Verfassungsblog (Mar 2023)
What is the Point of the UK’s Illegal Migration Bill?
Abstract
The introduction of the Illegal Migration Bill to the UK Parliament appears to be the latest outburst of the Conservative government’s increasing hysteria with respect to the small boat crossings of the Channel in which Brexit-released fantasies of post-imperial sovereign power are acted out in the form of half-baked legislative proposals. The politically inconvenient fact that most of the 15% of asylum seekers who reach UK territory in this way are found to have legitimate asylum or protection claims seems to be a particular source of rage with a leaked Conservative Party email to party members under Suella Braverman’s name blaming “an activist blob of leftwing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party” for boat crossings, which at least suggests she knows her audience. This is “Build the Wall” for an island nation and, like Trump’s project, its primary value is as a fantasy object than a practical project.
