IF YOU ever wanted proof that Britain’s political class has completely lost control of the immigration system, look no further than the latest ‘policy’ from Labour. Under plans released by the supposedly ‘hard-line’ Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, the government is considering paying families of failed asylum seekers up to £40,000 to return voluntarily to their countries of origin.
Yes, you read that correctly. £40,000.
People who enter Britain, who claim asylum, and have their claim rejected, who are found to have no legal right to remain in Britain, could now be handed tens of thousands of pounds in exchange for leaving the country.
This is not satire. This is Labour’s proposed response to the immigration crisis.
And the most astonishing thing about it is that nobody in government seems to realise what this will do. This proposal will not solve the asylum crisis. It will make it dramatically worse.
The moment you tell the world that if you come to Britain, claim asylum, fail that claim, and refuse to leave, you might still receive £40,000 to go home, you have created one of the most extraordinary pull factors imaginable: ‘Come to the United Kingdom. If things don’t work out, we will pay you to leave.’
You do not need to be an economist to understand what happens next. More people will come. Far more. On top of the nearly 200,000 who have already entered Britain illegally on the small boats since 2018.
This is the iron law of immigration policy that our elites refuse to accept: incentives matter. If a system seemingly rewards behaviour, that behaviour will increase.
And Britain’s asylum system is already bursting at the seams because for years it has rewarded the wrong incentives.
Think about the current reality. If you arrive in this country illegally, your current chance of being removed is 4 to 5 per cent. You are placed in taxpayer-funded accommodation. You are given financial support and healthcare. You know you’ll be drawn into a legal process, with free legal aid, that can take years to conclude, during which time you could work illegally.
Now add another incentive.
Even if your asylum claim fails – even if the British state concludes you have no right to remain – there may still be a huge reward at the end of the process.
A £40,000 exit package.
Much like the British state was recently reduced to the utter humiliation of paying a convicted sex offender to leave the country, under Labour’s proposals it could soon be using the British people’s money to pay failed asylum seekers to leave.
It’s difficult to imagine a clearer example of how to make a bad situation even worse.
Supporters of the policy will tell you this is about encouraging ‘voluntary returns’. They will argue that deportations are expensive and difficult to enforce, and that financial incentives might persuade people to leave.
But this completely misses the bigger picture. Immigration systems do not operate in isolation. They operate in a global information environment. Words travel. Reels on social media travel even faster. Smugglers advertise the incentives from one country to the next.
If it becomes widely known that Britain is paying failed asylum seekers tens of thousands of pounds to leave, that information will spread rapidly across the migration routes which already funnel people toward Europe, from Iran to India.
From the perspective of many people around the world, even a small chance of receiving such a payout could be life-changing. In the developing world, £40,000 is a fortune, equivalent to many years, even decades, of working in their home countries.
Which is why this policy risks transforming Britain’s broken asylum system into something that is even more absurd than it already is — a system where people are in effect paid for participating in it.
Meanwhile, the British people, who were repeatedly promised that immigration would be brought under control, are left watching a political class that is not only completely incapable of grasping the basics, but is also openly misleading them.
It’s not only that the British state has lost the ability to manage illegal migration and enforce its own borders; it’s also that it’s now actively planning to keep levels of legal net migration at between 200,000 and 300,000 every year until the end of the decade, if not beyond.
That was the key detail hidden away in the Spring Statement, buried in reports which very few people noticed.
So, if you assume that the level of illegal migration will now remain broadly stable, if not increase further, and net migration remains at these levels, Britain is looking at between another 1million and 1.5million entering over the next four years.
Another 1.5million looking for homes, GP appointments, places on NHS waiting lists, school places, infrastructure, and moreover the vast majority of whom will be coming from radically different nations and cultures outside Europe.
This is the reality that is unfolding around us, even if nobody in Westminster is willing to tell people the truth about what is happening in their own country.
What we need to do, when it comes to illegal migration, is move in a fundamentally different direction, following the course I have long advocated.
Leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Repeal Tony Blair’s Human Rights Act, which enshrines the ECHR into UK law. Immediately detain and deport anybody who arrives in Britain illegally. Process asylum claims offshore.
And use a combination of foreign aid and visa penalties to force nations to take their people back. It is absurd that people from nations such as Pakistan and India are trying to claim asylum in Britain while the British people are simultaneously sending those secure nations hundreds of millions of pounds in foreign aid.
The truth is that immigration systems function only when there are clear consequences for entering illegally or abusing the asylum process. If people know that unsuccessful claims will lead to swift removal, the incentive will be removed.
But if the system is slow, porous, and even financially rewarding, then the incentives flow in the opposite direction. More claims. More arrivals. More pressure.
At the same time, we need to end the disastrous policy of mass uncontrolled immigration, allow only a small amount of high-skill migration from culturally compatible nations, and bring the current era of masses of low-skill, low-educated migration from outside Europe to an end.
Put simply, we cannot go on as we are, or we will not have much of a country left. Which brings us back to the central question.
At a time when Britain is already struggling with record migration, collapsing public trust and growing political unrest over the issue, why on earth would any government introduce a policy that effectively rewards failure in the asylum system?
The answer, unfortunately, is becoming clearer by the day. For much of Britain’s political class, the priority is no longer controlling the system.
It is simply managing the consequences of losing control. It is no longer interested in saving the country – it is simply managing decline.
Paying people to leave the country is not a solution. It is yet another admission of failure.
This article appeared in Matt Goodwinon March 9, 2026, and is republished by kind permission.
