I thought that I would do a little bit of number crunching on the asylum seeker figures for 2014. I have given the link below. It needs a little bit of expertise to wade through the data, but I would be more than happy to help out if someone is interested.
Firstly, let’s be clear about the overall numbers. In 2014 just under 25 thousand people claimed asylum in the UK. In context this represents about 4% of people coming to our country. But actually the real number that should be used is the number of people who are granted asylum. Of the nearly 25,000 that claimed asylum in 2014 only 7,270 were granted asylum. Hence just over 1% of the immigrants to the UK in 2014 were people that we have granted asylum to.
Secondly, it is really interesting when you look at who gets asylum and who does not. I am not surprised that people from Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh want to come to the UK. They suffer corrupt governments and often lack opportunities to progress. Many will have friends and family in the UK. However, if they apply for asylum they are very unlikely to succeed. For example, 93% of asylum applications from Bangladesh fail. That looks pretty tough until you look at the figures for India. In 2014 of the 689 asylum applications from India only 2 (yes two) were accepted. Hence the idea that you can tell any old story and get in is simply not true. The vast majority of claimants from Afghanistan and Iraq are turned down.
So where do the successful asylum seekers come from? The big numbers that stand out are Syria (2,081), Eritrea (3,238) and Somalia (331). They each tell a different story. Let’s take Somalia first. From 2001 the numbers of asylum seekers have reduced by 95% (6,419 to 331). I’m not sure that I would want to live there but clearly now that some sort of normality have arrived there has been a vast reduction in people wanting to emigrate.
Syria shows the opposite trend. Even though it was a pretty horrible dictatorship, very few Syrians in 2001 wanted to claim asylum in the UK. 109 applied and 22 were successful. Not surprisingly as the civil war ramped up, so did the numbers. Just over 2,000 claimed asylum in 2014 and where a decision was made 85% were successful. To put some perspective on this number it equates to less than one in a thousand of those affected by the conflict.
Eritrea was the final country that I looked at. The numbers have been high for the last 10 years and virtually everyone (86%) gets granted asylum. Until the international community does something about the despotic regime I dare say this will continue.
To sum up, successful asylum seekers make up around 1% of the immigrants to the UK. Even if you come from a pretty dreadful country you are unlikely to be successful. And there is a clear link between civil war, conflict and people wanting to find safety. Even then, only if you come from somewhere where death and destruction are a daily feature are you likely to find sanctuary.
* Elwyn Watkins is an ex Parliamentary candidate and councillor from Rochdale/Oldham
24 Comments
Have you looked at what happened to those who were refused asylum, Elwyn ?
This looks right, but it would be helpful to split grants of asylum on application from allowed appeals.
Numbers are off here. If the question is “What fraction of legal immigrants are asylum seekers” then 7,270 is the wrong numerator. For a start, the number of asylum seekers who are allowed to stay in the UK is 8,096 (in the total grants column, rather than the asylum grants column – people who reveive Humanitarian Protection or Discretionary Leave get to stay in the UK). Counting people rather than cases (i.e. including partners and children) takes the number to 10,024. (Table as_02 in the report). Finally, we need to add asylum seekers who are rejected but stay in the UK after the rejection is overturned on appeal. Table as_14 says that 1,744 appeals were allowedin 2014 (not a directly comparable number, because the appeals decided in 2014 relate to decisions made in earlier years). If we assume the same ratio of people to cases then this adds an extra 2,159 people.
So in total, 12,200 asylum seekers got formal permission to stay in the UK in 2014, or almost double the headline number. On top of that are the failed asylum seekers who never get formal permission to stay but whom the government can’t or won’t deport, who technically count as part of the illegal immigration total.
I’m not blaming Elwyn here – I am pretty certain that the numbers are deliberately obfuscated by the Home Office – both Labour and the Tories had obvious motives to make immigration look smaller than it is. And in any case, the key point remains that immigration numbers have not been driven by asylum seekers for almost 10 years now.
Jonathan Monroe 4th Aug ’15 – 3:35pm Ilegal entrants are people on whom illegal entry papers have been served. Deportees (mainly convicted criminals) should be counted separately from administrative removals (mainly illegal entrants and overstayers).
Humanitarian Protection is a grant as a consequence of the Human Rights Act.
A grant of asylum does not automatically or immediately lead to a grant of Indefinite Leave to Enter (ILE) or Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR). In the past there was a military coup in Pakistan leading to an increase in asylum seekers to the UK, followed by a return to democracy, so that asylum seekers waiting for a decision were refused and some who had been granted found their leave to remain expiring. Similarly for HP.
Jonathan Monroe. I started looking at these figures last night and you are right in most of your comments. The data is certainly not easy to decipher. I was looking at applicants thereby not including their dependents. Presumably most of these are children. Does the substance of the argument change if we add in a few thousand children escaping from war torn countries?
