UK plans ‘two-tier’ asylum system to cut illegal Channel crossings

UK ministers on Wednesday will lay out plans that for the first time will discriminate against asylum claims from migrants who break immigration law to enter the country, in a sharp break with 70 years of practice.

The plans, which immediately attracted condemnation from organisations representing asylum-seekers and refugees, will scale back entitlements to people who arrive illegally, making it harder for them to remain. These include only granting them “temporary protection”, even if they prove their right to refugee status.

They previously were entitled to greater rights, which typically led to indefinite leave to remain.

However, home secretary Priti Patel insisted on Tuesday in highlights of the government’s “New Plan for Immigration” that opportunities for refugees to reach the UK would be expanded under resettlement programmes such as a just-concluded scheme to resettle 20,000 vulnerable Syrians from Turkish camps in the UK.

The UK has previously backed away from discriminating against asylum seekers who have broken immigration laws to reach the UK because of Article 31 of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. The article commits signatories, including the UK, not to penalise asylum-seekers who are on their territory “without authorisation,” as long as they fulfil certain conditions.

Patel also vowed to block people who had travelled through safe countries such as France without claiming asylum there from having immediate entry to the UK’s asylum system.

While there is no obligation on those fleeing persecution to seek protection in the first safe country they reach, the UK was until December a member of the EU’s Dublin Convention system. That system forcibly returns some migrants who previously registered in another member state to that country.

The home secretary said she would introduce “tougher, more accurate” age assessments to prevent adults from “abusing the system” by posing as children to gain more favourable treatment.

The measures are designed to choke off the surge in migration in small boats from mainland Europe, under which 8,420 people entered the UK to claim asylum last year. More than 800 people have claimed asylum after small-boat crossings in 2021.

“Profiteering from illegal migration to Britain will no longer be worth the risk, with new maximum life sentences for people smugglers,” Patel said. “I make no apology for these actions being firm, but as they will also save lives and target people smugglers, they are also undeniably fair.”

The Home Office said the expansion of resettlement routes would “prioritise persecuted minorities”.

However, Satbir Singh, chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, a charity, said the plans rolled back the UK’s commitment to the refugee convention. He expressed particular concern about whether minorities such as gay people facing persecution would be readily able to access the planned resettlement routes.

“Under these proposals, LGBTQ+ people and those fleeing political or religious persecution will be left with no options,” Singh said.

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, another charity, said the government was “effectively creating a two-tier system where some refugees are unfairly punished for the way they are able to get to the UK”.