Yvette Cooper to announce proposals to reduce net migration as government reacts to growing pressure from Reform UK
Visas for skilled overseas workers will be time-limited for those not taking a graduate-level job, the Home Office has announced.
The measure comes as part of a preview of wider plans being unveiled this week that are designed to reduce net migration to the UK.
Continue reading...Move to speed up appeals of people in government-funded hotels could be challenged on discrimination grounds, officials warn
A plan to fast-track the appeals of asylum seekers living in government-funded hotels could face multiple legal challenges on the grounds of discrimination, the government has said.
A 24-week legal deadline on appeal decisions for those staying in hotel rooms is being introduced in an attempt to fulfil a Labour manifesto promise to end a practice that costs the taxpayer billions of pounds a year.
Continue reading...Applicants will be targeted by Home Office due to suspicions they are most likely to overstay and claim asylum
Nigerians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans applying to work or study in the UK face Home Office restrictions over suspicions that they are most likely to overstay and claim asylum, Whitehall officials have claimed.
The government is working with the National Crime Agency to build models to profile applicants from these countries who are likely to go on to claim asylum.
Continue reading...Blow to Starmer’s hopes of post-Brexit reset and efforts to clear asylum claims amid rise of populist right
A UK request for access to shared European Union crime and illegal migration data has reportedly been rejected in a blow to Keir Starmer’s hopes of a post-Brexit relations “reset”.
British negotiators have been hoping to reach a deal on gaining access to the Schengen Information System (SIS), a vital tool for sharing police alerts across borders within the area where 29 countries have abolished passport controls.
Continue reading...Echoing comments by Nigel Farage, Zia Yusuf says judicial reviews, injunctions and planning laws will be used
Reform UK has vowed to use “every instrument of power” to resist housing people seeking asylum in areas where it now controls councils, its chair has confirmed.
Zia Yusuf, the party chair and a major donor, acknowledged Reform may not be able to stop people seeking asylum being put up in hotels where the Home Office has contracts with accommodation providers.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Ministers understood to be drafting white paper this month in move to reduce legal migration
Ministers will crack down on international students applying for asylum in the UK in a move designed to tackle migration figures, after a series of bruising losses to Reform in the local elections.
An immigration white paper setting out the proposed reforms in mid-May will include measures to bring down the numbers of UK student visa holders who make asylum claims, the Guardian understands.
Continue reading...Soaad Al Shawa had been barred from spending final days with her family, who fled Damascus to settle in Glasgow
A Syrian grandmother who is dying of cancer has been given permission to come to the UK to spend her final days with the grandchildren she has never met, after a Home Office U-turn.
The government had wanted to bar Soaad Al Shawa, who has liver cancer and has been given just weeks to live by doctors, from travelling to spend her last days with her daughter Ola Al Hamwi, son-in-law Mostafa Amonajid and their three children aged seven, five and one. Al Shawa has only been able to communicate with her grandchildren on video calls.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Leaked report says high visa costs also derailing clinical trials and research, denying NHS life-saving drugs
The world’s best cancer doctors, scientists and researchers are being put off moving to or staying in the UK by politicians’ rhetoric on immigration, a leaked report reveals.
Recruiting and retaining “global talent” to treat NHS patients and find new ways to cure cancer is vital, amid an acute British workforce crisis and rising numbers being diagnosed with the disease.
Continue reading...Exclusive: There were 380 safeguarding referrals of victims of hate crimes from January 2023 to August 2024
The Home Office is recording an average of 10 assaults a day on asylum seekers in its care, according to internal government data, amid harsh government rhetoric on those crossing the Channel.
Figures reveal that there were 5,960 referrals of assaults upon asylum seekers while in the care of the Home Office between January 2023 and August 2024. There were also 380 referrals of victims of hate crimes to their internal safeguarding hub during this period.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Continue reading...Home Office intervened after initial ruling allowing grandmother with terminal cancer to join family in Glasgow
A Syrian refugee says the Home Office has “broken her heart” by trying to bar her mother, who has weeks to live, from coming to the UK to spend her final days with the grandchildren she has never met.
Ola Al Hamwi fled Syria with her husband, Mostafa Amonajid, in 2015. They had lost their baby after a bombing and were unable to take Al Hamwi’s mother, Soaad Al Shawa, with them.
Continue reading...Mental Health Foundation says civil unrest last summer left many fearful of attacks by far-right protesters
Last summer’s riots, which took place after the murder of three girls at a Southport dance class, led to a deterioration in the mental health of asylum seekers, with many becoming fearful of walking down the street in case they were targeted by far-right protesters, according to a report.
The report from the Mental Health Foundation, published on Tuesday, identified a decline in the mental health of asylum seekers as a result of the civil unrest and attacks on hotels, compared with the state of their mental health when they published a similar report in February 2024.
Continue reading...Number of Brits crossing Atlantic down 14.3% from 2024 – and the travel industry fears decline could continue
After backpacker Rebecca Burke was arrested and locked up for nearly three weeks by US immigration officials in February, she started urging people not to travel to America.
Britons seem to have listened: UK residents visiting the US were down 14.3% in March compared with the same month in 2024, official figures show.
Continue reading...Elzbieta Olszewska had previously been told she faced deportation after mistakenly filling in form online
A Polish woman who had her application to remain in the UK rejected because she mistakenly filled in a form online instead of on paper has been granted permission to stay in Britain after a change of mind by the Home Office.
Elzbieta Olszewska, 80, had been living alone in her flat in Warsaw before arriving in the UK last September. Her only child, Michal Olszewski, 52, an aeronautical engineer and dual British-Polish citizen, who lives in Lincoln with his wife, had been travelling regularly to the Polish capital to support his mother.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Government source confirms action at nine establishments including one near Windsor Castle
Hundreds of people seeking asylum are to be removed from nine hotels across England within weeks as the Home Office attempts to show it has got to grips with the issue.
The crackdown will remove asylum seekers from a hotel in a village near Windsor Castle after claims of community tensions and racism, and hotels in the West Midlands and Cheshire that have been targeted by far-right activists.
Continue reading...With white paper imminent, Institute for Government urges ministers to abandon ‘reactive, kneejerk’ decisions
Ministers should introduce an annual migration plan to put an end to decades of “incoherent, disconnected and unpredictable” policies around work visas, according to a Whitehall thinktank.
The Institute for Government (IfG) said that successive governments have put forward “reactive, kneejerk policies” formulated when politicians have been questioned by broadcasters over net migration figures.
Continue reading...Home Office issues guidance hours before legal challenge on behalf of asylum seekers who were left in limbo
Thousands of people left in limbo since plans to deport them to Rwanda were axed will now have their asylum claims processed in the UK, Labour has confirmed.
More than 5,000 asylum seekers were on an initial list drawn up by the previous government to be sent to Rwanda under a deal between the two countries.
Continue reading...Released court statement says alleged Chinese spy helped draft private letters to Chinese president
The Duke of York sent letters directly to China’s president, the prince’s former senior adviser told a special immigration tribunal, with an alleged Chinese spy advising him on how to write them.
Dominic Hampshire, who worked for Andrew from 2019-22, said Andrew had “always had a communication channel” with Xi Jinping that was “accepted” and may even have been encouraged by Buckingham Palace and the late queen.
Continue reading...Council says cost running into tens of millions, as homeless refugees granted asylum across UK come to city for support
The asylum system risks “damaging social cohesion” with homeless refugees putting “unprecedented pressure” on Glasgow services, the city council has warned.
Glasgow city council, the largest asylum dispersal area outside London, had welcomed asylum seekers for decades, said the city convener for homelessness, Allan Casey.
Continue reading...Migrant dinghy was also confused with vessel from which 35 people were rescued, so incident was marked ‘resolved’
Survivors and bereaved relatives have told an inquiry into the biggest ever loss of life in a migrant dinghy in the Channel that they believe stereotyping them as “foreigners” contributed to the failure to rescue them before the majority died.
The Cranston inquiry into how at least 27 people drowned on 24 November 2021 heard that survivors believed many on board could have been saved if rescue had been sent more quickly.
Continue reading...Exclusive: NHS England has dramatically increased recruitment of workers from states with critical medical staff shortages
Brexit has left the NHS increasingly dependent on doctors and nurses from poor “red list” countries, from which the World Health Organization says it is wrong to recruit.
The health service in England has hired tens of thousands of health staff from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe since the UK left the EU single market at the end of 2020.
Continue reading...