Rwanda isn’t the answer to stopping dangerous Channel crossings – but this might be

“I felt like I was going to be executed...” Few can have read The Independent’s harrowing account of what it was like for two of those waiting for the first UK government flight to Rwanda without at least a frisson of sympathy and some sense of national shame. Here were the real-life, individual human beings at the end of an ill-conceived and misapplied government policy. And their torment, it would appear, is not over. The government insists it will press on.

In designing this plan to send people it defines as illegal migrants to the middle of Africa, however, the government has set up an easy target – far too easy a target – for those who oppose all or most controls on migration. If, of all countries in the world, only Rwanda is able to offer the required combination (a willingness to accommodate the UK’s deportees – at a price – and a just-about OK standard of human rights) then there must surely be something wrong with the policy.

You don’t have to belong to that class of so-called “lefty lawyers” to see the Rwanda option as undesirable. Many of those who would support a stricter migration and asylum system – and I include myself here – also regard Rwanda as a step too far. And that is a problem for the government.

You may appreciate, even support, what ministers are trying to do – deter people from taking illegal routes, undermine the business model of the traffickers and make it harder for those with no case to stay, while also complying with the Geneva Conventions and UK law – but if Rwanda is the only answer, is any of that even feasible at all?

The weakness in the argument of all those opposing Rwanda – and that includes the estimable shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper – is that they have offered no alternative. Which leaves the impression either that they think it is fine for ever more unauthorised boats to be crossing the Channel (as some do, along the lines of “we are a rich country, we can afford it, we take far fewer than Germany, it’s flattering that so many people want to come here”) or that they believe the only real solution lies with the French. But it’s not fine, and it’s not a French problem. It’s ours.

No country can have hundreds of people showing up on their beaches every clement day, all of them confident they will be given accommodation and one way or another – it’s a 90-plus per cent chance – be able to stay. That is not just the traffickers’ pitch, it is the truth. And a couple of other truths need to be acknowledged, too.

Whether by lorry or dinghy, the Channel is a comparatively safe route, compared with the dangers many would-be migrants will have survived to get there. And the traffickers are not “evil”; they are cynical profiteers meeting a demand. So what could be done, short of Rwanda? What would be legally, and politically, acceptable?

First, Channel crossings – and lorry stowaways – should have been treated long ago as a national security issue. Securing the border and knowing who is crossing it are among the first responsibilities of any state authorities worth the taxes we pay. Border crossings should be not just the preserve of the border force (scary by name, but not by nature), but of the actual armed forces.

The navy is reported to have resisted any role in patrolling the English Channel. The Black Sea, the South China Sea, of course, prime minister, but the UK’s, you know, actual coastline, really, prime minister?

Second, people who come via unorthodox (what some of us might call illegal) routes should be housed from arrival in either purpose-built pre-fabs or ex-army property. The accommodation should be decent and allow families to be housed together, but – on grounds of cost, social justice and so as not to be seen as offering any incentive – it should not be superior to what is available to lower-income Britons. Those with resources of their own should be charged a modest amount, as they are in Denmark.

They would stay there until their application to remain, on whatever grounds, was decided – with a guaranteed maximum stay, say six months to a year, in the hope this might stir the Home Office to up its pace. What might be seen (by “lefty lawyers”?) as detention might require a change in the law – but it would be far less of a change to people’s circumstances (and surely more acceptable to parliament) than dispatch to Rwanda, which the High Court allowed to go ahead.

Third, the vast majority of those arriving in lorries or dinghies are young single men. When people are given entry into the UK from refugee camps – which has been the preferred legal route – need has been the chief criterion. The same should apply to those arriving by other routes, with a default position that young single men will generally be disqualified from remaining, as has been the rule for Syrians seeking asylum in Canada – yes, kind, generous Canada – since 2016.

A condition for single people allowed to stay should also be a condition that they may not subsequently bring in other family members unless under very exceptional circumstances. And vice versa. Joining a family member has been a reason to allow someone to stay, even if someone has arrived by an “illegal” route.

But this can allow a fiancé, say, already in the UK and wanting to be joined by his bride-to-be, to bypass the financial requirements – minimum income, no recourse to state benefits and the visa fee, for instance – that would normally apply. If ever there was a perverse incentive to risk a Channel crossing, this is it. Should it really be that if you want to bring in a relative it can work out quicker and cheaper to use the traffickers than the services of the UK government?

And a footnote for those complaining that the UK has recently drawn an unfair distinction between Ukrainians and others, waiving most of the restrictions for Ukrainians, it should be stressed that there is also a big distinction in who is coming. The preponderance of Ukrainians seeking refuge are women and children; they are leaving hitherto stable lives where they had homes and jobs. They are refugees of the most traditional stamp, the very opposite of economic migrants.

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And lastly, and I say this with some reluctance, the UK needs to introduce ID cards. Now. Twenty years or so ago, I was among those fervently resisting such a move as “un-British” and unnecessary. Since then, however, it has been demonstrated time and again that the UK authorities have not the first idea of how many people are actually in the country and who and where they are.

The abolition of exit controls, the vastly higher number than estimated of EU arrivals post-enlargement and the vulnerability of the “Windrush” generation because they had no need for UK ID have convinced me that we should have to prove who we are.

The absence of ID cards, along with our lax – or, rather, hugely unenforced – labour regulation, is what makes the UK a more attractive destination for irregular migrants than any other country in Europe. Self-confessed illegal migrants admit this. From politicians on the right worried about law and order to those on the left concerned about pay and working conditions, there would surely be a cross-party consensus to do this.

And you never know: there must be more than a chance that simply tightening up our national record-keeping, along with actually enforcing labour regulations, could prove an easier and cheaper way to reduce the number of Channel boats than tying human beings into harnesses, loading them onto planes and waving them off to Rwanda.