Everyone, irrespective of political affiliation and moral viewpoint, can agree that the system for receiving and processing potential asylum seekers in the UK is in “crisis”. A backlog of more than 120,000 undecided asylum claims, reports of overcrowding at reception centres, a daily expenditure of £6.8 million of taxpayers’ money on boarding house and hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, to which can be added a “surge” of 40,000 arrivals in small boats across the Channel from France this year, all speak for themselves. Events such as a petrol bomb attack on the Western Jet Foil arrivals centre, a holding facility in Dover on 30 October by an aggrieved right-wing citizen from High Wycombe, and the forced dispersal of asylum seekers from Manston reception centre, near Ramsgate, the following day have been widely reported on and require no further comment.
Political instability, armed conflict, religious persecution, human rights abuses, economic inequality, and the impact of climate change commonly feature among the reasons why people choose to leave their countries of origin, seeking asylum on humanitarian grounds rather than relocating within their own homelands. The majority of the world’s refugees do not make it to the affluent West but end up in neighbouring low- and middle-income countries instead- Turkiye, Colombia, and Pakistan are among the world’s top destinations for intending asylum seekers. It also must not be forgotten that xenophobia, racism, and economic concerns frequently make refugees unwelcome in many host countries, especially when they do not share physical characteristics, religion, and cultural norms with the dominant local communities. For similar reasons, Poland, a country once averse to refugees, managed to accept around two million migrants from Ukraine to become the second largest refugee destination in the world this year.
Today’s asylum processes were developed in the aftermath of the post-Second World War refugee crisis and are primarily based upon the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Geneva Convention), to which the UK is a signatory, and the 1967 Protocol to that Convention. The asylum process in the UK has been updated by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which makes it harder for asylum seekers arriving through “illegal routes”, such as small boats crossing the Channel, who may be deemed “inadmissible” as having travelled via other safe countries, while favouring applicants who arrive with a valid entry visa.
Asylum seekers have to declare their intentions immediately upon arrival in the UK, either at an official port of entry or following rescue from small boats in the Channel by the Border Force, and if not, soon thereafter at the Home Office’s Asylum Intake Unit in Croydon. A successful claim for asylum requires the applicant to have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country, based upon race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a particular social group, and a demonstrable need for international protection against a risk of continued persecution, rather than the mere demonstration of past infringements on the person. Evidence has to be provided as personal testimony and in genuine and relevant documents, with translations by certified translators if required. Initial identity and security checks, including searches for concealed weapons, are carried out at the point of entry before transfer to a detention centre, where asylum seekers may normally spend no longer than 24 hours under the Short-Term Facility Holding Rules 2018. Following a confidential screening meeting with an immigration officer, during which possible involvement in criminal and terrorist activity are explored, an ARC (application registration card) is awarded. At a later date, a substantive interview helps determine the validity of the claim. Those identified as serious criminals or involved in human rights abuses in their countries of origin are not eligible for the protection of asylum in the UK. Asylum seekers are first sent to accommodation hostels before being rehoused in “dispersal accommodation” in flats or houses, which are frequently shared, around the country, until their applications are acted upon. A recent shortage of accommodation has meant that hotels, sometimes in tourist hot spots, have been drafted in to house the unplaced-a measure which has not found favour with several local councils
According to the UK Government’s website, “a decision on an application will usually be received within six months”, although claims may take anywhere between one and three years to be processed, with an average of 480 days. Home Office refusals of asylum can be subject to appeal. The appeal process commences in the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), followed by the Upper Tribunal, if permitted after a refusal in the first court of appeal. At times, a judicial review of refusal of appeal at the Upper Tribunal may be granted. As a last resort, new evidence can be submitted to the Further Submissions Unit for consideration, either in person or by post in certain situations. It is not surprising that the appeals process can be dragged out over months on end. A successful applicant is accepted as a refugee, with the right to apply for indefinite leave to remain (settlement) after five years, which can lead on to citizenship by naturalisation. During the period in the run up to acceptance, asylum support may include a subsistence allowance, accommodation, free state schooling for children, and free healthcare, as well as advice from asylum helplines run by charities. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work while their applications are being considered.
The UK has the attractions, or “pull factors”, of a higher standard of living, educational and employment opportunities, the existence of settled immigrant diaspora communities (and the associated likelihood of family reunification), and the universality of the English language, which apply both to legal immigrants as well as to intending refugees. It is important, however, not to conflate immigration (temporary or permanent), which is a means of filling skills gaps or reunifying families, and asylum, which is a humanitarian process that takes in people, including unaccompanied children, without necessarily considering their potential future contribution to the host nation’s economy.
The UK’s biggest single problem arises from the lack of formal agreements concerning asylum seekers with the EU and its individual member states. Post-Brexit relations have been frosty at times and belligerent rhetoric from both sides has hampered the UK’s desire to “take back control” of its borders. France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands have yet to agree bilateral “return deals” with the UK. The UK has also lost its access to EURODAC (European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database), a multi-national digitalised fingerprint database that is used to screen asylum seekers within the EU and may help identify members of organised criminal gangs found to be involved in human trafficking. Besides, on 23 September 2020, the Pact on Migration and Asylum, in place of the Dublin III Regulation of July 2013, replaced the criterion of first entry to determine the EU Member State responsible for processing an immigration application with a set of criteria instead, such as family considerations, recent stay in a Member State, and the mode of entry, either regular or irregular.
Refugees are considered by some UK citizens to impose a strain on housing, education, social services, and welfare benefits, and even more so at a time of economic crisis. To appease a significant section of the voting public, the UK Government has come up with a range of suggestions over the past year. These mostly reactive, rather than proactive, solutions have included deploying Naval vessels in the English Channel, the active push-back of asylum seekers, beach patrols and surveillance technology to monitor surreptitious human activity on the northern French coast (video, drones, thermal imaging cameras, automatic number plate recognition), and the use of offshore facilities or safe third countries (Rwanda; possibly Belize and Paraguay) to process asylum claimants. Some of these approaches are unenforceable or of dubious legality, while others have failed to gain sufficient traction to be of much use to halt what the Home Secretary has somewhat dramatically referred to as “an invasion”.
There can be no question that existing British asylum procedures are inefficient and, at times, inhumane. The numbers of potential refugees are such that the only sustainable solutions, in the form of political and economic transformation, have to be developed in their countries of origin- politically unstable states such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Eritrea, or economically disadvantaged states such as Albania. Meanwhile, the effective triage of asylum seekers should allow fast-tracking of high-risk groups, such as Christian fleeing the Middle East, unaccompanied minors, and the identifiable victims of human trafficking. The numbers of frontline Border Force staff available to deal with arrivals require a major boost. The story doesn’t end with the granting of refugee status. Much time, effort, and money have to be invested in refugee integration programmes to ensure the successful assimilation of the new arrivals. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of effective short-term remedies, other than streamlining and speeding up existing procedures, for the longer-term problems of international flows of people, with no clear solution in sight.
Ashis Banerjee