Nationality

• After a series of late-night votes and months of controversy, the bill is now set to receive royal assent and become the Illegal Migration Act 2023.
• The illegal migration bill piece of legislation is the central pillar of Rishi Sunak’s plan to stop small boat crossings, one of his five promises as prime minister.
• A key facet of the bill – the Rwanda migration partnership – remains in legal limbo.
• The House of Lords tried to soften these parts of the bill through a series of amendments, but was ultimately defeated by the government.

Legal concerns

• The home secretary, Suella Braverman, said herself that the bill would “push the boundaries” of international law.
• While international refugee law is difficult to enforce, there are a number of issues in the bill that are likely to face prolonged legal battles.

Will it even work?

• But there is very little evidence) to show that this approach of “deterrence” would be effective, writes Peter William Walsh, a researcher at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory.
• Read more:
  The government's plan to remove asylum seekers will be a logistical mess – and may not deter people from coming to the UK

The trauma of the asylum system

• The illegal immigration bill has generated endless controversy on its way to becoming law.
• You might remember a lot of debate only last year over a new immigration act.

Law one: a two-tier asylum system

• The Nationality and Borders Act introduced a two-tier system that offered refugees different levels of protection depending on how they entered the UK.
• And it set the stage for the controversial Rwanda plan by providing for offshore processing of asylum claims.

Law two: an outright ban

• The illegal migration bill is the most extreme piece of immigration legislation to date, and amounts to a ban on asylum.
• Under the proposed law, anyone who enters the UK irregularly (the majority of asylum seekers) will never have their asylum claims assessed.
• Read more:
  Nationality and Borders Act becomes law: five key changes explained

Why do we need both?

• The government says the illegal migration bill is needed because the asylum system is (still) broken, citing the increase in small boat crossings since 2018.
• Tighter security in recent years, as well as the pandemic, has made other clandestine routes (such as concealed in a lorry) more difficult.

Targeting Albanians

• The government has claimed that Albanians and others from “well-established safe countries” are falsely claiming to be victims of trafficking in order to access support they are entitled to under the Modern Slavery Act.
• But there is evidence that many Albanians flee due to blood feuds between families, for which the Albanian state offers little protection.
• In a bid to deter Albanians from seeking asylum in the UK, the government signed an agreement with Albania to speed up the return of its citizens.

Performance politics

• And what’s more, the Home Office doesn’t have the resources or, arguably, institutional competence to implement them.
• Most importantly, both policies are built on a strategy of deterrence, which even the Home Office acknowledges doesn’t work.
• Ultimately, both pieces of legislation are performance politics that have more to do with winning an election than solving policy problems.

• Special visa routes for people from Ukraine and Hong Kong contributed 172,000 people, and over 200,000 are international students and their dependants.
• People seeking asylum are now included (adding 72,000 to the total), but seasonal agricultural workers (38,000 visas in 2022) are excluded.
• Read more:
  Net migration: how an unreachable target came to shape Britain

  It’s notable that these figures come just years after government promises to “take back control” of the UK’s borders.

• On this we can see fairly direct impacts in the latest figures, with less migration from the EU and even net outflows of European citizens.

Quality of work

• They restrict worker rights – to move employers, or to have access to public services – all things that make migrants more vulnerable to exploitation.
• Indeed, the problems are already becoming clear in the agricultural sector where the evidence of exploitation is growing.
• But the addiction is actually to a labour market which has little or no protection for workers, and no strategy to improve standards and the quality of work.
• While this looks like it benefits the UK economy, it is short term, further segments the labour market, criminalises informal work, and opens large numbers of people to the risks of exploitation and modern slavery.

• WASHINGTON, May 26, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Investment firms EB5 Capital and Civitas Capital Group jointly announced today they are voluntarily dismissing, without prejudice, concurrent litigation against the U.S.
• Bethesda (MD)-based EB5 Capital and Dallas (TX)-based Civitas in April 2021 each filed suit against USCIS in response to the geographic restrictions USCIS had imposed retroactively on redeployed EB-5 investments, which could have negatively impacted thousands of pending petitions.
• He called the agreement to dismiss litigation a win not only for the EB-5 firms and regional centers represented but an enormous win for EB-5 investors and the industry at large.
• The decision to bring litigation and the promise that should the government not uphold its word, the firms will once again sue emphasizes how seriously the EB-5 industry stakeholders take compliance with rules, says Civitas Capital Group CEO Daniel J. Healy.