Rishi Sunak’s cabinet is “trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the British public” by announcing the closure of 150 hotels for asylum seekers, a leading researcher has said.
Robert Bates, who is research director at the Centre for Migration Control think tank, told The European Conservative that while it is “welcome that small communities and villages will no longer be upended by having to play host to dozens of undocumented young men,”
Key sites of British heritage, such as RAF Scampton, will still be accommodating illegal migrants long into the future.
He added that “the only reason the home secretary is able to close hotels is because a record number of asylum cases were approved last year. Two-thirds of all cases are now just waved through with only the most cursory of checks actually taking place.”
The British taxpayer was at one stage paying £8 million (€9.38 million) per day on around 400 hotels for asylum seekers. These included four-star country estates and tourist hotspots.
Attempts to diminish the frustration around this policy have resulted in yet more humiliating stories against the Conservative government, such as when migrants who arrived in Britain by crossing the Channel on small, packed dinghies initially refused to board a prison-like accommodation barge because of their “severe fear of water.”
Plans to deter migrants from crossing the Channel in the first place by threatening to deport them to Rwanda for processing upon arrival in the UK have been—and continue to be—even less fruitful.
In a press release put out this week, the government said the closure of migrant hotels “is just one part of the government’s relentless action to reduce the strain illegal migration continues to place on British taxpayers.”
Bates told this publication that, in reality, “the UK’s asylum system now implicitly condones illegal entry into the UK, rewarding those who cross on small boats, as well as the people smugglers, with an effective guarantee that they will be able to stay.” He added:
The lack of any meaningful deportation scheme, coupled with Home Office incompetence, is the biggest pull factor driving the illegal migration crisis. Unfortunately we do not have a government with enough resolve or conviction to take meaningful action.
This is unlikely to change under the incoming Labour government, however much it tries to pretend that it cares about controlling Britain’s borders.