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Retired British Army General has criticized the government for not expelling all Afghans working with Britain from Afghanistan after the Taliban took over Afghanistan.
General Sir John McColl said the UK was not living up to its promise to help its former staff and their families.
Last summer, the British government evacuated about 18,000 people from Afghanistan, including more than 6,000 British nationals.
How many Afghans have been resettled in the UK?
Prior to the fall of the Taliban, the British government launched a scheme in April 2021 called the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) to resettle Afghan citizens in the UK.
The Ministry of Defense says 9,000 people have been relocated to the UK since the start of the ARAP.
Under the scheme, Afghans who worked for the British military and the British government, including Afghan translators, can now settle permanently in the UK. Previously, they were given a five-year residence visa.
The Home Office said an additional 1,400 former staff members and their families had been relocated to the UK under the X-Gracia scheme since 2013.
In addition to the ARAP, the government has introduced a new scheme for the resettlement of Afghan citizens in the UK, the ACRS, in January 2022, under which 20,000 Afghan refugees will be resettled in the UK.
Under the scheme, women, children and religious minorities who are at risk from the Taliban can be brought to the UK.
In September, a government announcement said 5,000 Afghans would be brought to Britain in the first year.
The government announced in January 2022 that the first Afghan family had been resettled in the UK under the scheme, but did not say how many people had been resettled in the UK under the scheme.
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How many Afghans applied to leave Afghanistan?
The government has not confirmed how many Afghans have appealed for their expulsion from Afghanistan.
However, Raphael Marshall of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who has previously worked at the Foreign Office on the situation in Afghanistan, said that he estimated that between 75,000 and 150,000 people had left Afghanistan in August 2021. Had applied for
Raphael Marshall estimates that only 5% of the population has been helped.
How do Afghans settle in the UK?
The UK has taken a step called 'Operation Welcome' under which each council has been allocated 20 20,520 per person.
Funding will help refugees enroll in educational institutions, find work and integrate into new communities.
The government also announced that it would pay councils an additional 10m for housing costs in the first year, 5m in the second year and 20 2m in the third year.
However, reports are circulating that 12,000 Afghan refugees arriving in the UK are still being held in hotels.
The British Home Office said in February 2022 that the government was spending 1.2 million pounds a day on keeping Afghan refugees in hotels.
What do critics say about the resettlement of Afghans in the UK?
Gen. Sir John McCool, who served as the prime minister's special envoy to Afghanistan between 2005 and 2006, said it was "regrettable" that Britain was failing to deliver on its promises.
He believes that thousands of Afghans who deserve to come to Britain are still hiding in Afghanistan.
Immigration lawyer Sarah Pinder says government resettlement schemes are often too slow.
"It's very difficult to think that people can stand in line with an application and stand there and have immigration," he said.
He said that the criteria for obtaining visas are so strict that people get stuck between different schemes.
Shadow International Trade Secretary Nick Thomas Symonds has warned that government schemes in Afghanistan are endangering the lives of people there.
Some Afghan refugees are having difficulty working legally in the UK and are finding it difficult to rent a house because the government has not completed their paperwork.
How can other Afghan citizens come here?
Another important way to settle in the UK is to seek political asylum within the country's borders.
However, proposed changes to the UK's immigration system mean that illegal immigrants could be sent to the African country of Rwanda for processing.
Home Office figures show that the number of applications for Afghan asylum seekers in the UK rose from 1,417 in September 2020 to 1,974 in September 2021.
How many people did other countries expel from Afghanistan?
The United States has evacuated most people from Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power.
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| Afghan citizens are awaiting action after arriving in the United States on an evacuation flight (Photo: getty images) |
Other countries have evacuated a small number of people from Afghanistan.
Germany: over 5300
Italy: over 5000
Canada: over 3700
France: close to 3000
Since the end of August, some countries have continued the process of intermittent withdrawal. France has evacuated 258 people from Afghanistan by the end of April 2021. Last year, the number of Afghans applying for asylum in some EU countries, such as Greece, France and Germany, also increased.
How many British citizens are left in Afghanistan?
During the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the then Foreign Secretary Dominic Robb said that there were still a few hundred British citizens in Afghanistan but he could not say the exact number.
Mr Robb told a parliamentary committee that he had repatriated from Afghanistan all those who had only British citizenship, but it was difficult to estimate the exact number of British people with dual citizenship.
He said that not all members of some families have documentary evidence.
On December 7, 2021, Nigel Casey, the current Prime Minister's Special Representative for Afghanistan, told MPs that there were still around 200 British citizens in Afghanistan.
These statistics have not been updated.
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