The UK has significantly tightened its asylum policy, changing the status of refugees to a temporary one

The British Labour government has announced a significant tightening of its asylum policy, changing refugee status to a temporary nature and accelerating the repatriation of illegal immigrants. This move aims to curb the rise of the populist party, the British Reform Party, and prevent the abuse of the UK's asylum system.

Reuters reported that UK Home Secretary Mahmoud on Monday (November 17) outlined changes in the British court's interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights to give the government greater power to decide who can remain in the UK.

Mahmoud said that these reforms, modeled after Denmark's strict asylum system, would prevent migrants from crossing the English Channel from France by small boat.

She pointed out that the current asylum system is "out of control and unfair", and compared with other European countries, the generous asylum policy of the UK has become an "incentive" to attract immigrants, which is a "disturbing fact".

British Prime Minister Stammer, who once served as a human rights lawyer, said that the current asylum system in the UK is more lenient than that in other European countries and is unable to address the issue of large-scale population mobility on a global scale.

The British government has also threatened that it will impose visa bans on Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo unless they accept the repatriation of illegal immigrants and criminals.

In the year ending in March this year, a total of 109,343 people applied for asylum in the UK, an increase of 17% compared with the previous 12 months. Despite this, the number of people applying for asylum in the UK is still less than that in EU member states such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Most immigrants to the UK enter the country legally. Net migration reached a record 906,000 in the year ending June 2023 and dropped to 431,000 in 2024, partly due to tightened regulations in the UK.