My thanks to Elwyn Watkins and Jonathan Monroe for their analyses.
Migration Watch UK understandably studies the history of migration. Concerning Jewish migration (http://www.migrationwatchuk.com/Briefingpaper/document/48): “Another wave from Nazi Germany came in the 1930s- with perhaps as many as 100,000 coming.” That’s about 20,000 German Jewish refugees per year, probably rich or middle class people because they were the only people who could afford to get out, but still needing help to adjust to life in a new country. And it was a smaller UK population (55.5 million) in 1939.
Or we could assume the argument that only 50,000 German Jewish refugees came to the UK, 10,000 per annum. That’s about the same refugee status ratio to UK population that we’re supposed to be talking about. We (UK) managed it for the German Jews.
“Migration Watch UK understandably studies the history of migration”
Migration watch is not a credible source. Quite the opposite.
@Chris: “Migration watch is not a credible source. Quite the opposite.”
Err, that is why I quoted them and suggested that there are other numbers for German/Jewish migrants.
Right – let’s get some truth here. Take this from someone who was for three years a police officer attached to UK Borders and dealt with illegals every day.
Firstly, claiming asylum is but one route for an entrant. The choice is – claim asylum and get free accommodation and benefits (but with the proviso that you have to report to a police station every week or so and therefore stand to be arrested if your claim fails) or don’t claim it and go to ground as an illegal.
Most don’t claim it first off because a) they don’t have to commit themselves to giving a nationality and b) it’s more advantageous to go to ground and work illegally, and then claim asylum if they get caught. They know that the chances of being sent to a detention centre are slim and if they do get caught, well, the bonus is that at least they then get accommodation and benefits, even though by delaying the claim it’s very unlikely to be accepted.
By that time, of course, they’ve already had accommodation sorted out for themselves, so the trick is to rent out the property given to them by the government to gain extra income and top up the amount gained from illegal working.
If the asylum claim fails, then the benefits stop. That’s the time to make the first appeal. There still isn’t room in the detention centres, so they’ll be let out on bail and go to ground again and continue working in the back economy.
Get caught again? No problem – second appeal.
Get caught once more? Still no problem – go for judicial review.
Get caught yet again? Extend things still further by putting an an HRA claim.
And all this, remember, paid for by the taxpayer.
By this time, several years will have passed. Get up to ten years and they’ll stand a good chance of being allowed to stay through the HRA on a claim of ‘right to family life’, especially if they get someone pregnant and have a child here.
So – the figures really are a nonsense and are best ignored. Few of you will have seen a real asylum seeker. They’re the ones with the scars on their backs from the cattle prods (and they’re the ones that generally do get accepted). The rest are illegals, pure and simple, so don’t be fooled.
What Richard Stallard has written at 7.27pm is 100% in sync with verbal reports I have had from a couple of G4S workers. G4S presently have contracts to manage the accommodation of asylum seekers. ( And by all accounts it is very profitable ).
Strangely, those G4S workers have had to sign the Official Secrets Act. If everything is above board, why are those G4S workers being effectively gagged from mainstream press.? To be truthful, if what I’ve heard from the front line of G4S workers, Richard is holding back on the true scale of this asylum processing mess,.. and cost to the public?
Phil Beesley 4th Aug ’15 – 4:44pm Please see Golda Meir’s autobiography ‘My Life.’
Richard Stallard 4th Aug ’15 – 7:27pm Please give dates when this was happening. In all sincerity the dates matter a lot.
I was seconded there about five years ago, although I’m still very much involved in the area of law enforcement and I see it all the time.
I’m not trying to be controversial or anything, just trying to give you the best info I have and dispel a few myths. We are know that there are many genuine asylum seekers who genuinely need help, but the amount that (to put it bluntly) take the Mick, is still enormous. I suspect that just about every ethnic restaurant in my home town is employing illegals. Put it this way – when we were doing five or six restaurant raids a week over the course of three years, it was unusual to find even one that didn’t have someone illegal working there.
Most police officers I know are reluctant to ask people their nationality for fear of the PC brigade rounding on them. After arresting illegals for three years, I have no such qualms and will happily ask anyone their nationality and status in the country. I sometimes feel I’m fighting a losing battle!
Richard Stallard 4th Aug ’15 – 8:56pm Thank you. People need to hear that this is happening. You are more recent than the problems which occurred in the early years of the Labour government when massive queues caused by underfunding led to a situation in which it was possible to claim asylum in the UK and wait for maybe a year for the process to start after fingerprinting.
Shortly before the Human Rights Act came into force on 1/10/2000 every asylum claim was automatically considered for human rights as well, at least to the extent of Article 2 and 3. Wnen you are talking about a subsequent human rights claim do you mean marriage, etc under Article 8?
