The UK government wants to offshore migrant housing to disincentivize Channel boat crossings, but its plan to subcontract housing to Rwanda appears to be bogged down, so the government is instead looking to the former empire’s final rocky outcrops for unappealing but safe housing.
The British Overseas Territory of Ascension Island, a small volcanic outcrop in the South Atlantic between Brazil and Angola, might be utilised as a home for some of the thousands of migrants who enter the country ‘irregularly’ across the southern border each year.
Currently, courts have ruled that sheltering migrants offshore is allowed, but not in Africa’s Rwanda specifically because, contrary to what the government claims, Rwanda is not a’safe’ country.
Suella Braverman’s Home Office is now planning “plan B,” which will preserve the premise of the plan but change the destination, allowing them to avoid the legal concerns of travelling abroad by utilising a British Overseas Territory.
According to the Times, Ascension Island, located 4,000 miles from the United Kingdom, is “one of” those being considered as an asylum seeker processing site, and “Ministers believed its remote location would create a strong deterrent factor for migrants planning to cross the Channel in small boats.”
A government spokesman cited by the paper said of the idea: “It’s pragmatic to consider all options and it makes sense to draw up proposals to stop the boats that could work alongside our Rwanda policy. We’re still confident that our Rwanda scheme is lawful, but having alternative proposals on the table would provide us with a back-up if we’re frustrated legally.
While being stuck on an Atlantic island with a mountain, a military base, and space tracking stations may be a deterrent to coming to the UK on a smuggler boat, this plan has its own set of issues, not least the island’s underdeveloped infrastructure.
Lack of power and water capacity for a sudden rise in population have been mentioned as problems, as has the island’s lack of a hospital.
Because the island is 1,000 miles by sea from Africa and 4,000 miles from the United Kingdom, building new infrastructure would be prohibitively expensive.