Policy background
In 2022, over 45,700 illegal entrants entered the UK having crossed the English Channel in small boats; this compares to some 28,500 in 2021 and 8,500 in 2020 1 . In 2022, many of the illegal entrants originated from safe countries, such as Albania (28% of the total), and all travel through safe countries, such as France or other safe European countries. The annual cost of the asylum system is the highest in over two decades at over £3 billion, with £6 million a day spent housing migrants in over 300 hotels.
	Between 2015 and March 2023 the UK has offered refuge to over half a million (511,998) people, through safe and legal routes, including those from Hong Kong, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine, as well as family members of refugees.
	The Act creates a system in which anyone arriving illegally in the United Kingdom will not have their asylum claim, human rights claim or modern slavery referral considered while they are in the UK, but they will instead be promptly removed either to their home country or to a safe third country to have their protection claims processed there. The only way in which illegal entrants will be able to stay in the UK, and then only on a temporary basis, is if they can provide credible and compelling evidence that they face a real, imminent and foreseeable risk of serious and irreversible harm (for example persecution, torture or death) in the specific third country to which they are due to be removed.