As Britain ramps up efforts to deter asylum seekers, one politically explosive consequence is that across the Irish Sea, parts of Dublin are being turned into refugee camps, according to Politico.
The problem is directly related to Brexit, with potentially tens of thousands of asylum seekers passing the UK through the open Irish back door. In the past, asylum seekers usually arrived in Ireland only after spending months or even years trying to settle in neighbouring Britain.
Now, with the UK’s tough new immigration laws finally approved by Parliament and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promising to start deporting asylum seekers within weeks, Ireland is experiencing an unprecedented surge in migration.
As asylum seekers flee the Sunak government’s threat to send them to the East African country of Rwanda with limited appeal rights, many are leaving the UK and entering the Republic of Ireland by crossing the checks-free border through Northern Ireland.
Maintaining a barrier-free border with Ireland despite Brexit is crucial for Ireland’s economy and the hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland. But it also allows asylum seekers to move freely from the UK.
Other routes by sea and air are not that easy. Although the UK and Ireland have maintained a common travel zone for the past century, which gives British and Irish citizens the freedom to live and work in each other’s countries, there are still police passport control points on the Irish side of British flights that check the right not to leave. Crossing the border by car or train from Northern Ireland has become increasingly popular after Irish authorities began tightening rules on allowing British asylum seekers onto Irish-bound aircraft.
Over the past year, Ireland’s Department of Integration and the International Protection Office have struggled to find enough accommodation for the 100,000 Ukrainian refugees and at least 30,000 asylum seekers already in the country amid a national crisis in housing supply and affordability.
A number of derelict properties earmarked for asylum centres have been burned down in suspected arson attacks by angry locals. Civil servants trying to cope with the aftermath expect the pressure to continue to mount, possibly to a tipping point.
Ireland’s new prime minister Simon Harris, at his weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday, authorised an operation to relocate refugees from Mount Street to a conference centre on the city’s outskirts and to a more remote army-style tent camp with 12-person tents.
However, that has hardly solved the problem, according to a statement from the agency. The organisation’s staff are still unable to find shelter for more than 1,500 asylum seekers sleeping in difficult conditions. Refugee tents are scattered across Dublin in parks, shop fronts, alleyways and along the River Liffey, which divides the city in two.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that dozens of Mount Street evacuees have already left the state-provided public tents to board buses to return to downtown. More than 100 newly arrived applicants were told Thursday that the state had no space to offer, ensuring that new tents would be available in new locations.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cites France as a reason why England should have no sympathy for the Irish. He has ruled out accepting any refugees from Ireland unless France agrees to accept refugees who have crossed the English Channel.
Privately, officials in the Ministry of Justice and the Prime Minister’s Office say they do not expect any deportations to Britain until Sunak loses the next UK general election and Labour, which opposes Rwanda’s policies, takes power.
Previously, when Ireland and the UK were subject to the same EU asylum rules, such transfers had little practical significance for either country: between 2015 and 2020, Ireland sent 162 migrants back to the UK, while the British sent 156 migrants back.
“If we’re going to get a handle on this situation before it becomes overwhelming, we’ll need to deploy maximum resources into processing cases ourselves as quickly as possible and remove inadmissible cases back to their own countries wherever possible.”
Some government lawmakers in Dublin have accused Sunak of seeing Ireland’s difficulties as opportunities for Britain. Jim O’Callaghan, Fianna Fáil legislator, stated:
In order to get to Ireland, they’ve got to get into Britain,” O’Callaghan said. “If people are going to be deterred from going to the U.K., the likelihood is that they probably then won’t leave the continent.
