Everything is as surreal as a Dalí painting. The British Conservative government has begun to detain asylum seekers to deport them to Rwanda but a considerable number, seeing it coming, have crossed the border from Ulster to settle in the Republic of Ireland, which in turn intends to return them to the United Kingdom, and London says no way.
Downing Street used the eve of today’s municipal elections in England and Wales to proclaim that it has a list of six thousand pre-candidates to be sent to Rwanda, and has already detained an unspecified number of them to put them on the first planes heading to Kigali. But – more surreal, let’s say a painting by Miró or Magritte – there is still no date for the first flight, nor have its passengers been identified, nor have the lawyers presented the corresponding appeals, nor has the justice system ruled on them, nor has the European Court of Human Rights has said what it thinks of the whole pantomime. Even so, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is already showing off, to make people believe that things are underway in order to win votes.
Since the initial trip to Kigali is not expected to take place until July (and that at the earliest), the British government, which is in a hurry to send immigrants to Rwanda, is offering 3,500 euros at the taxpayer’s expense to those who voluntarily agree to exchange this country for East Africa. At the moment only one has done so, traveling in economy class on a commercial flight. The political version of a work by Max Ernst or André Breton, pure surrealism.
What Sunak and his Interior Minister James Cleverley do not boast so much about – we are already going for Man Ray or Marcel Duchamp – is that, of those almost six thousand first preselected to deport to Rwanda because their cases to appeal seem in principle the weakest ( Then it remains to be seen what the judges say), more than half are “disappeared” so that they do not get caught, and some have crossed from Ulster to the Republic of Ireland taking advantage of the fact that it is an invisible border, without controls or barriers. .
One of many paradoxes is that the Westminster parliament has ruled by decree that Rwanda is a “safe country” to which to send asylum seekers (that is, it will respect their rights), but the United Kingdom is not. for Ireland, precisely because it wants to get rid of them and send them to Africa. That is, London can send illegal immigrants to Kigali, but Dublin cannot return them to England. A level of surrealism typical of Marc Chagall, Lucien Freud or Paul Klee.
Now the new Irish taoiseach (prime minister) Simon Harris has announced that he is going to change the law and consider the United Kingdom a “safe place” to receive immigrants, given that the electorate of the emerald island no longer sees them in such good light. eyes, but rather as recipients of social benefits that lower educational levels, create more queues at public healthcare and occupy apartments, of which there is a great shortage. In recent months, incidents have occurred in front of hotels housing asylum seekers, and the Government has announced the dismantling of the unofficial Mount Street camp, in the heart of the capital. The votes are the votes.
But the thing doesn’t stop there. London and Dublin have a pact that dates back to 2020 for the return of illegal immigrants, but the British side says that it is only an “operational agreement”, which does not require it by law to accept any, while the Irish estimate that it is a binding commitment that hopes to be fulfilled. Bilateral relations had deteriorated greatly as a result of Brexit, and now even more so with this.
Dublin complains that 80% of immigrants entering Ireland do so through Ulster; London admits that so far this year more than 7,500 have crossed the English Channel by boat (27% more than in 2023), and wants to send them to Rwanda, but simultaneously it has legally opened the doors to 750,000, because you need to work in hospitals, caring for the elderly, in the service sector and in the countryside. More surreal, all in all, than Marcel Duchamp, Calder or Bacon.
