Demonstrators hold placards as they protest near the gates of 10 Downing Street in central London on May 8, 2024 during an anti-racism rally called by associations including Stand Up To Racism, to denounce the UK government's Rwanda Bill. The Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill is a plan of the UK government to deport asylum seekers to the east African country as part of efforts to cut immigration.
BENJAMIN CREMEL / AFP
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The British government on Wednesday announced that it is toughening immigration rules to make it nearly impossible for undocumented migrants who arrive on small boats to later receive citizenship.
Under new guidelines, migrants arriving by sea or hidden in the back of vehicles will normally be refused citizenship.
"This guidance further strengthens measures to make it clear that anyone who enters the UK illegally, including small boat arrivals, faces having a British citizenship application refused," a Home Office spokesperson said.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour government is under pressure to reduce migration after Nigel Farage's anti-immigration Reform UK party won roughly four million votes in the last general election — an unprecedented haul for a far-right party.
However, the change to the rules has been criticized by some Labour MPs.
"If we give someone refugee status, it can't be right to then refuse them a route to become a British citizen," lawmaker Stella Creasy wrote on X, adding that the policy would leave them "forever second-class."
Free Movement, an immigration law blog, said the changes had the potential to "block a large number of refugees from naturalizing as British citizens, effective immediately."
It called the updated guidance "incredibly spiteful and damaging to integration."
The announcement comes after MPs this week debated the government's new Border Security, Asylum, and Immigration Bill, designed to give law enforcement officials "counter-terror style powers" to break up gangs bringing irregular migrants across the Channel.
Legal and undocumented immigration — both currently running at historically high levels — was a major political issue in the July 2024 election that brought Starmer to power.
Upon taking office, he immediately scrapped his Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak's plan to deter undocumented migration to the UK by deporting new arrivals to Rwanda. Instead, he pledged to "smash the gangs" to bring the numbers down.
Some 36,816 people were detected in the Channel between England and France in 2024, a 25 percent increase from the 29,437 who arrived in 2023, provisional figures from the interior ministry showed.
