The magical thinking behind Britain’s Rwanda bill

“Magical thinking” is an overused term. Yet it well describes the government’s new Safety of Rwanda bill, which passed its first vote in Parliament on December 12th.The scheme the bill seeks to resurrect——is not grounded in reality as laws should be. It won’t “stop the boats”: Kigali could take only a few hundred of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have crossed the English Channel in recent years. The scheme pretends that Rwanda’s asylum system protects human rights as Britain’s does, when it does not come close. That means it is also unlawful, as the Supreme Court ruled last month: the chief risk is of “refoulement”, the return of asylum-seekers to dangerous countries.