LONDON: The British government’s illegal migration bill, announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week, would have denied entry to thousands of refugees, some of whom have become leading figures in their fields since arriving in the UK, a charity boss has said.

Sabir Zazai, who heads the Scottish Refugee Council, told The Guardian newspaper he would not have found sanctuary in the UK had the policy been law in 2000, when he arrived in the country on the back of a lorry having fled Afghanistan.

Zazai also said Somalian-born, Olympic-winning runner Mo Farah, one of Britain’s most decorated athletes, would have been deported on his 18th birthday under the controversial policy, having been trafficked to the UK aged 9.

The UK’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman dodged questions from Sky News on Wednesday regarding the status of Farah under the contentious bill, which will see asylum-seekers who arrive in the UK via small boats detained and deported.

If passed, it will also introduce an annual cap, to be decided by parliament, on the number of refugees offered sanctuary in the UK, and only through safe and legal routes.

“There’s no regular route. If there was a regular route, I wouldn’t have risked my life and many other people will not risk their lives and the lives of their children,” Zazai told The Guardian.

“This would have affected all of us, not just [Mo] Farah or me, but hundreds of thousands of people who fled and live their lives here: The friends, colleagues and neighbors, the people who have brought so much to this country, all of them would be affected.

“There’s no other way my family or the families of many other people that could come to the UK, from places like Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Eritrea, and Sudan, places that we know that there are still ongoing conflicts.”

The bill has faced criticism in the UK and from international bodies, including the UN. It has warned Sunak’s government it risked “extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in the UK.”

During her interview with Sky News, Braverman insisted the policy was lawful.

She said: “We’re not breaking the law, and no government representative has said that we’re breaking the law. In fact, we’ve made it very clear that we believe we’re in compliance with all of our international obligations, for example the Refugee Convention, the European Convention on Human Rights, [and] other conventions to which we are subject.

“They are breaking our laws, they are abusing the generosity of the British people and we now need to ensure that they are deterred from doing that.”

Applicants for asylum in the UK currently must be physically in the country, and just 1,185 refugees were resettled to the UK last year, a 75 percent decrease from 2019.

Only 22 refugees came to the UK on the Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme.