Stop the Home Office’s New Plan for Immigration

We call upon the Home Office to take the following actions:

1. Immediately and unreservedly retract any and all elements of this proposal which seek to penalise, criminalise, or otherwise disadvantage refugees and asylum seekers based on the way in which they enter the UK or the manner in which they present evidence.

These include but are not limited to:

a) The criminalisation of irregular passage or entry into the UK by those with an intent to seek asylum.

b) The “one-stop” process and the “good faith” requirement set out in Chapter 5 of the Plan, which place an unfair burden of responsibility on the asylum seeker who may be initially unable to make all claims due to trauma, fear, or lack of knowledge about the asylum process.

c) The introduction of “new temporary protection status with less generous entitlements and limited family reunion rights” for people unjustly and inappropriately deemed “inadmissible” as outlined in Chapter 4, another example of reducing rights based upon route of entry.

2. Withdraw all segments of the New Plan expressing intent to introduce “reception centres” and the powers to deport asylum seekers before their claims have been processed, per Chapter 4 of the plan, which will place the welfare of asylum seekers at imminent risk. Please also publicly commit to ruling out the use of offshore detention centres, or processing facilities.

3. Retract plans to place the age assessment process in the hands of those who are not social workers, and maintain the age for threshold of certainty as ‘significantly over 25’ instead of ‘significantly over 18’.

4. Facilitate the provision of safe, formalised routes of entry to the UK, to prevent more needless deaths occurring in UK waters, and release your intentions to provide these publicly, before the end of the UK government’s New Plan for Immigration 6 week online consultation process.

5. Provide more clarity as to your intentions and targets for resettlement as a legal and regular form of refugee support, and publicly commit to significantly increasing the UK’s resettlement capacity. We call upon you to publish your intended resettlement targets before the end of the consultation process. Without this information, it is impossible for members of the public to fully understand the government’s intentions and commitments, and this must be part of the consultation process.

6. Participate in an open consultative process with the organisations who have signed this letter, including those with lived experience of seeking asylum and of the journeys you are so quick to criminalise.