Britain’s controversial Rwanda policy could be working, according to several Iraqi smugglers who spoke exclusively to Sky News.
The much-criticised strategy, introduced by the current conservative government, has been the subject of numerous court cases and received widespread international backlash.
However, the two Conservative Party leadership hopefuls, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, have said they will continue the policy if elected the next British Prime Minister and, on the evidence of what the smugglers themselves have told Sky News, it could still be effective.
Follow politics live as Sunak says UK doesn’t know who illegal migrants are but they’re not bad, and Truss wants to expand Rwanda policy
Legal challenges have so far prevented deportations from taking place, which one smuggler who spoke to Sky News said have been closely monitored by migrants making the journey through Europe.
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3:36 “If you close this route, I’ll open another”
“People were afraid of going to Britain and being deported to Rwanda, but I think that decision is on hold for now, so the migration started again,” a smuggler tells us.
“If the Rwanda policy is implemented, I think people will pull back from traveling to Britain and go to Europe. They wouldn’t go to Britain.”
A second smuggler, also based in northern Iraq, told us that Rwanda’s policy has already had a limited effect.
He said: “Our young people have ambitions, but they have no money and their families can barely feed them. They want to have a life, a house, get married.
That is why they risk their lives and choose Britain because they will have rights.
“But because of Rwandan politics the number of people leaving [to the UK] has gone down.”
This week, the Home Affairs Select Committee said there was “no clear evidence” that the Rwanda plan will work, with committee chairwoman Yvette Cooper describing it as a waste of taxpayers’ money.
This view, however, has now been contradicted by the very smugglers who organize the dangerous journeys to Europe, and supported by some of the people we have met who are still hoping to make the journey.
And a smuggler revealed a new and undiscovered route to Europe has been opened to evade police and border officials, with hundreds of people already using it.
We spent a few weeks in northern Iraq and saw no decline in the number of Kurds wanting to travel to Europe, not all to the UK it must be said. Even if the British government starts deporting migrants to Rwanda in large numbers, it won’t stop people from trying to leave.
They will just go somewhere else.