The British government on Wednesday said it was toughening immigration rules to make it almost impossible for undocumented migrants who arrive on small boats to later receive citizenship.
Under new guidance migrants arriving by sea, or hidden in the back of vehicles will normally be refused citizenship.
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“This guidance further strengthens measures to make it clear that anyone who enters the UK illegally, including small boat arrivals, faces having a British citizenship application refused,” a Home Office spokesperson said.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is under pressure to reduce migration after Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party won roughly four million votes during the last general election — an unprecedented haul for a far-right party.
But the change to the rules has been criticised by some Labour MPs.
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“If we give someone refugee status, it can’t be right to then refuse them a route to become a British citizen,” wrote lawmaker Stella Creasy on X, adding that the policy would leave them “forever second class”.
Free Movement, an immigration law blog, said the changes had the potential to “block a large number of refugees from naturalising as British citizens, effective immediately”.
It called the updated guidance “incredibly spiteful and damaging to integration”.
The announcement comes after MPs this week debated the government’s new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, designed to give law enforcement officials “counter-terror style powers” to break up gangs bringing irregular migrants across the Channel.
Legal and undocumented immigration — both currently running at historically high levels — was a major political issue at the July 2024 poll that brought Starmer to power.
On taking office, he immediately scrapped his Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak’s plan to deter undocumented migration to the UK by deporting new arrivals to Rwanda.
Instead he pledged to “smash the gangs” to bring the numbers down.
Some 36,816 people were detected in the Channel between England and France in 2024, a 25 percent increase from the 29,437 who arrived in 2023, provisional figures from the interior ministry showed.