The government has promised to allow all “genuine” asylum seekers to remain in the UK indefinitely, while removing people “with no right to be here”.
Home Secretary Priti Patel also pledged to bring in “rigorous” age checks to stop adults entering the country by pretending to be children.
And she said convicted people smugglers would face life sentences under a “fairer” immigration system.
But Labour said the government lacked “competence and compassion” on asylum.
And refugee groups called the proposals – which form part of the New Plan for Immigration that Ms Patel is due to unveil fully on Wednesday – “unjust” and “unreal”.
The Home Office said that “for the first time” the question of whether asylum seekers enter the UK illegally – via another “safe” country, such as France – would “have an impact” on how it dealt with claims.
The government would seek the “rapid removal from the UK” of rejected applicants, with appeals “reformed to speed up” the process, it added.
Ms Patel said: “If people arrive illegally, they will no longer have the same entitlements as those who arrive legally, and it will be harder for them to stay.”
But “genuine” asylum seekers – fleeing persecution or violence and coming to the UK via the “legal resettlement” route from countries such as Syria and Iran – would straight away get permission to remain in the UK indefinitely, the Home Office said.
Currently they have to wait for five years after being granted refugee status to apply for this.
Ms Patel said asylum applicants with criminal records who returned to the UK after being deported would receive a jail sentence of up to five years. The current maximum is six months.
And people smugglers – responsible for shipping many of the 8,500 people who crossed the English Channel in small boats last year – could get life sentences, she warned.
“I make no apology for these actions being firm,” the home secretary said. “But as they will also save lives and target people smugglers, they are also undeniably fair.”
There were 35,099 asylum claims made in the UK during the year ending March 2020, with Iran, Albania and Iraq providing the most applicants.
Responding to Ms Patel’s pledges, Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon accused the government of “seeking to unjustly differentiate between the deserving and undeserving refugee” by giving protection “based on how they travel to the UK”.
Kolbassia Haoussou, of the charity Freedom from Torture, warned many would become “criminalised”, adding: “These unreal proposals make it clear that this government isn’t serious about improving lives and creating a fair asylum system.”
For Labour, shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said the plans would “do next to nothing to stop people making dangerous crossings, and risk withdrawing support from desperate people, such as victims of human trafficking”.
But he promised to “study the detail of whatever the government puts forward” in its full review.