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  "path": "/opinion/migrant-crisis-shabana-mahmood-labour",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-06T13:32:50.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.gbnews.com",
  "tags": [
    "Membership",
    "The GB News Editorial Charter"
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  "textContent": "\n\n\nThe Government have unveiled what they call a major new immigration crackdown. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, says she is restoring control of Britain’s borders.\n\nWe’re told the system will be tougher, faster and more disciplined.\n\nI don’t believe her.\n\nWhen you strip away the press releases and the political theatre, one policy stands out above the rest.\n\nPaying failed asylum seekers up to £10,000 each, or as much as £40,000 per family, to leave the United Kingdom.\n\nLet that sink in for a minute.\n\nIn a country where working families are squeezed by record taxes, sky-high energy bills and the cost of living, the Government’s solution to illegal immigration is to write a huge cheque.\n\nYou really couldn’t make it up.\n\nThe Home Office claims that this will save money because housing asylum seekers can cost well over £100,000 per year per family. But that completely misses the point.\n\nPolicies send signals. And what signal does this send across the world?\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nSimple… if you get to Britain and your claim fails, you might still walk away with tens of thousands of pounds - ten times the annual wage in many poorer countries.\n\nThat isn’t deterrence.\n\nThat’s advertising, and it’s effectively a giant billboard to the world’s people smugglers and migrant chancers.\n\n“Come to Britain. Try your luck. Even if you fail, you might still get paid.\n\nThat is not a border policy; it is an incentive.\n\nNow, to be fair, Mahmood has also announced tougher rhetoric in other areas. She says foreign criminals should not be able to enter the country and that those who break the rules could lose support or face removal.\n\nGood, why wasn’t this being done before?!\n\nOn paper, that sounds sensible.\n\nBut forgive me if I don’t pop the champagne just yet, because we’ve heard this all before.\n\nFor years, governments have promised control. Promised enforcement and promised deportations.\n\nAnd yet illegal migration has continued to rise to record levels, the asylum backlog has ballooned, and removal numbers remain painfully low.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nUnless you’re a Brazilian bar worker or maybe an Albanian who has tried their luck… but for the very people the public most want removed - the Channel migrants and visa fraudsters from countries like Pakistan… deportations remain close to zero.\n\nWords are cheap in Westminster.\n\nAction is what matters.\n\nAnd when the Prime Minister is Keir Starmer, a lifelong human-rights lawyer, many people simply do not believe that mass enforcement or large-scale deportations are ever going to happen.\n\nThe gap between their rhetoric and the reality is simply too wide.\n\nThis government has already become synonymous with over-promising and under-delivering… or let’s be honest, lying.\n\nTake another headline policy announced this week: visa restrictions targeting countries such as Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan to stop abuse of student and work routes.\n\nAgain, it sounds tough… I initially welcomed it.\n\nBut look closer, and it quickly begins to completely fall apart.\n\nThose countries account for a relatively small proportion of the visa system abuse.\n\nMeanwhile, some of the biggest sources of overstaying and asylum switching are barely mentioned.\n\nPeople are asking a simple question:\n\nWhy are certain countries missing from the list?\n\nPakistan and Nigeria immediately come to mind. That’s where the policy starts to look less like strategy and more like headline management and public relations.\n\nBecause if you really wanted to clamp down on abuse of the system, you would target the biggest sources first, not the easiest ones politically.\n\nAnd this is the problem with Labour’s immigration approach so far.\n\nLots of announcements. Lots of speeches. Lots of carefully crafted headlines, but very little evidence that anything fundamental is actually going to change.\n\nBritain does not need gimmicks.\n\nIt does not need pilot schemes handing out £40,000 cheques.\n\nAnd it certainly does not need policies that risk turning the UK into the world’s most generous consolation prize for failed asylum claims.\n\nWhat Britain needs is something far simpler, a system where if your claim fails, you leave. Immediately.\n\nNo cheques.\n\nNo incentives.\n\nNo negotiation.\n\nJust enforcement.\n\nUntil that happens, the message to the world remains the same.\n\nBritain is still open for a gamble.\n\nA no-lose gamble.\n\n**Our Standards:The GB News Editorial Charter **",
  "title": "One policy stands out in Labour's plan to stop the boats - and it's for all the wrong reasons - Adam Brooks"
}