The British government has introduced a bill to “stop the boats” of migrants in the English Channel, crossings that are reaching record levels and putting the asylum system under pressure. In 2022, more than 45,700 migrants made this perilous journey.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, there were 299 in 2018. The numbers then jumped to 1,843 in 2019, then 8,466 in 2020 and 28,526 in 2021. The trend has continued since the start of the year with more than 3,000 arrivals on the English coast (twice as many as last year), including nearly 200 again on Monday.
There were around 74,751 asylum applications in the United Kingdom in 2022. But the system finds itself overwhelmed by recent influxes: at the end of December, more than 160,000 asylum seekers were awaiting a decision, a record. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has thus decided to tighten up his bill.
A law that would “end the right of asylum”
“If you arrive irregularly, you cannot apply for asylum. You cannot benefit from our modern slavery protections. You cannot make bogus human rights claims and you cannot stay” in the UK, he said.
“It’s hard but it’s necessary. And that’s right,” he said. “We will detain people who come here illegally and then return them within weeks,” either to their country or to a country deemed safe.
“The law, if passed, will amount to ending asylum – depriving those who arrive illegally in the UK of the right to seek the protection afforded to a refugee, regardless of the genuineness and urgency of their their request,” the High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement, calling for it to be reviewed.