Priti Patel: the UK home secretary who wants asylum seekers sent to Rwanda
- UK government faces criticism for plan to outsource consideration of asylum applications to a third country
- Home Secretary Priti Patel tasked with implementing tougher immigration policies after English Channel crossings surge
A new UK plan to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda has been criticised by the UN, senior British political figures and a religious leader. It has also put a spotlight on one of the UK government’s most divisive ministers: Home Secretary Priti Patel.
About 28,000 migrants and refugees, many from the Middle East, made the journey last year, feeding what Patel has called a “deadly trade” run by people traffickers.
“We are taking bold and innovative steps and it’s surprising that those institutions that criticise the plans fail to offer their own solutions,” Patel wrote in The Times with Vincent Biruta, Rwanda’s foreign minister, a week after the announcement.
The plan will see some asylum seekers sent to Rwanda for processing, where they will have the right to apply to live. It includes a £120 million (US$154 million) economic deal with Rwanda, which has been promoted as a win-win for both the east African country and UK.
But not everyone sees it that way. The UK-based Refugee Council has called the Rwanda plan “cruel and nasty”, while the UN refugee agency said that people fleeing conflict and persecution “should not be traded like commodities”.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the UK’s most senior religious figure, described it as “the opposite of the nature of God”.
