Rwanda scheme and Illegal Migration Act should never have applied in NI - The Irish News view

The focus of the rapidly evolving migration debate shifted yesterday from Dublin, where rows of tents housing asylum seekers have become a feature of the city centre, to Belfast, where the High Court has dealt a blow to the British government’s Rwanda scheme.

Mr Justice Humphreys ordered that key provisions of the Illegal Migration Act - a flagship policy of Rishi Sunak - should be disapplied because they are incompatible with not only the Windsor Framework but also the European Convention of Human Rights.

The prime minister says his government will appeal and press ahead with its plans to send those it deems to be illegal migrants to Rwanda.

That is to be expected. This government can almost always be relied upon to do the wrong thing, as confirmed by the manner in which the appalling legacy act has been inflicted upon us.

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This decrepit Conservative government is in its last gasps and Mr Sunak, an increasingly unserious figure, seems to have calculated that he has no option but to cling to the wreckage of yet another obnoxious policy, even as it sinks towards ignominy.

The court ruling emphasises that Northern Ireland is different from the rest of the UK, in this case because of tougher human rights protections courtesy of the Good Friday Agreement.

Though most reasonable people might regard this as a positive development, the DUP have predictably complained about the creation of an “immigration border in the Irish Sea”.

This decrepit Conservative government is in its last gasps and Mr Sunak, an increasingly unserious figure, seems to have calculated that he has no option but to cling to the wreckage of yet another obnoxious policy, even as it sinks towards ignominy

Gavin Robinson, the party’s interim leader, warned that Northern Ireland could become “a magnet for asylum seekers seeking to escape enforcement”.

The DUP again finds itself trapped in the contortions forced by its Brexit fantasy when it collides with political and - as in this instance - legal reality.

Jim Allister, the TUV leader, said as much, crowing that the DUP’s Safeguarding the Union deal with the British government - on which it relied to restore power-sharing - was “exposed as a sham”.

The judge heard two applications asking for the Illegal Migration Act to be ruled incompatible.

One was from the Human Rights Commission but the second, on behalf of a teenage boy from Iran, puts a human face on the asylum situation.

The 16-year-old, who had arrived in the UK in a ‘small boat’ from France last summer, argued that he would be killed or sent to prison if he was returned to Iran. His asylum application has not yet been determined.

It is a reminder that at the heart of the challenges around migration which are unfolding on both sides of the border, there are often vulnerable and frightened people, far from home. They deserve our empathy and support, not being turned into political footballs.