By Kolawole Ojebisi
The United Kingdom, on Thursday, said it would establish a “return hub” for failed asylum seekers as part of strategies to deal with the proliferation of irregular immigrants in the country.
The government stated that it will initiate diplomatic discussions with other countries to intimate them of its plan, stressing that the move is aimed at according dignity to people of other nationalities who failed to secure their stay in the UK.
British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, disclosed this during an official visit to Albania.
“What now we want to do and are having discussions of… is return hubs, which is where someone has been through the system in the UK, they need to be returned… and we’ll do that, if we can, through return hubs.”Starmer told GB News.
The Labour leader is under intense pressure to reduce the number of irregular migrants arriving in the UK, particularly those crossing the English Channel in small boats.
The issue of irregular immigrants occupies the front burner in national discussion, with many political opponents exploiting it for popularly by holding Starmer’s feet to the fire.
Prominent among the Labour leader’s critics are the anti-immigration figure Nigel Farage and the leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch.
Badenoch had advised Starmer to stem the rising tides of immigration in the country by adopting stringent measures proposed by her party in an anti-imigratiom bill.
Starmer’s visit to Albania comes two days after its administration scrapped a controversial plan by the previous Conservative administration to deport undocumented migrants to Rwanda.
Recall that on Wednesday, Starmer unveiled a raft of new immigration measures aimed at tightening the UK’s borders.
These include reducing the number of overseas care workers, extending the time required before migrants can apply for settlement, and introducing new powers to deport foreign criminals.
The Labour government had pledged in its election manifesto to significantly cut net migration, which stood at 728,000 in the 12 months to June 2024.
That figure followed a peak of 906,000 in 2023, a sharp increase from the average of 200,000 throughout most of the 2010s.
While legal migration has surged, the UK has also witnessed record levels of irregular migration.
The AFP reports that more than 12,500 people have crossed the Channel so far this year.
The publication said the figure was based on UK interior ministry data,
