For the first time in modern British history, we are seeing the creation of a multi-tier asylum system – one that ranks people’s right to protection based on how “deserving” the Government decides they are.

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Earlier this week Shabana Mahmood announced plans to make refugee protection temporary. Yesterday, she confirmed that citizens of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan – countries devastated by conflict – will be denied access to study and skilled visas simply because of where they come from.

Now she is going further. Refugees who had no safe way to reach the UK and arrived irregularly could now be forced to spend two decades in legal limbo before qualifying for permanent settlement, while imposing even stricter conditions for securing permanent status.

At the same time, the Home Secretary has outlined plans to offer families who have been refused asylum up to £40,000 to leave the UK, and forcibly remove families and children seeking safety in order to reduce costs in the asylum system. These removals are not paperwork exercises. They involve physically removing families – including children – from the country and offering financial incentives that effectively pressure people to gamble with their safety.

Taken together, these changes mark a dangerous shift in principle: a system where rights become negotiable, discrimination becomes policy, and state coercion is reframed as a cost-cutting measure.

We see the human impacts every day. One mother we support has a baby daughter who endured life-threatening cancer treatment. She cannot return to her home country without endangering her daughter’s life, and yet she faces the constant threat of being uprooted – all on top of juggling hospital appointments, childcare, rent, and visa applications. This is the reality behind the headlines.

These policies create a two-tier society. For all Shabana Mahmood’s talk of working people, she seems unaware that migrants, too, are working people. They particularly target working-class refugees and migrants – the very people politicians on both sides of the political spectrum claim to stand up for. Years of extended insecurity mean difficulty renting, planning, retraining, or putting down roots. It weakens communities and pushes people into precarious work.

If chasing Reform’s rhetoric was a winning strategy, we would see the evidence. But we don’t. Look at results in Gorton and Denton. Voters who want Reform will vote for Reform. Others are left disillusioned by a party that appears to abandon its principles.

Labour party members are already distancing themselves from the Home Secretary’s hardline immigration policies, with one hundred Labour MPS urging Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to rethink changes to the UK’s immigration system.

The Prime Minister has only weeks to change course. These policies will not just harm migrant communities; they are also a terrible political strategy. Fear and exclusion do not win votes – they alienate the very communities his Government needs to engage, while empowering the far-right.

Policies built on suspicion and deterrence have consistently failed. They do not improve integration or public confidence. Instead, they generate fear, disengagement and marginalisation, while worsening economic outcomes by pushing people out of secure work, limiting productivity and increasing inequality – creating exactly the conditions in which the far-right thrives.

Economically, this approach is self-defeating. The Government is effectively attempting a Danish-style deterrence model across the immigration system – despite mounting evidence that such approaches do not reduce displacement, but do increase human and financial costs. Preventing asylum seekers from working keeps people dependent on state support while businesses face labour shortages. Extending settlement routes traps families in limbo for longer, undermining productivity and integration.

The UK can have a functioning immigration system without abandoning the principle of equal protection under the law. What we cannot afford – morally or politically – is a system built on suspicion, discrimination and collective punishment.

If the Government continues down this path, it will not outflank the far-right. It will normalise it. And families who have already fled war and persecution will once again pay the price.

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