The list includes Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, South Africa, Ukraine, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. With them included, the list now comprises 24 states, including Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
As the UK Home Office said, the list is designed to prevent “large-scale abuses” of the rules for granting political asylum. The ministry calls the compiled list a list of safe countries whose citizens are not subjected to constant persecution at home and do not need constant protection from other states.
Let us add that in February 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the government’s intention to halve the number of immigrants by September. Because of the tightening of immigration rules, the number of asylum applications fell by 32% in the first quarter of this year, with an average of 5,000 applications per month. Last year, more than 110,000 applications were submitted to the British Home Office.
At the same time, according to Interfax, the British government reported that the list of countries whose citizens need transit visas when traveling anywhere via the UK has been expanded by 16 more states. Among them are Belarus and Moldova.
According to representatives of the British authorities, these measures are directed against those who try to obtain asylum and evade immigration control by claiming that they are going to a third country. The list of countries will include Albania, Belarus, Burundi, Vietnam, Gambia, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Macedonia, Moldova, Myanmar, Nepal, the Palestinian territories, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Sudan. The restriction for them came into force last Tuesday.