One of the last four candidates for the Conservative Party leadership to replace Rishi Sunak, Robert Jenrick, has promised to impose strict visa penalties on countries that refuse to accept the return of their illegal migrants. In his proposal, countries like India and Vietnam have been specifically mentioned. According to Jenrick, even though the UK has given visas this year to approximately 250,000 Indian nationals for purposes such as work, tourism, and study, around 100,000 Indians live illegally in the UK, and deportation volumes “are stuck in the hundreds.”
Jenrick put forward a five-point proposal to increase illegal resident returns in the United Kingdom to “more than 100,000 in a year” as opposed to the current level of five times that amount. “It’s time to take a firm stance with those countries and suspend the issuance of visas until they are willing to accept their nationals living here illegally,” he declared.
This is founded on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was signed between the two countries in 2021 and intended to facilitate the repatriation of unwanted illegal immigrants in the UK, and yet, according to the figures, only 22,807 deportations for that year happened. Of these, 15% (3,439 individuals) were Indian nationals.
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Jenrick suggested making foreign aid and visa regulations contingent on repatriation cooperation. He listed Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan as some of the nations that have received aid from the UK but are not willing to accept the return of their nationals. “The government must stop allowing other countries to exploit our generosity by enforcing strict visa limits and reducing aid to nations that fail to cooperate on repatriations,” he asserted.
In the context of an approach to immigration policy in general, Jenrick argued for countries to be pioneered through legislation as stated above: “safe nations” like Vietnam, Turkey, and Brazil so that the United Kingdom can enter into accelerated deportation agreements with countries such as Albania, similar to those already existing with that country. “These are holiday destinations, not war zones,” he argued.
Withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights was also advocated by Jenrick, who says it inhibits quick deportation of foreign offenders. The UK now houses about 11800 foreign offenders, with the length of stay in prisons exceeding five years for 4000 of them. Foreign criminals make up more than 10000 of the 87,000 prisoners in England and Wales prisons, costing taxpayers £47,000 each year per inmate.
Jenrick affirmed the need to intensify actions against companies employing illegal workers, such as making criminal liability for the employers involved. He warned that they “create an intolerable burden upon communities and taxpayers” due to illegal immigration.
“The system is broken; contrary to an influx of undocumented immigrants during the last twenty years, deportations have dramatically decreased,” he explained. On the occasion of his term as minister for immigration, he said, “I increased removals by over 50%, and now we need complete reform. Anyone arriving illegally from a safe country should be removed immediately”.
Jenrick has carried on being ahead in the leadership contest. So far he has topped both of the parliamentary hustings and is likely to move on into the final party membership vote. However, Home Office officials clarified to The Times of India that visa bans are not the policy of the current Labour-led government.