Statement on the Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026

At a time when we need to be looking forward at how we welcome migrants and ensure rights are protected, the immigration and asylum bill is rolling back not only those rights but the very principles of fairness and tolerance which it is claimed to support.

Routes to settlement are already arduous and costly. Families face significant obstacles in being together. Those from already marginalised communities face additional obstacles. All of this mounts up to create a system which unjustly treats those building their lives here, working here, forming parts of our community and our friends, as an “other”, as “second class”. 

This is a bill which rather than helping to heal the divides in our country, will only make them worse. It tells migrants that they are unwanted. That they must always have to “prove themselves” in ways which nobody else would be expected to.

If the UK is truly to move forward then it needs to recognise that migrants are essential to doing that. Creating a system which tells us that we are unwanted unless the state can gain something from us undermines not only our lives, but the whole country.