The Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) on Returns were signed during the inaugural Joint Working Group on Home Affairs meeting between Bangladesh and the UK on Thursday at the British Home Office in London.
According to a message received here today, Bangladesh High Commissioner in London Saida Muna Tasneem and British Minister for Countering Illegal Migration James Tomlinson-Mynors KC began the JWG meeting and saw the signature of the SOPs between the two nations.
The process that was previously in place for returning Bangladeshi overstayers from the UK prior to the UK’s exit from the EU is replaced by the Bangladesh-UK SOPs on Returns, which replaced the previously signed Bangladesh-EU SOPs of 2017.
In her opening remarks, Bangladesh’s envoy Tasneem recalled how the two Commonwealth nations’ values-driven diplomatic relations began with the long-standing friendship between the UK’s Conservative Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath and the nation’s father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The High Commissioner stated, “Bangladesh High Commission London in collaboration with UK Home Office has been returning certain numbers of undocumented Bangladeshis for more than a decade,” restating Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s zero tolerance attitude against irregular migration.
She stated that there are now very few undocumented Bangladeshis living in the UK and that, with assistance from the High Commission, the Bangladesh Home Office will collaborate closely with the British Home Office.
“The good news is that Bangladesh is not even within the top ten countries in terms of numbers of undocumented nationals in the UK, and yet we needed to formalize this MoU with the post-Brexit UK,” the envoy said.
Along with signing the SOPs, the Joint Working Group on Home Affairs also opened discussions on mutual legal assistance, extradition, transnational crimes, counterterrorism and extremism, and building the capacity of Bangladesh’s law enforcement agencies. They also covered opportunities for orderly migration, including skilled and high-talent migration from Bangladesh to the UK.
Khairul Kabir Menon, the assistant secretary of the Bangladeshi home ministry, and Bas Javid, the director general of the UK’s immigration enforcement home office, led their respective groups.
At the meeting were senior officials from Bangladesh Police, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Special Branch, and the Bangladesh High Commission in London.
