The month of March 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of the US, the UK and Australia’s invasion of Iraq. It is also the month the UK government introduced Australian-like ‘Stop the Boats’ legislation criminalising asylum seekers who arrive in small boats and immediately deporting them to Rwanda with no right to ever settle in the UK.

Not an Australian export of which the country can be proud.

Last month, the UK parliament considered the question of whether Britain was still a country that recognised the universality of rights that were codified after the second world war and signed by Winston Churchill no less which clarify that it is not illegal for a refugee to land in an irregular manner in a safe country without documents.

However most Tory MPs decided the UK would not follow international law saying they are stopping the boats. Sunak has hitched his party’s electoral prospects to a cruel migration policy.

He has made “stop the boats” a test of his credibility.

Therefore the language the UK Government is using against asylum seekers is too close to the language used by the Nazis in their pre-war anti-Jewish propaganda in the denigration and demonisation of the ‘other’ to deflect and blame the Jews or migrants for the problems facing the country.

In many ways, this legislation echoes the 1905 Aliens Act, which pulled up the drawbridge after the mass emigration of Jews from Russian-controlled lands, and other parts of Eastern Europe, and closed off the UK as a country of sanctuary.

As well the legislation seems to reflects the policies of the 1930’s, rather than relaxing entry requirements for Austrian Jews after Germany’s annexation of Austria in March 1938, the British government tightened them, introducing new, strictly controlled visas precisely to restrict their numbers.

According to Whitehall and The Jews, 1933-1948, Louise London’s definitive account of British immigration policy and the Holocaust, “The process…was designed to keep out large numbers of European Jews – perhaps 10 times as many as it let in.”

It would be easy to stop the boats if there were safe and legal routes to reach Britain with resettlement schemes. There are only a few operating and, an as a result the Government’s plans amount to a ban on asylum for asylum seekers from most countries.

The upsurge in the arrival of small boats packed with refugees is a consequence of the UK not currently offering a viable alternative.

At its root, the ‘Illegal Migration Bill’ exposes the absence of protection, and the use of anti migrant rhetoric to justify policies of exclusion, contrary to international law and human rights norms.