LONDON (dpa-AFX) – The dispute over the tightening of British immigration laws is becoming increasingly open within Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party. On Wednesday, the Minister of State responsible for migration, Robert Jenrick, resigned. The MP, who is actually considered a confidante of Sunak, did not go far enough with a bill that the prime minister wanted to use to enforce a controversial asylum pact with Rwanda.
“I cannot continue in my position if I so clearly disagree with the direction of the government’s immigration policy,” wrote Jenrick on the X platform (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday evening. Department head James Cleverly confirmed the personnel in Parliament.
The planned law envisages declaring the East African country a safe third country. Sunak even wants to expressly declare a British human rights law inapplicable. But hardliners like former Interior Minister Suella Braverman and now Jenrick are calling for even more explicit measures, including withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, in order to prevent lawsuits in international courts. Recently, Jenrick, who had actually been appointed as a counterweight to the right-wing politician Braverman, had moved further and further to the right.
The British government wants to immediately deport asylum seekers who enter the country irregularly to Rwanda, regardless of their origin. They are supposed to ask for asylum there, but they are not allowed to return to Great Britain. The Supreme Court in London also stopped the project citing constitutional deficits in Rwanda. The new law is now intended to circumvent these concerns./bvi/DP/ngu