Earlier (2019) Sailer: I Didn’t Know the UK Even Had a Supreme Court

Great Britain’s Indian Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has a follow-up bill on illegal immigration, the first bill was overturned by Great Britain’s kritarchs, their Supreme Court. In response to the ongoing invasion across the English Channel and the kritarchs, Sunak has decided to basically overturn the British Supreme Court decision making their reforms on asylum and immigration, including declaring the scheme to deport illegal asylum seekers to Rwanda, illegal. Now, I am skeptical of Sunak on immigration, as is a colleague at VDare.com, James Kirkpatrick, though Sunak is, at least on paper, better than any other Tory and enjoys support from VDare’s resident specialist on English affairs, John Derbyshire.

Stop the Boats by Defeating the Kritarchy

My interest in the most recent action on immigration in the United Kingdom is, of course, as the resident specialist at VDare on the kritarchy and its pernicious effect on immigration law enforcement in the United States.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain on Wednesday announced plans to override his country’s top court and disregard some human rights law, gambling on emergency legislation to rescue a highly contested scheme that would put asylum seekers on one-way flights to Rwanda.

But even as the proposal drew criticism from opposition politicians, it failed to satisfy hard-liners in Mr. Sunak’s own Conservative Party, prompting the resignation of the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, who had pressed for more sweeping measures.

The bill comes less than a month after Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that the small country of Rwanda in Central Africa was an unsafe place to send those arriving in small boats on the southern British coast, and that the government’s plan would breach British and international law.

That derailed a flagship asylum policy that Mr. Sunak has put at the center of his political agenda. And it was a significant setback to a prime minister who is struggling to revive a stagnant economy and improve his dismal opinion poll ratings ahead of an election likely to be held next year.

Sunak’s New Rwanda Bill Aims to Override Some Human Rights Law, by Stephen Castle and Abdi Latif Dahir, NYT, December 6, 2023

Even more important was the statement by Sunak that any decisions against these deportation reforms from the European Court for Human Rights would be ignored as well.

This is a significant move by Sunak, basically ending judicial review, ending the power of the kritarchy, in immigration cases. But now it is he who will be held responsible for any success for failure of the program. Sunak could also be backstabbed by the Rwandans, but that could likely be solved by judicious foreign aid payments, which appears to be the Rwandan plan, play hard to get, then up the demands.

Mr. Sunak may have been constrained from going further by the Rwandan government, whose minister for foreign affairs, Vincent Biruta, said in a statement that it was “important to both Rwanda and the U.K. that our rule of law partnership meets the highest standards of international law.” In a thinly veiled warning, he added that “without lawful behavior by the U.K., Rwanda would not be able to continue” with its agreement to accept asylum seekers from Britain.

Time will tell, but Sunak has done what needs to be done in the United States. The courts, both Federal Article III and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), need to be removed from reviewing deportation decisions by the executive branch. It should not be an endless carousel of courts and appeals that never end. Congress needs to step up and make that happen. It has that authority in the Constitution to set the jurisdiction of courts. Just as the British Parliament is sovereign, so is Congress in the area of immigration. The poison in immigration law enforcement is the judiciary. Time to end their involvement.