Home secretary to announce a drastic tightening of rules, including requiring asylum seekers to wait 20 years before getting the right to permanently settle in UK
Alex Norris, the border security and asylum minister, has been giving interviews this morning defending the government’s asylum plans.
Even though the government has said that people who arrive in the UK illegally could have to wait 20 years before they can get permanent settlement under the proposals, Norris played down the prospect of this happening.
Those individuals who were on that 20-year route to settlement – we will give them the chance to switch to work or study routes so that they are learning English, so that they are taking part in the economy, so they’re contributing to their own lives and to British society. And if they do that, they can earn their right to settlement, like others on on work and study routes do already.
Let’s not forget, I’m afraid, that of those who have successful [asylum] claims, 50% of them end up on benefits.
If your intention is to come to the country illegally, to have a claim assessed and, if you’re successful, then sit at home, not contribute, not learn English [or] integrate into [the] community, not to build a life away from the dreadful circumstances that you may have come from, then that is going to come with much greater checks.
The numbers of people who are prevented from return by the Strasbourg court are very, very small.
And we need to be realistic about what those sorts of reforms are going to achieve. We can’t promise the public things which it’s not going to deliver.
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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/nov/17/immigration-asylum-keir-starmer-labour-shabana-mahmood-uk-politics-live-news-updates
Author : Andrew Sparrow
Publish date : 2025-11-17 09:52:00
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