Taliban spokesperson said that Afghanistan will accept UK boat people deportees. – Michael
Nigel Farage has set out his stall on how to deal with the illegal immigrants crossing the channel in small boats when he becomes the next Prime Minister! Part of the plans include extensive returns to their countries of origin one of which is Afghanistan. He would return all ‘boat people’ as under his strategy illegal immigrants would lose their right to asylum. To enforce this, he’d opt out of the existing international treaties and judicial framework as they present a massive blockage. It is said that these legal structures on asylum are out of date as they were put in place post-WW2.
Historically it seems that it has been all but impossible to get countries of origin to accept returns and so it is extremely refreshing to read today that an Afghan official has stated unequivocally that Afghanistan will accept into their country illegal immigrants deported from Britain.
A senior Taliban official said they would “embrace” any Afghans sent back under the Reform leader’s plan, unveiled on Tuesday, to deport 600,000 illegal migrants. – The Telegraph newspaper online
Importantly, overall, between 2018 and 2024, Afghan nationals represented about 15% of all small boat arrivals to the UK. The largest single ethnic group at some stage as I understand it. In 2023, they were the most common nationality among small boat arrivals, comprising 19% of the total.
In the year ending March 2025, Afghans were the most common nationality among irregular arrivals to the UK, with 6,051 individuals detected. Of these, 95% arrived via small boats.
And so, this is excellent news in the battle to solve this intractable problem. At the moment the law works against deporting illegal immigrants in several ways one of which is the incredibly slow working of the judicial system sometimes taking three years to assess the asylum application which encourages the applicant to disappear into the grey British labour market. And it creates huge societal tensions. This undermines government. Starmer must be very concerned as he can foresee a catastrophic election defeat at the end of this Parliament.
But if this ineffectual Labour government could toughen up the judges and reject more Afghan applicants (and forbid appeals) they could fly then back to Afghanistan in the not-too-distant future. This is a move that could happen relatively quickly and if so, it would send a brilliantly clear signal to prospective boat people. It would act as a deterrent which is sorely needed.
At present almost everything the UK does regarding the boat people encourages them to make that dangerous journey across the English Channel. The opposite is desperately required.
P.S. All genuine asylum seekers must be treated with respect and dignity. I am not a right-wing nutcase. I am sensitive to the desires of brave immigrants but there must always be a limit. There is a limit to freedoms and human rights and there is a limit to the number of illegal immigrants the country can accept.
More: Starmer
Update 27th August 2025. The Times reports that this story is untrue. The Taliban spokesman has said that there is no such agreement and also Farage confirmed that there had been no dialogue with the Taliban on this.
Further update: The Telegraph also states that the Taliban are building homes to house returning refuges which supports the story that they are willing to accept deportees from the UK. Slight confusion over this story but the Telegraph seem to be ahead of other newspapers on this. Wait and see.
Further update: some confusion! The IBTimes reports that a Talian spokesman said that it will easier to work with Farage than Starmer and they’d do a deal on accepting returns for money.
