Last week began with the announcement of a deal being struck between the UK and the EU, and ended with the release of some revealing reports from the Government into the vulnerabilities, needs of and support for people seeking asylum.
In the wake of the Immigration White Paper, the Government also published new Immigration statistics on 22nd May, covering the year ending March 2025. These show that:
- fewer work visas granted; biggest drop is health and care at 85%
- work visa extensions at nearly 7x the rate of that in 2019
- 10% fewer study visas, 83% fewer dependants
- 38% increase in settlement granted to refugees, 54% for skilled workers
- 10% increase in people in detention
- Asylum claims: 113% increase in Vietnamese nationals claiming asylum, 167% increase in Kuwaiti nationals, 277% increase in Yemeni nationals, and 1292% increase in Jordanian nationals
While the Government is busy patting itself on the back for this decrease, it’s important to note there’s been an increase in immigration enforcement activity between July 2024 and March 2025, specifically around enforced returns:
- Enforced and voluntary returns both increased by around 25% in 2024. of these, ‘other returns from detention’ increased by 62%, and ‘assisted returns’ increased by 104%
- Deportations of Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) both EU and non-EU nationals increased by around 25% – 60% increased in deportations of Poles, big increase in Malaysians too (went from 5 people in 2023 to 105 in 2024)
- for other types of enforced returns, Pakistanis increased by 80%; for other voluntary returns Indians increased by 67%, Brazilians by 64%, and Nigerians by 58%, whereas Albanians fell by 26% and Chinese by 31%; there was a 716% increase in Sudanese nationals denied entry at ports
EU deal
The EU and UK finally reached a wide-ranging agreement covering a number of areas, including trade, defence and education, to decide post-Brexit relations. There have been disagreements over many of these areas since January 2020, when the UK officially left the EU, for example on fishing rights and trade restrictions. It marks a much more conciliatory approach than previous Conservative governments when former Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushed for more of a ‘hard Brexit’ deal.
The new deal signals closer cooperation in the context of an increasingly hardline US, particularly in relation to the high tariffs that President Trump is threatening to place on the EU. The deal means that there will be no tariffs between the EU and the UK, making it easier to trade more, the EU still the UK’s largest trading partner, instead of the US.
In relation to migration, a significant commitment was for closer cooperation on crime and migration, including the UK being granted access to EU facial recognition data, which is something that was highly sought after by the Government. This will likely bolster an existing agreement between Frontex and Border Force around information sharing, as well as the Border Security Command’s surveillance capabilities.
Despite recent moves to clampdown on international students from non-EU countries (particularly proposals set out in the Immigration White Paper), International students from the EU will also be able to pay the same fees as UK students again, after being charged the same amount as non-EU international students post-Brexit
While not agreed at the summit, the deal has laid the groundwork for the much-discussed Youth Mobility Scheme, which would allow young people from the UK and EU to live, study and work in the other region. The Government has insisted that this be capped and time-limited, where there is a numerical limit to the number of people who would be able to use the scheme each year.
Report on vulnerability ignored
The Government also released to the public a report from 2022 on the vulnerabilities of people seeking asylum.
The report is critical of the current environment around how people categorised as ‘vulnerable’ (e.g. disabled people, people who have experienced modern slavery, human trafficking, or torture), describing any safeguarding improvements as ‘palliative’ in the face of a broader anti-migrant policy environment. The ‘compliant environment’ – the rhetorical successor to the ‘Hostile Environment’ – ‘has a significant role and impact in creating and aggravating the vulnerability of asylum seekers and asylum-route refugees, particularly in the context of addressing the challenges associated with irregular entry to the UK.’
As the report was written in 2022, it makes reference to the Nationality and Border Act 2022 and the Conservative Government’s ‘New Plan for Immigration’ here. Successive legislation and policies, including the ‘Illegal’ Migration Act 2023, and that which has been proposed under the Labour Government’s ‘Plan for Change’, namely the Border Security, Immigration and Asylum Bill and the recent Immigration White Paper, have undoubtedly worsened this.
At MRN, we avoid the language of vulnerability because of the way that it obscures the effects of state violence and is used as a euphemism to avoid actually engaging with disability and disabled people. People are made vulnerable not inherently vulnerable. the report however is critical of this treatment of vulnerability too – not that the current or former Government adopted its findings though.
The report also notes key issues that we raised in our Disability and Migration zine: in practice, frontline Home Office staff ‘rely on preconceived, visible, internal factors (mostly personal characteristics)’ to identify so-called ‘vulnerable persons’, which neglects people with less visible disabilities and creates a hierarchy of vulnerability.
Ultimately, it is clear that there can be no disability justice in an anti-migrant system.
You can find more of our work here on our Hostile Office and Who is Welcome campaigns.