Asylum fraudsters are taking the British public for a ride

The UK’s asylum system has been broken for years. As the British public knows all too well, anyone can arrive and seemingly no one can be deported. This week’s revelation that just one per cent of asylum claims are genuine strips the British state of the little credibility it had left.

The Home Office whistleblower who leaked this information to The Times has caused a predictable degree of outrage. But we shouldn’t be so shocked. Our asylum system has been completely overwhelmed and incompetently managed for some time.

Since the start of 2021, there have been over 200,000 grants of leave or protection at the initial decision-making stage. This inexplicably includes individuals from Canada, Ireland, Germany and a host of other developed countries that are quite clearly not in a parlous state.

The UK government will point to a recent increase in initial rejections, but three-quarters of these go on to appeal. This adds to the already huge immigration-tribunal backlog, where a significant number of claims are subsequently upheld on spurious, scarcely credible grounds.

Historically unprecedented pressures are being placed on the asylum system. Between 2003 and 2021, the number of annual asylum applications rarely exceeded more than 45,000. In 2024, there were a record-breaking 108,000 applications. Despite Labour’s talk of bringing down applications since entering office, there have been 86,000 lodged in the past 12 months.

The Home Office is not fit for purpose during the best of times. It is manifestly incapable of dealing with an escalating crisis such as this.

The department’s own data suggests that just half of asylum claims are actually being processed to a satisfactory standard. This week, the UN – hardly a cheerleader for strong border protection – has warned that Britain is awarding asylum to undeserving individuals.

Rejecting a claim takes time that caseworkers do not have. When faced with a mountain of paperwork, it is much easier to copy and paste a boilerplate approval letter than to spend hours refuting every point raised by the applicant. In the rare instance that the Home Office does issue a rejection letter, it acts as nothing more than a stimulus for more inventive claims to be conjured at the appeal stage.

This is how we end up with, according to the Home Office whistleblower, hundreds of Kurdish men being granted asylum on the basis of being in a relationship with the same woman – the daughter of Kurdistan’s prime minister. A running joke in the Home Office apparently, but an example of what most of us have long suspected: that our asylum system is a farce.

In March, home secretary Shabana Mahmood proposed that refugees should be expected to return home once their country is deemed to be safe. But this misses the point. Asylum seekers are not being allowed to stay because their country is in upheaval. They are here because they have been able to concoct tales of woe that hit all the right notes for our naive human-rights and modern-slavery framework.

We have on our hands here a system that is beyond reform. The longer it is allowed to continue, the greater the social corrosion and economic ruin that must be contended with.

The Home Office spent £4.9 billion on core asylum provision last year, not including the eye-watering amounts squandered on legal aid and healthcare. And these are just the immediate costs. The cost to the British state stretches far into the future. Even eight years after being granted asylum, less than half of migrants will be in work. The median wage of those actually in a job is less than £14,000 per annum.

The pressure on the UK’s infrastructure and finances is one thing, but it is nothing compared to the impact on our social fabric. Outrage over the near-daily reports of sexual assaults and heinous crimes carried out by asylum seekers is ubiquitous. The anger is exacerbated by the fact that these atrocities are entirely avoidable – each one the direct result of government failure.

Our public spaces have now been commandeered by groups of young men, squeezing the pre-existing citizenry into the margins. The average British town is now an asylum seekers’ playpen, which just happens to have a community attached. Public order has been obliterated by the number of illegal immigrants brazenly working for delivery companies, in vape shops and at car washes.

We have voted against this mess, consistently. We have been told the problem will be sorted, and that the very best brains are working on a solution. But the situation only seems to get worse.

We are staring down the barrel of a democratic crisis. Regaining public trust will require more than simply a commitment to prevent future error. Those mistakes already made must be reversed. This entails not just the suspension of the asylum system, but a root-and-branch review of all grants made in recent years, and the removal of all who entered via illegal means. Enough is enough.

Rob Bates is the research director at the Centre for Migration Control.