- Record High Pending Asylum Cases in the UK
- Challenges Faced by Asylum Seekers During Processing
- Small Boat Arrivals and Afghan Resettlement
The latest Home Office numbers show a record number of UK asylum seekers awaiting a judgement.
More over 175,000 refugees awaited a verdict in June 2023, up 44% from the previous year.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak set a December 2022 deadline to clear the inherited backlog.
Since then, officials have cleared an average of 2,061 cases per month.
With 67,870 cases remaining, the Home Office must process 11,311 cases per month to reach its objective.
The legacy backlog refers to asylum requests submitted before June 2022.
The number of pending cases refers to primary claimants, while the number of persons includes family members and other dependents.
Asylum seekers leave their home country, enter another, and apply for international protection and residency.
In the United Kingdom, asylum applicants are prohibited from working and must rely on state assistance. Asylum seekers are furnished with housing, but cannot choose where it is located.
Rose (not her actual name), a single mother from Cameroon who arrived in the United Kingdom in August 2019, has been awaiting the processing of her asylum claim for four years.
Rose has enrolled in a college course in IT and expects to work in computing. But she cannot be employed until her refugee status is confirmed, as is the case for all asylum seekers.
“I struggle with not knowing what the future holds,” she explained, adding that she also suffers from anxiety and depression.
She and her companion Mohammed are both members of the London-based charity Praxis’s youth group for asylum seekers.
They both entered the United Kingdom on visitor visas before claiming asylum.
Mohammed stated that he left Ghana for the United Kingdom due to discrimination he confronted as a bisexual man.
“I chose to come to Britain because it is the most protective country,” he explained.
“If I travel to a foreign European country, I may encounter racism. This country will have less,” he said.
The Home Office stated that it was “on track” to eliminate the legacy backlog and that the number of withdrawn asylum claims had increased as a result of “our efforts to eliminate the asylum backlog.”
“[They] occur for a variety of reasons, including when an individual has left the United Kingdom before their claim was processed or when they choose to submit another application for permission to remain,” a spokesperson explained. In the three months leading up to June 2023, the number of pending cases increased by less than 1 percent. Which the Home Office interpreted as a “deceleration in the growth of the backlog.”
A spokesperson for the Home Office stated that the department remained committed to reducing immigration levels and that the system was working to attract the “best and brightest” to the United Kingdom.
However, according to Labour, the latest migration statistics demonstrate that the government has “lost control” of the immigration system.
Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, stated, “This legacy nonsense is ludicrous, considering they’ve been in power for 13 years and a backlog has accumulated.”
Dr. Peter William Walsh, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, stated that the backlog remained “obstinately high” despite a decline in asylum claims and an increase in Home Office asylum caseworkers.
“The rate of decision-making would have to be more than doubled for the government to meet its pledge to eliminate the so-called ‘legacy backlog’ of older claims by the end of the year,” he said.
Small boats brought 44,460 people in the year to June 2023, a 26% increase over the previous year.
More than half of these individuals arrived between August and October of 2022. August of last year saw the highest number of arrivals since data collection began.
In the twelve months preceding June, 26% and 21% of small boat arrivals were composed of Albanians and Afghans, respectively.
The number of Afghans arriving aboard small boats has grown since the Taliban gained power in summer 2021. And they are the most prevalent nationality as of 2023, according to the Home Office.
Afghan nationals have access to two resettlement programs: the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, for those who worked for the British government in Afghanistan and fear Taliban reprisals, and the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), which prioritizes women, children, and religious and ethnic minorities.
In the year to June, 233 ACRS refugees were placed in the UK.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) United Kingdom stated that the numbers “reveal the shocking reality of the government’s failure to protect vulnerable Afghans” and that there are insufficient secure routes for refugees from countries such as Afghanistan.
Laura Kyrke-Smith, executive director of the International Rescue Committee, stated that the majority of the nearly 10,000 Afghans seeking refuge in the United Kingdom were forced to undertake perilous crossings of the English Channel.
A government spokeswoman said, “There are safe and legal ways to enter the country,” and called ACRS “generous.”
