Take Up U.K.’s Scrapped Rwanda Migration Scheme, Urges German Lawmaker

It has been just days since the new U.K. Labour government made good on a promise to scrap a controversial multi-million dollar scheme to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda for offshore processing. Now, the parliamentary home affairs spokesperson for Germany’s center-right CDU/CSU faction has said the government ought to use the U.K.’s preparatory work on the deal to build up their own.

Alexander Throm, member of the German parliament for Heilbronn in the southwest Baden-Württemberg region, said that in his view, given the government of Rwanda was happy to work with European countries on migration cooperation, the end of the U.K. deal means more “capacity” for Germany.

“We should stick to the plan, and make use of the preparations our British partners made for it,” he told the country’s Evangelischer Pressedienst news outlet.

This hasn’t come out of nowhere. Since finding themselves in opposition, members of former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU faction (technically two different parties who in practice function as one in the German parliament) have worked to promote their proposal for offshore processing of asylum seekers, similar to the scheme Italy has planned with Albania, and the U.K.’s now-abandoned Rwanda scheme.

Just a few months ago, one of the leading lawmakers in the CDU, Jens Spahn, who served as Health Minister under Angela Merkel, visited Rwanda to meet President Paul Kagame. He spoke glowingly about relations between the two countries, hinting at his hopes for future cooperation.

Immigration, particularly irregular immigration and asylum, is seen as a big issue in Germany. Many attribute recent electoral successes of the far-right Alternative for Germany party to anxieties over irregular migration. The party is projected to do well in three state elections later this year, adding political pressure to the current coalition government to be seen addressing those anxieties.

To that end, Chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed in principle in late 2023 to explore the idea of offshore processing of asylum claims. Many senior figures in state government, including the Bavarian home affairs minister Joachim Herrmann, are pushing for it. Of the three parties in Germany’s governing coalition, both the Greens and Scholz’s Social Democrats broadly oppose the idea, while the center-right FDP are in favor.

The logic of the proposed offshore processing scheme is similar to those others mentioned above – by removing people to an area they don’t want to be, and processing their asylum applications there, you both clear out the country of ‘undesired’ people, and deter future would-be asylum seekers from attempting to seek shelter.

These ideas are dubious in both theory and practice. When the U.K. government began targetting people for mass deportation in early 2024, thousands of people went to ground, vanishing into the shadows of society. The deportation orders also sparked mass protests as well as actions from activists and communities to block immigration enforcement efforts.

Likewise, the effectiveness of deterrence has long been challenged by migration researchers and experts, who argue with empirical backing that policy efforts to deter tend to fail because people fleeing war, poverty or desperate situations tend not to know, or care, about them.

Though Chancellor Scholz promised to look into the feasability of such a scheme, the Interior Ministry, having conducted its own research, said it would be tricky to enact under European legal frameworks. They also highlighted the prohibitive costs of enacting such a scheme, an issue the U.K. government is still coming to terms with.

Aside from being both publically and politically controversial, not to mention mired in constant legal challenge, the Rwanda scheme was hugely expensive to the U.K. taxpayer. By the end of 2023, it had already cost over $280,000,000. The new Labour government has announced it will try to recoup some of that money, though the Rwandan government has made clear they do not consider themselves obliged to return anything.

Despite all these concerns, the review into a potential German offshore processing scheme continues.