UK targets reform of ‘Hotel California’ immigration system
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It is both sad and true that the UK has evolved from being a sanctuary for those in need of protection after fleeing conflicts or persecution to the ultimate place for asylum seekers, economic migrants and victims of organized crime gangs that specialize in human trafficking. There are bogus student visa suppliers and shady companies profiting from skilled and unskilled workers, offloading low-paid workers onto the caving social security system of the UK once they earn their settled status.
So, it is a welcome step to see that the country’s new interior minister, Yvette Cooper, is already showing a drive and a resolve to fix the chaotic immigration and settlement system she inherited after years of less-than-perfect immigration legislation and policies. Cooper, the home secretary since Labour’s landslide election win over the Conservatives earlier this month, deemed the last of these policies, the now-scrapped Rwanda plan, to be the “most shocking waste of taxpayer money ever.”
In a stinging speech in Parliament this week, Cooper said the Tory government had created an asylum backlog that meant the system was like “Hotel California,” referring to the famous Eagles song. She said the previous government stopped processing thousands of cases, meaning people that have entered the asylum system since March 2023 would never leave it. She is promising to hire enough officers to process and clear the mounting backlog.
The plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, which was created as a deterrent to prevent migrants using small boats to reach the UK, wasted nearly £700 million ($902 million) without deporting a single person. Only four people went to the East African country voluntarily before Labour scrapped the relocation program. Cooper said the wasted money included “£290 million payments to Rwanda, chartering flights that never took off, detaining hundreds of people and then releasing them, and paying for more than 1,000 civil servants to work on the scheme.”
This is in addition to the more than £3 billion spent annually on housing and providing for asylum seekers in the UK while their claims are processed. Cooper said the previous Conservative government had planned to spend more than £10 billion on the Rwanda scheme in total.
Illegal migration is an issue being grappled with by governments across Europe, as more than 380,000 people are believed to have entered the EU through irregular routes in 2023 — an increase of 17 percent on the previous year. About 41 percent of those arrivals are believed to have come in small boats across the Central Mediterranean, 26 percent on land through the Balkans and 16 percent across the Eastern Mediterranean.
The UK’s new Labour government has made a promising start after making border security one of its top priorities.
Mohamed Chebaro
For years, a common approach to dealing with the migration crisis has remained elusive, fueling the ascendance of populist and far-right parties across Europe, destabilizing nations and causing rifts between allies and neighbors.
The UK’s new Labour government has made a promising start after making border security one of its top priorities. It has already taken steps to establish a Border Security Command to coordinate the work of all the agencies and departments involved and give them more powers to confront the people smugglers. Prime Minister Keir Starmer also made it a government target to help lead the Europe-wide efforts to combat organized immigration crime and the people-smuggling gangs trading in human lives, in cooperation with Europol, Frontex and individual member states. He even signaled he would be open to considering offshore processing arrangements similar to the one between Italy and Albania.
Although the government is cautious and is under no illusion that tackling the small boats issue will take time and require hard work, the initial indications show a holistic approach from Cooper, a veteran politician who claimed solving the problem will take “hard graft not sticking plasters.” For a start, thousands of immigration officers will resume processing the asylum and immigration claims that have been on hold since March 2023. In addition, she is reassigning the officers who were working on the Rwanda plan to working on return and enforcement programs, targeting illegal workers at businesses such as nail bars and car washes.
All of the above is very welcome, as it shows someone is being responsible and it constitutes a departure from the previous idleness on migration — a topic that has often been used as a political football. With no easy fix for an issue that has long plagued the public discourse, the new government should go even further. It should dare to carry out a strategic review of the country’s points-based immigrant visa system and, where necessary, review the post-Brexit cancellation of the freedom of movement of skilled and unskilled workers from the EU. Meanwhile, it should speed up investment in training and mentoring programs to provide many Brits with the opportunity to rejoin the labor market and fill the shortages in the UK economy, which has suffered as a result of Brexit. These measures would help the economy achieve some of the targeted growth that this new government is banking on.
Going after nail bars, car washes, criminal gangs and even unscrupulous businesses trading in work visas — which sell dreams for high fees paid in advance only to offload more low-skilled, language-deficient staff that end up as a burden on social services, the country’s limited social housing and the under-funded education and healthcare sectors — is long overdue. In the UK, it is not difficult to notice the post-Brexit change in the quality of services in businesses up and down the country.
The new government has warned against expecting miracles and that its predecessor had left the country’s coffers extremely stretched and, therefore, the scope for change could be limited. But the power of a new government, as they say, stems not from its ideas but its enthusiasm and its willingness to try. Many governments have failed to solve the visa and immigration conundrum this country has often faced. But this time, there is a new team that is willing and driven to try and solve the problems and bottlenecks.
The migration and asylum issue is multifaceted and complex. It deserves the attention of a serious government, which must try to make sure that, even if stemming the flow of new arrivals — and not just those coming on small boats — is impossible, then hard work can reduce the flow and control it in a way that ensures the UK stops being like “Hotel California,” or an asylum free-for-all. Instead, it should become a place where the majority of newcomers can live and thrive in safety, while contributing to a system that has, for decades, been key to catering for those in the greatest need of refuge.
- Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy. He is also a media consultant and trainer.
