UK to reopen refugee scheme to push ‘safe’ migration
LIVERPOOL: UK interior minister Shabana Mahmood announced on Monday the reopening of a scheme for refugees to settle in Britain as part of a renewed focus on “safe and legal routes” for vulnerable people to reach the country.
The scheme will be relaunched immediately, and along with three new “community” refugee sponsorship routes previously announced, is initially expected to welcome hundreds of applicants, according to the interior ministry.
Mahmood formally unveiled the plan in a speech at the ruling Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool, when she said “fairness” would be integral to the government’s immigration agenda.
It comes amid pushback from some within centre-left Labour over a series of hardline policies aimed at both tightening the rules for migrants arriving via legal routes while curbing asylum-seeker numbers coming by irregular means.
Three migrants die in attempt to cross Channel
To be run in partnership with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), it follows the closure of an Afghan resettlement route last year.
The planned changes include contentious proposals to make some legal migrants wait years longer than under current rules before they can apply to settle permanently in the UK.
Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, an influential figure within Labour, said in a newspaper interview last week that she was concerned about some of the plans because they “change the goalposts”. Around a quarter of applicants to the reopened resettlement scheme are expected to be Afghan women and girls and Palestinians, Mahmood told the Labour conference.
“We will take vulnerable refugees from across the world and give them the chance of a new and better life here in Britain with the first arrivals this year,” she said. Within days, charities and nonprofits will be able to apply to become sponsors of refugees, with the first arrivals under this route expected in around a year’s time.
The numbers arriving under the legal programmes “will grow into the low thousands as levels of illegal migration fall”, according to the ministry, which noted an annual cap will be set.
Channel crossing accident
Three undocumented migrants, including a 10-year-old boy, died on Monday off the French coast while trying to cross the Channel to Britain, French authorities said.
France has long been a staging post for asylum seekers without visas hoping to cross the sea to Britain. They pay smugglers thousands of dollars to board unstable and often overcrowded rubber dinghies to make the hazardous illegal journey across one of the world’s busiest shipping routes.
The dinghy left the area of Sangatte in northern France at around 5:15 am (0315 GMT) carrying 105 people, local prefect Francois Xavier Lauch said. Its passengers called rescue services at around 8:00 am when they were some six kilometres (nearly four miles) off the English coast, he added.
Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2026
