The government has accused the EU of double standards after Ireland promised to send asylum seekers to Britain despite France refusing to take back Channel migrants.
The row broke out after senior Irish ministers said they would draw up emergency laws to return refugees arriving from Britain to prevent them being deported to Rwanda.
However, Tory ministers see the proposal as a “non-starter” because they will not be able to send asylum seekers arriving across the Channel on small boats back to France.
A UK government source said: “We will not accept asylum returns from the EU via Ireland until the EU accepts we can send them back to France. We are fully focused on operationalizing our Rwanda plan and will continue to work with the French to prevent the boats from crossing the Channel.”
Last night the Daily Mail reported that international students, workers and visitors are seeking asylum in a bid to stay in Britain through the back door.
Figures obtained by the newspaper show that a record number of 21,525 asylum applications have been submitted by visa holders in the period to March 2023, representing an annual increase of 154 percent.
On Monday, the Home Office will begin detaining asylum seekers to be deported to Rwanda, with the government hoping the first flights will depart in the summer.
It comes amid record numbers of migrants crossing the Channel before the end of April, with Home Office figures on Sunday showing the highest total number of arrivals yet.
Last week, Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, indicated that a deal on the return of migrants with France to help break up smuggling gangs and prevent people from making the dangerous journey across the Channel after Brexit was “simply not possible”.
He said “the situation we find ourselves in” meant that a deal to send migrants back to France when they landed in Britain, an agreement that existed when he was prime minister, could not be repeated.
Last week, Michel Martin, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said Britain’s Rwanda policy was “impacting Ireland” because people were “afraid” of remaining in Britain and were seeking asylum in Ireland instead.
Following his comments, Helen McEntee, Ireland’s justice minister, discussed the plan to send asylum seekers back to Britain on Sunday on RTE, the national broadcaster.
Simon Harris, Ireland’s prime minister, has called for the proposals to be presented to his cabinet this week as he faces mounting public pressure over rising migration rates.
Ms McEntee said: “My focus as Justice Secretary is to ensure we have an effective immigration structure and system.
“That’s why I’m introducing fast processing. That is why I will have emergency legislation in Cabinet this week to ensure that we can effectively return people to Britain, and that is why I will be meeting the Home Secretary. [James Cleverly] to raise these issues on Monday.”
However, Mr. Cleverly canceled the meeting because he said he had a diary conflict. Chris Heaton-Harris, the minister for Northern Ireland, is expected to meet senior Irish officials on Monday and make clear the government’s position.
Mr Heaton-Harris, once chairman of the European Research Group of Brexiteer Tory MPs, meets Mr Martin and Ms McEntee at the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference in London. Lord Caine and Steve Baker, two other ministers of Northern Ireland, are also present.
The new calls for a stricter return deal have sparked resistance from some Tories.
David Jones, a Tory MP and former Cabinet minister, said: “If they send them back they will go back because there is an open border. The Irish can’t have their cake and eat it too. They wanted an open border, and they have an open border.
“What it does underline is the effectiveness of the Rwanda policy. It’s clear that people are anticipating this by moving to Ireland. As far as I can see, the Irish government does not know how to approach this. I don’t think they ever anticipated a situation like this would arise.”
Immigration to Ireland rose by 32 percent in the year ending April last year, with asylum seekers accounting for more than 13,000 of the more than 140,000 arrivals.
The influx comes amid a shortage of Irish homes and high rents. Last year, a Business Post/Red C poll found that 74 percent of Irish voters thought the country had taken in “too many refugees.”
Mr Harris said on Sunday: “Every country is entitled to its own migration policy, but I certainly have no intention of allowing anyone else’s migration policy to undermine the integrity of our own. This country will not, in any way, shape, or form, provide a loophole for anyone else’s migration problems. That is very clear.”
Before Brexit, the return of migrants to EU countries was governed by the Dublin Agreement, under which migrants could be returned to a safe third country through which they had passed before arriving at their destination.
This meant that asylum seekers arriving in Ireland from Britain, or migrants reaching the UK from France, could be returned if it could be proven that they had passed through a safe third country – that is, Britain or France.
But Britain abandoned the plan when it left the EU and no follow-up deal was signed during the Brexit talks, meaning no formal return agreements exist between EU countries and the United Kingdom.
However, a post-Brexit provision was made in the case of Britain and Ireland, which meant Ireland could return asylum seekers to Britain. Since the Brexit settlement was made, no asylum seeker has been successfully returned to Ireland, or vice versa, under this post-Brexit arrangement.
However, Ireland’s High Court ruled last month that the Irish government’s declaration that Britain was a “safe third country” to which it could return asylum seekers was unlawful, under the Rwanda law. The emergency bill aims to reverse this judgment.
Any return deal would face the challenge of how it would work, as asylum seekers returning to Britain could simply walk back to Ireland via the land border with Northern Ireland.
The issue is becoming increasingly controversial as Mr Sunak risks his political credibility by stopping small boats from crossing the Channel.
On Sunday he said the influx of migrants traveling from Britain to Ireland showed that the Rwanda program was already working as a deterrent. He told Sky News: “If people come to our country illegally but know they cannot stay there, they are much less likely to come – and that is why the Rwanda program is so important.”
Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry will launch a nationwide operation on Monday to detain asylum seekers for deportation to Rwanda. Immigration teams are ready to pick up people destined for deportation and detain those routinely checked at the Home Office’s asylum centres.
They will be transferred to immigration detention centres, where Mr Sunak said last week that 2,200 places have been allocated for migrants held before deportation.
The moves came after Home Office figures showed the number of migrants crossing the Channel before the end of April had passed 7,000 for the first time.
Despite the deaths of five migrants last Tuesday, some 359 people arrived on eight boats on Saturday, bringing the total for the year so far to 7,167. That is a quarter more than on the same date last year, when 5,745 people had crossed the border on April 27, and seven percent more than in 2022, when the number was 6,691.
Last week, Sunak said the first flights to Rwanda would depart within “10 to 12 weeks” after winning parliamentary support for the Safety of Rwanda Act, legalizing the flights and ratifying a new treaty with the country.