Copyright: BBC
Sitting outside a makeshift tent in a wood near Calais, a group of young Sudanese men peered at map of Africa on
a mobile phone.
“Rwanda? No,” said one of the men, firmly.
In recent days, several would-be migrants from
Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan and Vietnam – gathering near the French coast – have
all told the BBC the prospect of being sent from Britain to Rwanda
would not deter them from seeking to cross the Channel in a small boat. At
least not yet.
“I don’t worry. This is my last chance,” said a 24-year-old man from Afghanistan who said he’d recently been denied asylum in
Belgium and felt he had no option but to attempt the crossing.
He stood with
dozens of other young men in a patch of wasteland near Calais’s main hospital.
“Nothing can stop me,” said a Sudanese student from
Khartoum, who said that if he ended up in Rwanda, he would simply leave and
return to France to make another attempt to join relatives already in
the UK.
In woods near the port of Dunkirk, a group of ten
Vietnamese people said they had little idea where they were being taken, and had
not heard of Rwanda. Several people in the group said they’d fled their homes to escape debts
owed to gangsters there.
For now, the threat of being sent to Rwanda
remains, for many migrants, either a theoretical risk or something they simply
don’t know about. It remains hard to assess what deterrent effect the policy may
yet have.