Refugees encouraged to take legal routes into UK
ASYLUM seekers will be incentivised to use new legal routes to the UK with an offer of an immediate indefinite leave to remain in the UK in an attempt to cut illegal migration, under plans to be set out this week.
Priority will be given to refugees, including children, in regions of conflict and instability, rather than those who are already in safe European countries.
Currently, resettled refugees receive permission to stay in the UK for five years, after which they must apply again for indefinite leave to remain.
Officials hope that granting indefinite leave to remain at the outset provides refugees with the stability they need to properly rebuild their lives in the UK.
As part of the plan applications would take place and be approved overseas to avoid them arriving in the UK illegally and having to be deported.
Promising the plans would help to “break the human trade for asylum seekers” Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, said: “For the first time in decades this Government will address this challenge through comprehensive reform of our asylum system. Illegal immigration is facilitated by serious organised criminals exploiting people and profiting from human misery.
“It is counter to our national interest because the same criminal gangs and networks are also responsible for other illicit activity, ranging from drug and firearms trafficking to serious violent crimes.”
The Home Office said Ms Patel’s “New Plan for Immigration” would overhaul what it described as “our broken and outdated asylum system” and replace it with one that is “fair but firm”.
The new plan was built around three “pillars”. The first was to increase the fairness and efficacy of the system to better protect and support those in genuine need of asylum.
The second was to deter illegal entry into the UK, thereby breaking the business model of criminal smuggling networks, protecting the lives of those they endangered. And the third was to remove more easily from the UK those with no right to be there.
The changes would clear up anomalies in historic immigration law which denied British citizenship to people from British Overseas Territories for unfair and outdated reasons, such as someone’s parents not being married. Foreign criminals would no longer be able to frustrate the removals process by lodging endless claims for protection, as disclosed last week by The Sunday Telegraph.
Instead, they would be served with a “Priority Removal Notice”, making them raise all protection claims at that point so all issues could be considered together, including grounds for asylum, human rights and modern slavery.
Border Force staff would be given powers to search containers coming into the UK, to help crack down on illegal migration at the first opportunity.
Displaced families would also be reunited more easily as family reunion routes available to refugees who came here legally were reviewed, while people smugglers who facilitated entry to the UK would face longer jail terms.
Priti Patel deserves enormous credit for pursuing such a bold and comprehensive reform of the asylum system. The current set-up is widely acknowledged to be an embarrassing failure, but given the complexity of the issues and the resistance of human rights lawyers, most previous home secretaries have preferred merely to paper over the cracks. What Ms Patel now aims for is a package that helps those who genuinely need it, deters criminal exploitation and deports fraudulent claimants with greater speed.
There is nothing humane or fair about the status quo. In the last year, thousands of people, including a mix of asylum seekers and economic migrants, have attempted the perilous crossing over the Channel; and once here and processed, even if a claim is rejected, it can be notoriously difficult to send anyone back – including known criminals. This has seriously undermined public confidence and in effect eliminated the important distinction between legal and illegal immigration.
The Left routinely denounces attempts to control immigration as an assault on human rights, because most of them do not believe in borders, but Ms Patel’s proposals answer that charge by offering a more generous deal to those who do get asylum via a safe and legal route. At present they are granted permission to stay for five years; under Ms Patel’s plan, they would get indefinite leave to remain at the outset. This, alongside tougher sentences for people traffickers and a crackdown on endless claims for protection, should rebalance the system back towards what it should have been doing for years – providing refuge to those who need it, while punishing those who break the law or profit from others’ suffering.
This will not be an easy political battle. While the voters overwhelmingly share Ms Patel’s philosophy, the political, legal and NGO establishment does not. But regularising routes into the UK and policing them efficiently is infinitely more humane than the current arrangements. The Prime Minister and the Cabinet must back the Home Secretary all the way and not allow the Left to derail these vital reforms.