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To fight against the record arrivals of migrants, London concluded an agreement on Thursday with the East African country where they will be placed in a detention center while their asylum application is examined. The British Navy will henceforth be responsible for controlling the English Channel.
Send asylum seekers to Rwanda, more than 6,500 kilometers from the UK. This is the main – and very controversial – measure of the “immigration plan” presented this Thursday by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The stated aim of this project, announced by both London and Kigali, is twofold: to dissuade migrants from crossing the Channel to reach the English coast and, in turn, to dismantle the networks of smugglers.
“Only controlled immigration, via safe and legal routes, allows us to generously offer refuge, while managing the inevitable strains on our public services. The counterpart of this generosity is that we cannot maintain a parallel illegal system. Our compassion may be infinite, but our ability to help people is not. justified Boris Johnson during a speech in Kent, in the south-east of England.
“I understand that these people are looking for a better life […] and hopes for a fresh start. But these hopes, these dreams have been exploited. These smugglers abuse vulnerable people and turn the Channel into an underwater graveyard,” he added, explaining that the country “would take back control” of its borders and that migrants in an irregular situation should be “quickly and humanely deported to a third country or their country of origin”.
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In 2021, 28,526 people crossed the Channel in rubber dinghies, i.e. nearly four f…