The government’s plan to pay failed asylum seekers £3,000 to move to Rwanda has been torn apart by online critics.
The Times reported last night that ministers have come up with a new voluntary scheme for migrants who have no right to stay in the UK but cannot go back to their home country.
At the moment, people with no right to remain in the UK can receive financial assistance worth up to £3,000 to go back to their “country of origin”.
This new programme would pay people to leave the UK and start a life in Rwanda, with help and housing from the local authorities for up to five years.
The plan would supposedly help the UK remove one of the tens of thousands of migrants who have had their asylum claims rejected, but come from war zones where return flights are not an option.
This is a separate scheme to the divisive Rwanda deportation programme which hash made headlines over the last few years.
And the UK has already handed over millions to Rwanda so that the country will take so-called illegal asylum seekers – but legal challenges mean not one person has yet been deported there as yet.
For those who choose not to relocate to Rwanda, they will not be able to officially work, claim benefits and will be left without accommodation, and then may face forced deportation to the country anyway (if the original scheme ever overcomes the legal setbacks).
Postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake told Times Radio this plan was a “good use of public money”, adding: “No, it doesn’t undermine the scheme. Quite the opposite.”
He acknowledged £3,000 “is a lot of money”, but claimed: “It costs a lot more money than that to keep people in this country who are out here without merit that have come here illegally and have failed those asylum tests.”
Repeating the government’s claim that the scheme itself is a “deterrent”, he said: “It’s about saying to people, if you come here, you can’t stay here if you come here illegally. That’s the point.
“So I don’t think anybody would try and come here just to get £3,000 to go to Rwanda.”
However, plenty of people on X (formerly Twitter) felt differently...