How to Really Fix the Asylum System

Shabana Mahmood will fail. Here is what can succeed

LUCA WATSON

Labour’s latest Home Secretary has put forward the biggest overhaul of the asylum system since the Second World War. Shabana Mahmood hopes to regain public support for Britain’s asylum system by increasing removals of those with no right to remain, transitioning asylum from a route to permanent settlement to one of temporary protection, and reducing those coming by small boat by deterring “asylum shoppers” from coming to Britain. The package of reforms has already faced shrill condemnations in Parliament and may well never come to fruition in its original form.

Mahmood’s hope that her proposals will restore public trust in the system is doomed either way, as her plans aim to please a consensus that doesn’t exist in Britain. Those to her left, including many of her party’s MPs, decry any limitations on the rights or inflows of refugees as cruel and barbaric. To her right, the party consistently leading in the polls has pledged to not bother with tinkering with the system, but to abolish it completely. For those exercised about the scale and cost of asylum seekers coming to Britain, a pledge to confiscate their jewellery is an unconvincing response to a policy of not letting asylum seekers in at all.

What the Home Secretary’s plan amounts to is a desperate attempt to salvage the remnants of a system built on principles long past their sell-by date. It should be of no surprise that a global architecture for asylum conjured up in the wake of the Second World War and concretised in an age before mass jet travel, the internet, and instant global communication is proving itself unfit for the modern age. Those fighting to maintain the same system and policies of the 1950s in healthcare, or education, or transport, or whatever else, would rightly be dismissed as delusional reactionaries, yet dare to question if the foundations upon which the 1950s asylum system is built and accusations abound that such a thing would be unconscionable and possibly fascist.

The primary problem faced by Britain’s current asylum system is one common to nations throughout Europe — namely that a select number of states on the Western edge of the Eurasian continent are being expected to absorb an unlimited number of people fleeing from the whole of Africa and Asia. Some come fleeing war, others persecution, but many are simply fleeing a lack of opportunity and affluence. The fact that in the year ending June 2025, Britain had 41,400 asylum applications from people already in the country on work, study or tourist visas, accounting for 37 per cent of all claims that year, gives a clear indication that the asylum system is being gamed by those who are safe in their home countries but have exhausted any other routes to continued settlement.

There is also an implicitly understood lack of reciprocity to the inflows Europe finds itself with, for whilst Europeans are expected to take on the burden of providing refuge for Eritreans, say, everyone knows that should Europeans require refuge that burden would never be asked of Eritrea. The system morally justified as a global form of mutual assistance in practice functions as an unlimited and exceedingly costly expectation that European states take on the burden of welcoming the world’s dispossessed ad infinitum, where a justification can always be concocted for why it must bear this moral burden.

When Afghan men oppress the country’s women, Europe must take the burden. When UAE-backed militias displace Sudanese civilians, Europe must take the burden. When Saudi jets bomb Yemen, Europe must take the burden. Within the world’s globalised economy, there is always a supply chain that can be wriggled up far enough to find Europe’s supposed complicity in whatever injustice is taking place. Failing that, European colonial history serves as the backup justification for Europe’s moral burden, presumably in perpetuity.

A complete overhaul of the system starting from first principles is long overdue

Even in times of prosperity and rising living standards this burden is a big ask, but during our present period of squeezed finances and tumbling quality of life, the continued imposition of this limitless burden is proving positively incendiary. This anger is only heightened by the constant stream of stories of asylum seekers showing their gratitude for sanctuary by committing serious crimes, most provocatively of all sexual crimes against children, the catalyst of the spate of violent protests that started in Epping over the summer.

Against this backdrop, a complete overhaul of the system starting from first principles is long overdue. This would include distilling what the fundamental needs of refugees are: physical reprieve from danger, freedom from their persecutors, and relative stability as a base to rebuild their lives. A humanitarian and compassionate system is one where these conditions can be met, and one that can continue to meet them in a sustainable way that receives broad public support. What it does not necessarily have to entail is the permanent settlement in Europe of those fleeing for refuge, for though there are other factors which may be desirable — a strong job market, good healthcare system, family or cultural connections, relative affluence, and so on — none of these are fundamental, and the great majority of people around the world today live in areas in which those desires are unmet or are far from reaching European standards. A lack of European levels of affluence doesn’t confer the moral right to permanent settlement in Europe, nor would such a scheme ever be practically feasible.

Rather, European nations can ensure that the fundamental needs of refugees are met by supporting them in countries closer to refugees’ countries of origin and providing financial and material assistance to those nations who take on the responsibility of hosting refugees. Such an arrangement is already facilitated by bodies such as the UN Refugee Agency, where resources go a lot further than hosting a select few in eye-wateringly expensive hotels. It is a shameful and largely obscured scandal that a huge chunk of Britain’s foreign aid budget has been redirected to inefficient domestic spending on asylum seekers, peaking at £4.3 billion in 2023, instead of helping refugees closer to the source where that money would help a great many times over the people in need.

It is high time to call the curtains on an asylum system that entails the permanent settlement of those needing temporary sanctuary in European nations, and transition to a sustainable model in which European nations can fulfil their humanitarian sense of duty by supporting refugees in their regions of origin. Those who nonetheless attempt to enter the continent via irregular means out of a desire to settle in Europe rather than a safe nation closer to their home ought to face a blanket regime of immediate removals to third country partners. A program of this nature would be similar to the ill-fated Rwanda scheme, but could be greatly expanded to include many willing third-country participants.

Such a system would ensure that the fundamental needs of refugees are met, as a country such as Rwanda fulfils the criteria of offering safety, protection from persecution, and stability. The end of the possibility of settlement in Europe would bring the enormous humanitarian advantage of stopping people from making the perilous, often deadly journey to the continent. This is the only realistic way of killing off violent smuggling gangs, ending Libyan slave markets, and stopping the drownings at sea. As long as Europe offers the chance to settle for those who puncture its borders, whether through naivety or desperation, people will continue to put themselves at risk of such barbarity.

Mahmood … remains too dogmatically committed to its key pillars to bring about sufficient reforms

The time for tinkering at the edges is over. Europe is facing a period of relative calm in its longstanding struggle to deal with the issue of asylum, but another sudden wave similar to the Syrian crisis of the mid-2010s is only a matter of time. Now is therefore an opportune and urgent moment to create an asylum system fit for this century, one which recognises the limits of Europe’s capacity for accommodation whilst ensuring that those suffering the misfortune of requiring refuge are supported in having their fundamental needs met. Mahmood clearly recognises the unsuitability of Britain’s current asylum system, but remains too dogmatically committed to its key pillars to bring about sufficient reforms. That way lies deeper entrenchment of the issues our current asylum system causes and a level of public furore that may prove explosive. No one stands to benefit: not the country, nor the world’s refugees, and certainly not Labour. Instead, the Home Secretary would do well to commit to the promise Labour were elected on: change.

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This article (How to really fix the asylum system) was created and published by The Critic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Luca Watson

Featured image: Alamy