Angola, Namibia<\/a> and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that travel restrictions could be imposed unless they improved cooperation on repatriating their citizens, underscoring rising tensions over immigration compliance.\n <\/p>\n\n The DRC has now been stripped of fast-track visa services and preferential treatment for senior officials after failing to meet Britain\u2019s requirements on returns cooperation, Reuters reported.\n <\/p>\n
\n Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the UK could go further and impose a full visa suspension on the DRC unless \u201cco-operation rapidly improves.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n “We expect countries to play by the rules. If one of their citizens has no right to be here, they must take them back,” the Home Secretary added.\n <\/p>\n
New immigration reforms accelerate deportations<\/p>\n
\n The moves represent the first significant steps under reforms announced last month aimed at making refugee status temporary and accelerating the removal of people who enter the UK illegally.\n <\/p>\n
\n Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the UK has removed more than 50,000 people with no right to remain since July last year, a 23% increase compared with the previous period, adding that diplomats have been instructed to prioritise deportation agreements.\n <\/p>\n
\n The UK\u2019s stance emphasises the growing use of visa policy as a diplomatic lever to force cooperation on migrant returns.\n <\/p>\n
\n The restrictions are intended to pressure governments to meet their obligations on repatriation, a tactic that has also been adopted by other European countries, including Germany and France, in dealings with African states.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain has reached agreements with Angola and Namibia to take back illegal migrants and criminal offenders, the UK…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102],"class_list":{"0":"post-2937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-namibia","8":"tag-namibia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}