LONDON: Britain\u2019s interior minister on Sunday defended plans to drastically reduce protections for refugees and end automatic benefits for asylum seekers, insisting that irregular migration was \u201ctearing our country apart.\u201d<\/p>\n
The measures, modelled on Denmark\u2019s strict asylum system, aim to stop thousands of migrants from arriving in England from northern France on small boats \u2014 crossings that are fueling support for the anti-immigrant Reform UK party.<\/p>\n
But the proposals were criticized as \u201charsh and unnecessary\u201d by the Refugee Council charity and are likely to be opposed by left-wing lawmakers within Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2019s embattled Labour government, which is trying to counter the hard right.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really reject this idea that dealing with this problem is somehow engaging in far-right talking points,\u201d Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told BBC television.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a moral mission for me, because I can see illegal migration is tearing our country apart, it is dividing communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Presently, those given refugee status have it for five years, after which they can apply for indefinite leave to remain and eventually citizenship.<\/p>\n
But Mahmood\u2019s ministry, the Home Office, said it would cut the length of refugee status to 30 months.<\/p>\n
That protection will be \u201cregularly reviewed,\u201d and refugees will be forced to return to their home countries once they are deemed safe, it added.<\/p>\n
The ministry said it also intended to make people granted asylum wait 20 years before applying to be allowed to live in the United Kingdom indefinitely.<\/p>\n
It also announced that it would create \u201cnew safe and legal routes for genuine refugees\u201d through \u201ccapped work and study routes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asylum claims in Britain are at a record high, with around 111,000 applications made in the year to June 2025, according to official figures.<\/p>\n
The Home Office called the new proposals, which Mahmood will lay out in parliament on Monday, the \u201clargest overhaul of asylum policy in modern times.\u201d<\/p>\n
It said the reforms would make it less attractive for irregular migrants to come to Britain, and make it easier to remove those already in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: Britain\u2019s interior minister on Sunday defended plans to drastically reduce protections for refugees and end automatic benefits for asylum seekers, insisting that irregular migration was \u201ctearing our country apart.\u201d The measures, modelled on Denmark\u2019s strict asylum system, aim to stop thousands of migrants from arriving in England from northern France on small boats \u2014 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89735,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89736,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89723\/revisions\/89736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}