LONDON: Britain Wednesday hit back at critics including the United Nations and the football presenter Gary Lineker, after he compared its new plan on illegal immigration to the rhetoric of Nazi-era Germany.
The Conservative government intends to outlaw asylum claims by all illegal arrivals and transfer them elsewhere, such as Rwanda, in a bid to stop thousands of migrants from crossing the Channel on small boats.
Rights groups and the United Nations said the legislation would make Britain itself an international outlaw under European and UN conventions on asylum.
"I am deeply concerned at this legislation," United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said in a statement.
"All people compelled to leave their country of origin to seek safety and dignity abroad are entitled to the full respect of their human rights, regardless of their migration status or mode of arrival."
Presenting the Illegal Migration Bill in the UK parliament, Home Secretary Suella Braverman attached a letter conceding that she could not confirm yet whether the plan respected European human rights law.
But in a round of broadcast interviews, the interior minister insisted the government was within its rights to stop the seaborne migrants, who she said could total 80,000 this year.
"We're not breaking the law," she told Sky News, claiming support from the "vast majority" of the British public.
"We are very confident that our measures that we've announced yesterday (Tuesday) are in compliance with our international law obligations."
'Immeasurably cruel'
Lineker, the popular former England striker who presents the BBC's flagship Match of the Day football coverage on TV, was warned by the broadcaster to respect its social media guidelines after he lashed out at Braverman on Twitter.
"Good heavens, this is beyond awful," he tweeted over a video of Braverman explaining her plan, in his latest broadside against the Conservatives' immigration policies.
"There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries," Lineker noted.
"This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I'm out of order?"
Braverman has often been accused herself of using inflammatory language over the migration issue, as the Conservatives try to restore their weak standing in opinion polls ahead of local elections in May.
"I'm obviously disappointed that he should attempt to equate our measures with 1930s Germany," she told BBC radio, vowing to be "honest" with the British public.
"I don't think that's an appropriate way of framing the debate.
"And if that makes some people feel uncomfortable, then you know that we can have a debate about the substance of the measures," she said, after claiming that "billions" of migrants were "eager" to come to Britain.
'Take back control'
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was ready to fight legal challenges to the bill, as he vowed to "take back control of our borders once and for all" — reprising a popular pledge from campaigners like him who backed Britain's Brexit divorce from the European Union.
But Sunak, who meets French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Friday, faces pressure to restore migration cooperation with the EU that was severed by Brexit.
The perilous nature of the Channel crossings — with migrants traversing one of the world's busiest waterways on fragile craft — has been underlined by several tragedies in recent years.
In November 2021, at least 27 people drowned when their dinghy deflated. They were mostly Kurds from Iraq and included a child aged seven.
If passed by parliament, the draft law would prevent anyone deported after making the journey from re-entering the UK and ever claiming British citizenship.
More than 3,000 migrants have arrived by boat so far this year, often ending up in expensive hotels at taxpayer expense, and the backlog of asylum claims now exceeds 160,000.
The new plan would transfer illegal migrants to disused military barracks temporarily and cap the annual number of refugees who arrive legally.
Citing a similar, deeply controversial, policy in Australia, Braverman said the boat crossings would "fall dramatically" in time, but could not say when.
