Why not ship them to Rwanda?

That’s the solution espoused by Britain’s conservative prime minister, Rishi Sunak, on the issue of illegal immigration into the United Kingdom.

Granted, the British problem is incomparably less severe than America’s, but the government’s proposal to send as many as it can find of its 100,000 or so “irregular immigrants,” as they’re called, does sound strangely like a campaign dating from before the Civil War for sending American slaves back to Africa.

Fighting to keep the conservative majority in the House of Commons in elections later this year, Sunak would like to see about a thousand people a month flying to Rwanda, whose 14.4 million people subsist largely on farming. The opposition Labor Party has decried the whole idea as cruel and inhumane.

Though the Commons has just passed a bill declaring Rwanda a safe enough place for the government to approve a treaty with the landlocked East African country, the House of Lords, under Labor Party pressure, is delaying action at least until March. Instead, Lords who oppose the scheme are calling for an elaborate measure guaranteeing the safety and rights for those unfortunate enough to be sent there.

"The question today is simply whether we can honestly say that Rwanda is a safe country," Lord David Alton of Liverpool declared Monday as debate opened in the House of Lords. Evoking memories of the massacre by the country's Hutu majority 30 years ago, in which at least 500,000 members of the Tutsi minority were killed, Alton cited the country's........

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