Britain spent millions to send migrants to Africa. So far, just two have gone.

livemint.com:

Two years ago, the British government decided to spend big to outsource a migration problem. To deter migrants seeking asylum from illegally entering the country, it announced a radical plan: Those smuggled on makeshift dinghies to British shores would be sent to Rwanda, a small country in central Africa, where they would remain. The U.K.

government handed Rwanda a £120 million (about $150 million) down payment and told it to get ready to host thousands of potential refugees. Shortly after, Hope Hostel, a neatly kept yellow-fronted hotel in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, was rented out with British taxpayer funds to accommodate the expected planeloads of asylum seekers. Hotel manager Ismael Bakina and his team of 40 have been keeping busy ever since, changing the sheets on 100 double beds weekly, trimming decorative pot shapes into the bushes that adorn the hotel’s entrance and mowing the lawn on its mini-soccer pitch.

But on a recent day the beds at Hope Hostel were untouched. The suggestion box at the reception desk sat empty. No one has yet come to stay.

“We are still waiting," Bakina said, standing near a sign that reads: “Come as a guest, leave as a friend." No one may ever arrive. The U.K. government’s plan—criticized by some as inhumane, praised by others as a pragmatic response to a global migration crisis—has faced logistical, political and legal hurdles.

So far, it’s been a huge waste of money. Just two migrants have volunteered to go to Rwanda after being paid £3,000 by the British state. Meanwhile, record numbers of migrants are crossing the English Channel to Britain so far this year, according to official data.