coming, have crossed the border from Ulster to to settle in the Republic of Ireland, which in turn wants them to return to the United Kingdom, and London says not to even talk about it.
Downing Street used the eve of today’s local elections in England and Wales to announce that it has a list of six thousand pre-candidates to send to Rwanda, and has already arrested an unspecified number to put them at the top planes to Kigali. But – more surreal than a painting by Miró or Magritte – there is still no date for the first flight, nor have the passengers been identified, nor have the lawyers presented the corresponding appeals, nor has the justice ruled on the arrests, nor the The European Court of Human Rights has said what it thinks of the whole pantomime. However, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is already bragging about it to make people believe that the thing is underway with the aim of winning votes.
As the initial trip to Kigali is not expected to be until July (and that would be soon), the British Government, in a rush to send immigrants to Rwanda, is offering €3,500 at the taxpayer’s expense to anyone who voluntarily agrees to exchange this country in East Africa. At the moment, only one person has been transferred, who traveled in tourist class on a commercial flight. The political version of a work by Max Ernst or André Breton, pure surrealism.
What Sunak and his Minister of the Interior, James Cleverly, do not brag about so much – let’s go for Man Ray or Marcel Duchamp – is that, of these almost six thousand first pre-selected to be deported to Rwanda because their cases to appeal in principle they seem the weakest (then you have to see what the judges say), more than half have “disappeared” to avoid falling into the trap, and there are some who have gone from Ulster to the Republic of Ireland taking advantage which is an invisible border, without controls or barriers.
One of the many paradoxes is that the Westminster Parliament has ruled by decree that Rwanda is a “safe country” to send asylum seekers back to (that is, it will respect their rights), but, in change, the United Kingdom is not for Ireland, precisely because it wants to get rid of them and wants to send them to Africa. That is, London can send illegal immigrants to Kigali, but Dublin cannot send them back to England. A level of surrealism already typical of Marc Chagall, Lucian Freud or Paul Klee.
Now the new Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Simon Harris, has announced that he will change the law and consider the UK a “safe place” to receive immigrants, given that the electorate of the Emerald Isle no longer sees them so well eyes, but rather as recipients of social benefits that lower the educational level, create more queues in public health and occupy flats, of which there are very few. In recent months, there have been incidents in front of the hotels that host asylum seekers, and the Government has announced the dismantling of the unofficial Mount camp, right in the center of the capital. Votes are votes.
But it doesn’t end there. London and Dublin have a pact dating back to 2020 for the return of illegal immigrants, but the British side says it is only an “operational agreement”, not bound by law to accept any, while the Irishman believes that it is a binding commitment that he hopes will be fulfilled. Bilateral relations had deteriorated greatly following Brexit, and now, with this, even more so.
Dublin complains that 80% of immigrants who enter Ireland are through Ulster; London admits that since the beginning of the year more than 7,500 have crossed the English Channel on pasture (27% more than in 2023), and that it wants to send them to Rwanda, but at the same time it has legally opened the doors to 750,000, because they need them to work in hospitals, care for the elderly and work in the service sector and in the countryside. More surreal, all together, than Marcel Duchamp, Calder or Bacon.
