Chaos in asylum system means small boat migrants can stay

FEWER than one in a hundred small boat migrants who arrived in Britain over the past year have had their asylum claims processed, leaving them stuck in taxpayer-funded accommodation including hotels.

Meanwhile there is a huge backlog of claims dating back to before June 2023.

The Home Office admitted that only 177 people have received a decision out of 29,976 who crossed the Channel over the last 12 month and applied for asylum status.

Asylum seekers cannot usually be removed from the country while they are waiting for claims to be processed, but they are also banned from working. It means they depend on public funding and housing.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper last night admitted the UK’s immigration system is “in chaos” but vowed to “turn things around” with 100 new officers recruited to the National Crime Agency dedicated to fighting criminal people-smuggling gangs,
Blaming the previous Conservative government, she said: “Record numbers of people were in limbo waiting for decisions, and £8 million of taxpayers’ money was being spent every day on hotel accommodation.”

The Home Secretary also vowed to end increases in legal migration by pushing employers to recruit British staff instead of overseas workers.

She said: “We have to tackle the skills shortages in key sectors like engineering, IT and social care which have left too many employers recruiting staff from overseas when we should be training people here at home.”

Ms Cooper has charged Bas Javid, the Home Office’s Director General for Immigration Enforcement and brother of former Tory Home Secretary Sajid Javid, with fixing the UK’s immigration system.

But Conservative former Home Secretary Priti Patel accused Labour of handing people smuggling gangs “a blank cheque to send more people to the UK” by scrapping the previous government’s plan to remove asylum seekers to Rwanda.

She said: “Alongside introducing a more robust deportation system, it is essential we have a credible deterrent to dissuade people making the crossing from France. That is why the Rwanda scheme which I championed is so important.”

Writing in today’s Sunday Express, Ms Patel also highlighted her plan as Home Secretary to house illegal migrants in detention centres where they could be closely monitored rather.

She said: “It was unfortunate that these centres were never introduced and I firmly believe they should be a feature in our plans to speed up asylum processing.”

Failure to process asylum claims means 7,348 applications from people who crossed the Channel in small boats before June 2023 are still awaiting a decision.

Nearly 30,000 asylum seekers are still living in hotels across the UK, although the figure is down from 50,000 last year.
Official data also reveals the Home Office is failing to return people who arrive in the UK illegally.

Out of 13,489 small boat arrivals in the first six months of the year, just 1,067 have been removed. Meanwhile, thousands of foreign criminals who should be deported are walking the streets of Britain with 17,428 foreign offenders who should be deported remaining at large.

Most have served at least 12 months in jail while others are criminals where deportation is deemed “conducive to the public good”, for example because they are repeat offenders.

And the figure has shot up from 12,681 a year previously - an increase of 72 percent.
In one high profile case, Ernesto Elliott avoided deportation to Jamaica in 2020 by invoking his “right to a family life” in a legal challenge, and went on to commit murder six months later.

He was convicted of killing 35-year-old Nathaniel Eyewu-Ago in south east London in June 2021.

But a damning report last year by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration warned Home Office logjams were largely to blame for failure to remove criminals.

He said officials “did not have a clear sense of priorities, and there was a disproportionate focus on managing cases, rather than making decisions and progressing the removal of foreign national offenders.”