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Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world
Americas+1 212 318 2000
EMEA+44 20 7330 7500
Asia Pacific+65 6212 1000
The UK has developed a controversial solution to the migration pressures facing many developed nations: Send asylum-seekers to Africa. The plan — first floated by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in April 2022 — was to immediately deport migrants who arrive on British shores without permission some 4,000 miles (6,440 kilometers) to Rwanda and leave them there. Two years later, the UK has yet to fly a single migrant to the central African nation, having been rejected in a string of legal defeats. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has staked his political future on getting the plan done.
Like countries across Europe, the UK has experienced an increase in asylum-seekers fleeing conflict and economic turmoil in Asia and Africa. About 30,000 people arrived in the UK in 2023 by crossing the English Channel in dangerous small boats, down 36% from a year earlier. The numbers are up again this year, with a record number of migrants arriving on British shores in the first quarter. More than 70% of those who arrived since 2018 were nationals of five countries — Iran, Syria, Albania, Iraq and Afghanistan — according to an analysis by the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory. Almost nine in 10 have ultimately gone on to secure asylum under rights guaranteed by a network of laws and international agreements, including the UK Human Rights Act, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention.
