The UK government has “no plans” to establish “safe routes” for Sudanese refugees to seek asylum in Britain, Home Secretary Suella Braverman has said.
The British military has airlifted 536 people out of the African country, which was plunged into violence on April 15 when a bloody conflict broke out between the Sudanese army and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces.
More than 2,000 British nationals have registered in Sudan under evacuation plans, but thousands more could be in the country.
During a visit to Northamptonshire on Wednesday, Braverman was asked if the government will “start looking at safe routes for refugees from Sudan” once the evacuation of British nationals has been completed.
She replied: “We have no plans to do that. Our focus first and foremost right now—and bearing in mind this is a fast-moving situation and a complex situation—is to support British nationals and their dependents.”
Downing Street confirmed on Thursday that there were no current plans to create a specific resettlement scheme for anyone fleeing Sudan.
‘Safe and Legal Route’
The UK government said the country “has a proud history of providing protection for those who genuinely need it through our safe and legal routes.”According to official figures, the UK offered refuge to almost half a million people between 2015 and 2022, including people from Ukraine, Hong Kong, and Afghanistan.
The government also made clear that, “We cannot accommodate everyone who wants to come to the UK and we are not able to open a bespoke route for every situation.”
Asked about the possibility of safe and legal routes for Sudanese refugees to get to the UK, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said on Thursday: “There is war and conflict all over the world. There are literally millions upon millions of people who are in countries plagued by war. We recognise that we cannot host everybody who is in a country plagued by war.
Small Boat Crossings
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick has already warned that the conflict in Sudan will worsen the illegal immigration crisis in the English Channel.Speaking at the Policy Exchange think tank on Tuesday, Jenrick noted that the African country was already in the top 10 countries from where illegal immigrants crossing the Channel originate.
He said that “very significant numbers of people will leave Sudan” in the coming days and weeks following the outbreak of conflict.
The minister played down the chances of the UK taking refugees directly from Sudan, but stressed the government will “do everything we can” to assist the United Nations in supporting those who have fled to neighbouring countries.
In his speech, Jenrick said that, “The basic fact is undeniable that the number of people who are willing and able to reach the UK today is astronomical and vastly outnumbers what we are capable or willing to take as a country.”
He said illegal immigrants “tend to have completely different lifestyles and values to those in the UK, and tend to settle in already hyper-diverse areas, undermining the cultural cohesiveness that binds diverse groups together and makes our proud multi-ethnic democracy so successful.”
‘Abusing Our Hospitality’
The foreign secretary said illegal immigrants have been abusing the generosity of the British people.Cleverly said on Thursday: “The people from many, many parts of the world who have come into the UK over many, many decades have integrated fully and successfully in British society.
“We have always been a generous nation, but we can also see that there are people who are proactively abusing our hospitality and a national character is very much like a personal character.
“People are generous of spirit, but if we see people abusing that generosity, it erodes trust, it erodes trust in the immigration system.
“We want to reinforce the British people’s natural hospitality and generosity, we want to support that and protect that. We also want to protect the country from people who seek to abuse it, including those people traffickers.”
