According to the first complete government estimate, sending asylum seekers to Rwanda will cost 169,000 pounds ($215,035) per person.
In a contract with Rwanda last year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government plans to send thousands of migrants across 4,000 miles (6,400 km) to Rwanda.
The plan is crucial to discourage French asylum seekers. Sunak has declared this one of his five objectives amid pressure from Conservative legislators and the public to fix the problem before a national election next year.
In an economic impact assessment released Monday, the government estimated that deporting each asylum seeker to Rwanda would cost 105,000 pounds for hosting, 22,000 pounds for flight and escorting, and 18,000 pounds for processing and legal fees.
Home Secretary (interior minister) Suella Braverman stated these costs must be weighed alongside discouraging others from reaching Britain and the escalating cost of hosting asylum seekers.
Braverman warned the expense of hosting asylum seekers would increase to 11 billion pounds a year if nothing is done.
“The economic impact assessment clearly shows that doing nothing is not an option,” she stated.
The government called the savings “highly uncertain” but estimated that the scheme would need to dissuade almost two in five small boat arrivals from breaking even.
Labour called the economic evaluation a “complete joke” that underestimated the plan’s cost.
The Scottish National Party accused the government of spending “astronomical” amounts deporting desperate immigrants while failing to aid Brits with rising mortgage and food costs.
The Court of Appeal will decide whether Rwanda flights are legal on Thursday.
A last-minute judgment by the European Court of Human Rights prevented the first planned flight last June.
The High Court in London found the program legal in December, but asylum applicants from Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, and several human rights organizations appealed.
Last year, a record 45,000 French migrants crossed the Channel in small boats to Britain. Over 11,000.
