Britain’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has announced a plan to send rejected asylum seekers to third countries. He says they will be sent to detention centres in foreign countries.
After an asylum seeker’s application has been rejected by the UK, and once all their appeals are exhausted, the British government plans to send them to the so-called return hubs.
This is reportedly to prevent the asylum seekers from engaging in delay tactics to prolong their stay in Britain. The British government says that stalling tactics include asylum seekers saying that they lost their documentation, or them starting a new family with someone living in the UK legally. Starmer’s government believes that these tactics will not work if the asylum seekers are sent to “return hubs”.
Starmer announced his “return hub” plan while on a visit to Albania. Albania worked out a similar deal with Italy in 2023. But the plan is on hold while it is being examined by the European Court of Justice. If Starmer was hoping that Albania would want to work out a deal with Britain in the meantime, then he would have been mistaken.
During a joint press conference with Starmer, Albania’s Prime Minister, Edi Rama, said that Tirana’s deal with Rome was a “one-off”. Rama said that Albania was not looking to set up “return hubs” for any country other than Italy. Starmer said that the UK had begun official negotiations with potential host countries, but he refused to name which ones. Rama essentially confirmed that Albania is not among them.
Starmer’s “return hub” plan has some key differences from the infamous “Rwanda Deportation scheme” proposed by the previous Conservative party government. The “Rwanda scheme” would have resulted in asylum claims being processed in the East African nation. The people who qualified for asylum would have been forced to take refuge in Rwanda, not the UK.
Starmer’s “return hub” scheme will result in the deportation of adult men and women who have exhausted all routes to get asylum in Britain. Starmer had scrapped the “Rwanda scheme” soon after taking office in July 2024.
