Will the UK really send refugees to Rwanda? – podcast
Today in Focus
The Guardian
4.6 • 5.9K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2022
⏱️ 32 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Guardian. |
| 0:10.6 | Today, the government's plan to send refugees to Rwanda. |
| 0:15.6 | In a highly controversial change to UK immigration policy, the government plans to send anyone deemed to be entering the country illegally to Rwanda in East Africa. |
| 0:38.6 | Last week, the British government audaciously announced a new policy to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda if they've come across the channel by Laurie or Boat. |
| 0:49.6 | Men and women in arriving in the UK by an unofficial route will have their request for sanctuary ruled inadmissible. |
| 0:56.6 | And then, even if their claims for asylum are successful, these refugees don't come back to the UK. |
| 1:02.6 | They'd stay and live in Rwanda. |
| 1:04.6 | The one way ticket to East Africa for people who reach the UK illegally. |
| 1:08.6 | The proposals have provoked outrage. |
| 1:10.6 | The head of the refugee council said the plan was cruel and nasty. |
| 1:15.6 | The UN's refugee agency said it would breach international law. |
| 1:20.6 | And on Easter Sunday, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said that deporting and dumping Britain's refugees to Africa was ungodly. |
| 1:30.6 | Subcontracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God. |
| 1:42.6 | But for Sundercatwala, the director of British Future, a think tank which focuses on immigration and integration, this is just the latest and the line of similar ideas proposed by Boris Johnson's government. |
| 2:00.6 | This story has happened quite a lot. |
| 2:02.6 | And so, my first thought was I was surprised that they were actually going through and doing it and announcing it because we've had this policy with Rwanda, with Ghana, with Albania, and often it falls apart. |
| 2:14.6 | From proposals to use decommissioned oil rigs in the North Sea to shipping people to far flung countries across the world, the government has been scrambling for ideas to look tough on immigration. |
| 2:26.6 | I still think there's enormous numbers of questions about whether it ever happens, but we've seen again now that the government is very committed politically to pursuing this notion. |
| 2:36.6 | And as the Prime Minister faces continuing questions about parties in Downing Street, and with campaigning underway for May's local elections, he's desperate to change the conversation. |
| 2:48.6 | Our compassion may be infinite, but our capacity to help people is not. I don't think it's a serious attempt to have hundreds or thousands of people going to Rwanda. I think it's an idea, an a slogan, and a message. |
| 3:02.6 | From the Guardian, I'm not in Iqbal. Today in focus, Can Britain really send refugees on a one-way ticket to Rwanda? |
| 3:12.6 | I and I have a kind of a proud history of welcoming people from overseas, including many fleeing persecution. |
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