U.K. Follows Europe and U.S. in Crackdown on Asylum Seekers

Britain also is threatening countries, mainly in Africa, with restricting visas unless they accept illegal migrants and criminals back into their countries, taking a page from the Trump administration’s playbook. It also announced controversial plans to confiscate asylum seekers’ assets, such as jewelry and cars, to offset the cost of processing their asylum claims and taxpayer-funded accommodation.

Britain has been “unwilling to show the necessary toughness” to return those with no right to be in the country, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said. Some of the reforms will need new legislation, which could present the government with a challenge given that many on the left of the ruling Labour Party are against the harder-line approach to migration.

The tough rhetoric, especially coming from a center-left party, underscores a shift in sentiment on the continent as right-wing, anti-immigration parties rise in the polls. Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy have all toughened immigration enforcement in recent years in an attempt to stop a surge in asylum seekers.

The efforts appear to be having an effect, with the number of migrants crossing into Europe illegally down nearly a quarter since last year, according to Frontex, the European Union’s border agency. 

That isn’t the case in Britain, where asylum claims hit a record this past year of 111,000. Many of those arrived in the country illegally on small dinghies across the English Channel from France. Those small boat crossings are currently running at the second highest rate on record, despite the Starmer government’s pledge to smash the criminal gangs who operate them.

A record-setting wave of both legal and illegal immigration to the U.K. has propelled Reform UK, an anti-immigration party led by former Brexiteer Nigel Farage, to the top of the polls and has turned the issue of immigration into one of British voters’ top concerns. Unable to find government housing for them, 30,000 asylum seekers who arrived in recent years are living in hotels, a tab that cost taxpayers some £2 billion last year.

Britain has been convulsed by occasional protests over the issue, usually following an alleged criminal incident by a migrant. 

The moves by Starmer and Mahmood will cause friction in the Labour Party, which has slumped in the polls since it came to power last year. Some Labour lawmakers accused the government of pandering to right-wing voters. “Many who have stuck with Labour so far will be repulsed by these attacks on vulnerable people fleeing war and persecution,” said Richard Burgon, a Labour lawmaker.

The Home Secretary also will set an annual cap on the number of people legally allowed to arrive into the country as refugees. New routes for “skilled refugees” to enter the country to find work also will be opened, the Home Office said.  

Industrialized countries have all struggled to cope with global asylum rules that date to shortly after World War II, when European countries agreed that refugees who fled their countries fearing for their lives shouldn’t simply be turned away, as was the case with many Jewish refugees who were killed in the Holocaust.

But in recent years, the global asylum system has been upended. Millions of people, using sophisticated smuggler networks, have started turning up at the borders of industrialized countries, many of them economic migrants who aren’t in imminent danger. But because of asylum laws, countries are legally obliged to hear their cases.

In practice, many countries have been overwhelmed and have found it difficult to deport migrants who fail to be deemed eligible for asylum. That has created a sense that countries don’t have control over their own borders. The U.S., under President Trump, suspended the right to apply for asylum at the southern U.S. border, leading to a sharp decline in border crossings.

On Monday the U.K. government proposed passing legislation to make it harder for migrants to lean on the European Convention on Human Rights, an international treaty, to argue against their deportation. Analysts said it was too early to say whether the change would have the desired effect.

The U.K. in the past has been able to bring down high levels of asylum claims, which previously peaked in the early 2000s and were reduced thanks in part to tighter border controls, said Alan Manning, an economist at the London School of Economics. “It’s wrong to say nothing can be done,” he said.

However, more recent efforts to dissuade asylum seekers have failed. In 2023, the U.K. government made it illegal to claim asylum status if a migrant arrived by small boat. This did little to slow the pace of arrivals, which overwhelmed the asylum system and prompted the government to put them in hotels at taxpayer expense. 

“A lot depends on how the policies are implemented,” says Mihnea Cuibus, a researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, who notes that the U.K. has several unique pull factors, including the English language. “Looking at the overall evidence it is plausible [the measures] will have an effect but how big an effect is very difficult to predict.”

Write to Max Colchester at Max.Colchester@wsj.com