Lawmakers would set an annual quota for legal refugees eligible to settle in Britain.
London:
Britain is facing a domestic and international backlash after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak today unveiled contentious legislation to overhaul the way it handles migrants crossing the channel on small boats.
Here's your 10-point cheatsheet to this big story
- The Illegal Migration Bill places a legal duty on the interior minister to deport anyone who enters the UK illegally, superseding their other rights under human rights conventions.
- They would be deported home or to a "safe third country", such as Rwanda, under an existing UK plan, where they could then claim asylum.
- Legal challenges or human rights claims would be heard in that country.
- Illegal entrants who are removed also face a lifetime ban on citizenship and re-entry to the UK.
- More than 45,000 arrivals from across the Channel were recorded last year, with 3,150 already having made the journey so far in 2023.
- Interior minister Suella Braverman says that as many as 80,000 could cross by the end of the year, and that the "broken" asylum system is costing UK taxpayers £3 billion ($3.55 billion) annually.
- The bill has drawn vocal support from many Conservative MPs and right-wing newspapers.
- But critics including UK rights groups and United Nations agencies have expressed deep concern.
- The main opposition Labour party wants the money spent instead on a crackdown on criminal gangs behind the cross-Channel traffic.
- BBC football presenter Gary Lineker, a longtime critic of the government's migration policies, even compared the new plan to the rhetoric of Nazi-era Germany.
