Asylum seekers who land on the shores of the UK would be detained and deported under sweeping new laws introduced by the British government.
The new law bars entry of asylum seekers who come to the UK by boats across the English Channel, prevents them from claiming asylum and would either turn them around or deport them to a third country.
Exceptions would be made for those who are under 18, medically unfit to fly or "at a real risk of serious and irreversible harm" in the country to which the government would have them removed.
Migrants arriving by boat would also face a permanent ban on re-entry to the UK and ever securing British citizenship, subject to only very narrow exceptions.
"And once you are removed, you will be banned, like you are in America and Australia, from ever re-entering our country," Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said.
Arrivals would be detained for 28 days "without bail or judicial review" before being deported, however the government is yet to release plans on where detention centres may be located and what third-party countries would accept them.
The bill also allows the UK government to set an annual cap on the number of asylum seekers it resettles via safe and legal routes.
Mr Sunak has made stopping boat arrivals one of his key priorities after the number of asylum seekers arriving on English shores reached 45,000 last year.
In 2018, around 300 people made the crossing.
"The prime minister made a promise to the British people. He said that anyone entering this country illegally will be detained and swiftly removed. No half measures," Home Secretary Suella Braverman told the House of Commons.
"The Illegal Migration Bill will fulfil that promise."
She said deterrence was key to reducing the number of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel.
"We want to send the message loudly and clearly to those people smugglers, to those people thinking about crossing the Channel: Do not do it," she said.
"Do not hand over your life savings, do not get into that flimsy dinghy, do not risk your life, because you will not be entitled to a life in the UK."
The new legislation will be debated in parliament and is not expected to pass for some months, but will be backdated to apply to anyone who reached the UK from the moment Ms Braverman announced the plan.
Opponents doubt bill passes international law
Opposition parties and charities have questioned whether the latest plans would be any more effective than previous attempts to deter people from making the crossing, and voiced concerns about practical and legal issues to the proposals, including where migrants can be deported to if they cannot claim asylum.
Maria Brul from advocacy group Detention Action said Australia's similar hard-line approach to asylum seekers showed an enormous human cost.
"What we know within the Australian context, seeing people indiscriminately detained and held indefinitely is having huge human costs on people's mental health, having huge impacts on their wellbeing and that it is just causing a huge amount of long-term damage on individuals," Ms Brul told the ABC.
The Refugee Council said the new legislation would "shatter the UK's long-standing commitment under the UN Convention to give people a fair hearing regardless of the path they have taken to reach our shores".
Shadow Home Affairs Minister Yvette Cooper accused the government of "ramping up the rhetoric on refugees" without solving the "deeply damaging chaos" in Britain's asylum system.
"This bill isn't a solution," she said. "It is a con that risks making the chaos even worse."
Ms Braverman told her colleagues in parliament that she was "confident" the legislation complied with international laws such as the UN Refugee Convention and European Convention on Human Rights.
She has previously said the bill would push "the boundaries of international law" without breaking it.
Under the bill, Ms Braverman announced, those seeking asylum in the UK would also no longer be able to use anti-slavery laws to try to block their removal to another country.
One of the countries asylum seekers would be rerouted to is likely to be Rwanda, given the existence of a Boris Johnson-era policy in which some would be sent on to the African nation to claim asylum there.
That policy is yet to deport anyone. It is currently paused awaiting appeal after the High Court ruled in favour of the UK following a last-minute injunction by the European Court of Human Rights to block the first deportation flight.
Refugee policies revisited as mass migration overwhelms
The UK and Europe have seen a massive increase in the number of people seeking asylum in recent years.
The UK saw a 400 per cent increase on migrants crossing the English Channel between 2020 and 2022.
Countries in the EU received almost 1 million applications for asylum in 2022 alone, an increase of more than 50 per cent on 2021.
That figure does not include the nearly 4 million Ukrainian refugees who fled into Europe when Russia initiated its war.
European border countries such as Italy and Spain have called for reform on the EU's commitment to asylum seekers.
The bloc's laws legislate that EU countries have an obligation to see out claims for asylum seekers who reach their territory, but some EU members want to see negotiations with the countries they flee to reduce the number of people departing in the first place.
Britain receives fewer asylum-seekers than Italy, Germany or France, but thousands of migrants from around the world travel to northern France each year in hopes of reaching the UK.
The Brexit campaign to leave the European Union in 2016 touted an end to uncontrolled immigration, but successive governments have so far failed to stop the arrivals.
