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Foreign postgraduate students on non-research courses will no longer be able to bring family members to the UK, under new immigration curbs. The announcement has been made two days before official statistics are expected to show legal migration has hit a record 700,000 this year. Last year, 135,788 visas were granted to dependants of foreign […]

The prime minister has refused to explicitly commit to a Conservative promise to get net migration levels below where they were four years ago. The Tory manifesto before the general election in 2019 promised that “overall numbers will come down”. Net migration – the number of people moving to the UK minus the number who

Suella Braverman has said people who enter the UK illegally after crossing the Channel on small boats “possess values which are at odds with our country” as well as “heightened levels of criminality”. The home secretary refused to criticise claims by the immigration minister Robert Jenrick that people who cross the Channel to seek asylum

Over 1,000 Albanian nationals have been returned since the UK-Albania joint communiqué was signed on 13 December. Following the landmark joint communiqué between the Prime Ministers of Albania and the UK on tackling illegal migration, operational teams in the UK and Albania have intensified operational work to address illegal migration, particularly the small boat crossings

The Home Office is planning to use 10 redundant cruise ships, ferries and barges to house asylum seekers in ports around the country, with Merseyside expected to be next in line as ministers struggle to get to grips with the asylum backlog. Officials have been told to look at “all options” to find housing for

The Home Office plans to use artificial intelligence to reduce the asylum backlog, and is launching a three-day hackathon in the search for quicker ways to process the 138,052 undecided asylum cases. The government is convening academics, tech experts, civil servants and business people to form 15 multidisciplinary teams tasked with brainstorming solutions to the

By Becky Morton Political reporter Plans aimed at stopping people crossing the Channel in small boats risk breaching the UK’s human rights obligations, a watchdog has warned. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said the government’s Illegal Migration Bill also risked exposing people to serious harm. It said it was particularly worried about the

The government has announced new funding to relocate more than 8,000 Afghans who are currently living in hotels in the UK. The government says this will help move refugees into permanent homes, but critics say it risks making some Afghans homeless. How many Afghans have arrived in the UK? The government says that more than 24,000

By Nick Eardley & Oliver Slow BBC News Ministers are facing the prospect of a legal challenge if they go ahead with plans to house asylum seekers on a barge off the Dorset coast. The Home Office is reportedly looking to use the Bibby Stockholm for the migrants to reduce reliance on hotels. Portland Port