British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced on Monday that the left-wing Labour Party government will reopen a scheme to import alleged refugees from Afghanistan and Palestine, despite a clear and longstanding majority of the public being opposed to more immigration into the country. In an address to the Labour Annual Conference in Liverpool, Home Secretary Mahmood touted her record in reducing the number of illegal crossings of the English Channel — which are still set to remain in the tens of thousands this year — and said that because of this, Britain now has the capacity to open up more legal routes for alleged asylum seekers, starting with supposed refugees from Afghanistan and Palestine.
Mahmood, who was pitched to the public as an immigration hawk, said the government will reopen the UK Resettlement Route in conjunction with the United Nations to “take vulnerable refugees from camps across the world and give them the chance of a new and better life here in Britain.” The first female Muslim Home Secretary said that the scheme will begin to import migrants from Afghanistan and Palestine this year with a focus on women and girls. While Mahmood said the scheme will be capped, she did not provide a firm figure for how many migrants will be brought to the UK under the scheme. The move comes despite widespread opposition to more immigration among the British people, with a YouGov survey finding last month that 69 per cent believe that immigration has been too high over the past decade, while a plurality of 43 per cent view immigration as having been mostly bad for the country.
