UK refugee status shake-up: undermining rights in the name of deterrence

Guest post by Kabir Joshi. Kabir is an Associate Solicitor at Wilson Solicitors LLP. He works on immigration, asylum and human rights law, with a particular focus on national security work before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC). 

Earlier this month, the Home Secretary announced plans to radically change the status given to refugees in the UK. The plans, already introduced in the statement of changes to Immigration Rules (rather than by a new immigration bill passed through parliament), shift refugee status from a five-year protective status with a clear pathway to permanent status, to only two and a half years protection with regular reviews, and a potential 20-year wait for permanent settlement. The changes will apply to anyone who has claimed asylum from 2 March 2026.

If refugees access welfare benefits, they may be required to re-apply for protection on eight separate occasions over 20 years, before they are entitled to apply for permanent settlement. Refugees not accessing the welfare system may be entitled to apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) earlier – effectively creating a two-tier system based on ‘earned settlement’. If refugees cannot prove that they remain at risk in their countries of origin during that time, this will lead to the cessation of their refugee status and they could be detained and deported. 

Refugees will be encouraged to ‘earn settlement’ by switching to “legal visa routes” – such as work and study visas – as an alternative to continued protection grants, which Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood defined as being reserved for “genuine refugees”. The new rules, and accompanying rhetoric of “genuine”, “illegal” and “legal” statuses, continue to frame the very process of claiming asylum and securing refugee status as almost inherently ‘illegal’. 

The new rules are an extreme departure from the former system whereby, after an initial five-year period, refugees were entitled to apply for ILR, affording them permanent settled status in the UK. Moreover, while previous applications for refugee ILR were seen largely as a formality (unless an applicant had returned to their home country or committed an offence), current changes mean each applicant will be subject to an active ‘safe returns review’ regarding their country of origin situation before a further grant of leave is issued. 

Challenges to the refugee convention: Syria as a test case

The foreground was set for these changes by last year’s review of all Syrian settlement cases following the fall of the Assad government in December 2024. Deportation of Syrian nationals is reportedly now an ‘early priority’ for Mahmood, despite ongoing violent clashes, uncertain political situation and humanitarian crisis in the country. In many ways, Syria may serve as the test case for implementation of the upcoming changes, since even Syrians with refugee status have been required to justify their continued need for protection after the Home Office updated its guidance on the country in mid-2025.

This active review process poses a considerable challenge to the refugee convention and the UNHCR’s guidelines on the Cessation of Refugee status. Article 34 of the convention urges states hosting refugees “as far as possible [to] facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees”. The UNHCR's guidelines go even further, requiring that the country of origin conditions must have “changed in a profound and enduring manner” in order to justify returns, clearly not evident in Syria to date. The guidelines also maintain that cessation of refugee status should not “result in persons residing in a host state with an uncertain status”, and notes that “any return may thus break ties to family, social networks and employment in the community in which the refugee has become established.”

Yet the Home Secretary's changes propose to create exactly this: a climate of uncertainty and fear for those granted protection in the UK. The same protective status that is supposed to provide a stable platform upon which to rebuild one's life is set to instead become a prolonged limbo, in which refugees are constantly required to prove their status as an individual at risk in their home country. This is all the more frustrating, as many individuals already wait years for their initial claims to be decided in the first place. Now they will continue to need legal representation every 30 months, which is itself either extremely costly or very difficult to obtain, with thousands of asylum seekers currently unrepresented in their initial claims.

Shabana Mahmood cited Denmark as inspiration for her proposed changes, referring to a consequent fall in asylum applications there. This is despite evidence which suggests that deterrence policies do not generally influence asylum seekers’ choices of destination. Indeed, she claims these are the “most sweeping reforms to tackle illegal migration since the Second World War”, and touts this as a move that will also help tackle “illegitimate claims” – despite the fact that, by its very nature, the policy targets recognised refugees, not people whose claims have been refused. The Home Secretary also fails to address the criticisms of Denmark’s policies, which delayed family reunification rights, passed legislation to seize valuables from asylum seekers and unsuccessfully tried to implement the offshore processing of asylum claims.

The latest in a long line of failed deterrents

These changes can be read in line with countless policies by successive governments, which appear to contravene the Refugee Convention, specifically the non-penalisation clauses in Article 31, and whose stated purpose is to disincentivise asylum seekers from travelling to the UK. Infamously, the Conservatives tried to legislate for third country removals of asylum seekers to Rwanda, to catastrophic failure. This was followed soon after by the criminalisation of those arriving by small boat, with a maximum sentence of up to four years imprisonment. 

Recent changes by the Labour Party have focused instead on settlement, and limiting the rights for refugees granted status in the UK. Here they have excluded those who arrived ‘illegally’ by dangerous journey – i.e. almost all asylum seekers – from naturalising as British citizens as they are deemed to fail the ‘good character’ requirement. Notably this policy has even been applied retrospectively to anyone that arrived in this manner, thereby targeting refugees who have already settled. 

A legal challenge to the policy has been brought by Wilson Solicitors. Amongst other grounds, they argue that the government’s policy is unlawful because it fails to direct decision makers to take account of the impact of refusal on Article 8 ECHR rights, which protect a person’s right to respect for their private and family life, home and correspondence. It also interprets Article 31 of the Refugee Convention, focused on the non-penalisation of refugees, to only apply to those who have travelled ‘directly.. from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of Article 1’. This has been a central issue in all the aforementioned deterrent policy challenges, as the government has argued, despite UNHCR guidance, that anyone who travels to the UK via another country in which they could have claimed asylum can be penalised accordingly. A peculiar new framework given the geography of the UK.

Last year the former Home Secretary also, perhaps most cruelly, suspended current family reunion provisions for refugees, where new rules are to be introduced “that bring financial and integration requirements in line with those expected of British Citizens”. Meaning they will likely be subject to a minimum income threshold (currently £29,000 per annum) should they wish to bring their families to the UK. Clearly an unreasonable amount for those recently granted status. 

Leaving aside the morality of such policies, the principal issue is perhaps whether these changes to refugee status will actually serve as a deterrent, as is Mahmood’s stated aim. To date none of the UK’s previous deterrence policies have managed to consistently reduce small boat crossings, despite their severity. It therefore seems unlikely that these changes will achieve a different result. 

They will however have a profound effect on those that are granted status here. Previously, a grant of refugee status drew a line in the sand to the torrid experiences peoples faced before: from persecution in their home countries, on route to the UK, and while awaiting a decision on their claim. Now that hostile experience is extended into the never-ending threat of cessation, with 20 years of recurring costs and bureaucracy required to continually maintain their rights as refugees. As with the other deterrence policies, it seems designed to prey on and expose the vulnerability of refugees, rather than successfully dissuade individuals from seeking asylum in the UK. 

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