Yesterday the Court of Appeals ruled that the High Court’s judgement was mistaken and that removing asylum seekers who entered Britain illegally by sending them to Rwanda under the Migration and Economic Development Partnership was in fact unlawful. Although the Court found that the policy itself wasn’t unfair, it concluded that the time limit of seven days for asylum seekers in detention to argue why they shouldn’t be sent to Rwanda was too short. As a result, no removals will take place.
The government can now publish a policy explaining how and why extensions would be granted to asylum seekers, which might allow removals to begin. However, as the plan was announced in April 2022 and no removals have yet taken place (a flight in June 2022 was cancelled after a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights) it is likely that the plan will continue to be dragged through the courts without achieving much. That despite the fact that 95,407 migrants crossed the Channel since 2018.
The initial High Court challenge was made by Detention Action, Care4Calais, and the PCS Union. The Court of Appeals challenge was made by Asylum Aid. Three of these are charities and warrant further attention.
Asylum Aid are a charity who provide legal representation and aid to asylum seekers. However they also publish research with the specific intent to influencing policy. It is evident that all of their policy suggestions would have the result of making it easier to make a successful asylum claim in Britain. There is no acceptance that some asylum seekers may be lying or dangerous. Their accounts show that last year Asylum Aid had an income of £707,506, including a government grant of £61,306 (to advise migrants in Westminster whose first language isn’t English on how to access benefits).
Digging into the accounts reveals that the majority of the their income doesn’t come from the general public. They received £39,244 in individual donations and another £15,102 in legacies, for a total of £54,346 - less than the value of the government grant. In contrast, they received £72,000 in corporate donations and £136,155 from the Helen Bamber Foundation, among others. In other words, less than 10% of their income is in the form of ordinary people donating money.
Detention Action are a charity who provide legal and emotional support for people in immigration detention. Much like Asylum Aid, they publish regularly in an effort to change policy and are clear that they oppose the use of immigration detention at all, despite the potential risk this poses to the public. Their income last year was £642,305 but included no government grants. Of this, £103,036 was from donations or gifts but £539,233 came in the form of grants. The grant givers include many familiar faces like the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (£50,300), Trust for London (£50,000) and Esmee Fairburn Foundation (£60,000). The amount of grant money - £141,917 - provided by the Oak Foundation alone was bigger than all donations and gifts.
The most infamous of the three charities is Care4Calais, whose founder recently quit after reports that she’d threatened staff and migrants. This came after well-reported revelations that she’d had an affair with an illegal migrant, who was hired by her as a bodyguard and translator. This “Syrian migrant” turned out in fact to be a Tunisian market stall trader who had previously married an older British woman in Tunisia and who has now married a Romanian and settled in Britain, despite having been jailed in France for attempted arson and presumably now being a bigamist.
Care4Calais promotes “safe passage” for migrants, which would in effect mean open borders as the nationalities trying to cross the Channel can have up to a 92% success rate at getting asylum and even those who failed would be unlikely to be removed, as immigration removal has dropped precipitously under the current government. Last year Care4Calais reported an income of £1,617,000, despite the Charity Commission putting it under a statutory investigation in August 2021, although frustratingly they fail to break down the source of their income, only saying that the “vast majority” of their income comes from “public donations”.
So, of the three charities which have led the legal challenge to government policy, two aren’t grassroots and the one which does appear to be grassroots has been scandal hit, as well as now being under investigation. It is also clear that the fundamental block to government policy over Rwanda isn’t from their democratic opposition in the shape of Labour but rather from lawfare by charities. Dominic Cummings has stated that when he was in government they got legal advice and were told that illegal immigration to Britain cannot be halted without dealing with the ECHR, the Human Rights Act, and judicial review. Rwanda plan or not, until these are dealt with, illegal immigration will remain unfixable.