Not claiming promptly, particularly not claiming until after arrest, usually leads to credibilty issues, refusal of claims and dismissal of appeals. Asylum claims from India are unlikely to succeed because it is a large country in which peple can move about, and it is a democracy. They have had problems with terrorism.
Richard Underhil – To be honest, my involvement was (and is) more ‘front end’ than with regard to the courts and hearings side of it. As far as I am aware, lawyers would trawl for any HRA reason to put a claim in on so, sorry, but I can’t be specific on that. After perhaps months of trying to track a specific illegal down and arrest him, we’d often hear he’d put in a HRA claim and been released again on the strength of it. Very depressing!
Reference it being unlikely that asylum would be granted if they didn’t claim promptly: that doesn’t worry them. Don’t forget, it’s but one route, albeit a useful one if you want to spin things out for as long as possible through endless appeals etc. They money they get from benefits is pocket money compared to the amount they earn working illegally. Most of it gets sent back home by Western Union, so it leaves the county.
What we ended up doing quite a lot of was dealing with them under the Identity Cards Act, 2006. They needed false documentation to get employment (unless they were working totally under the radar) and a conviction for using such usually resulted in imprisonment with deportation at the end of the sentence. Often, they would then magically ‘find’ their missing genuine passport and agree to leave the country quietly and without making a fuss under HRA in exchange for not going to prison.
A not uncommon ploy is to take on the identity of someone already in the country, perhaps granted British citizenship. Once you have one set of real papers, with the collusion of the person with those documents it’s not difficult to obtain duplicates and a whole duplicate identity and history can be put together quite quickly. Unless they do something wrong and get arrested (so fingerprints are checked) they can live like that forever.
More difficult are those who refuse to declare their nationality on being arrested. They don’t (contrary to popular belief) very often destroy i/d papers they may have – after all, they’ll want to return home at some point – rather they hide them. We used to find quite a few hidden in copies of the Koran. They believed that we wouldn’t dare touch it and they usually had it with them, or at least had access to it!
Richard Stallard 5th Aug ’15 – 12:29am Yes, I understand. There is a rule that photocopies of documents are not acceptable, originals must be submitted, faxes are photocopies. Solicitors would say that they had honestly copied them, which would be true, but the process itself undermines the things looked for in originals. Colleagues would say “why are you suspicious?” but that was not the point, the rule should be enforced.
In the case of one country in Africa the originals did not contain enough anti-forgery devices to be worth looking at.
Thanks Richard for sharing, I have long suspected that this is what is happening. Growing up in Africa myself and arriving here I knew straight away the generous uk welfare state is going to be exploited to the point of collapse.
I have no proplem with people coming go here to improve their lot in life, and I don’t want to live in a police state were people can be stopped and asked to prove their Nationality, but I object to my taxes being used to subsidise somebody else’s lifestyle.
I have family struggling back home, I would rather send that money to them. I don’t believe high immigration rates and a well-funded welfare state are compatible, I am sure many here disagree, luckily I don’t think it will be too long before we find out.
Thank you Richard Stallard, we need more posts from people like you who know the reality beyond the statistics, but thank you too to Elwyn, Richard and Jonathan for the analysis. It’s time we had a discussion around solutions rather than the nonsense in the press. It is not a simple argument about our humanitarian response, as some would like to portray it, any more than it is at all helpful to pretend we can stop the ‘swarms’ by sending tough messages.
“Solicitors would say that they had honestly copied them, which would be true…”
Not always, in my experience! Let’s not forget, we’re dealing with highly organised crime. Example – three private hire firms employing illegals, all in different parts of the country. As soon as one of the ’employees’ starts to accrue too many points on their licences, or the immigration authorities start sniffing around, the individual is moved to one of the other firms and given a clean driving licence in a new identity.
We used to issue very large fixed penalties to businesses employing illegal immigrants. The fines would always get paid and the businesses never closed down. Why? Because the ‘community’ would club together in the local mosque to pay the fine as part of zakat (the obligatory alms-giving and religious tax in Islam) and keep the business open.
I have blogged on another thread about “snakeheads”, travel agents for illegal migration.
The phrase genuine “asylum seekers” does not make sense in law, although it is much used in the press. For instance someone may have left Somalia in the past, but that does not mean that they have suffered persecution for a Convention reason or would be at serious risk of being persecuted individually on return. These precedent legal cases tend to float up to our highest courts. Discrimination falls short of persecution and does not engage the responsibilities of the international community. Compulsory military service was common in 1951 and is an exemption despite the risks. Difficulty of travel between the country of alleged persecution and a Convention signatory is essentially irrelevant to the obligations of the safe country. It should be remembered that in 1951 many refugees had travelled against their will, for instance as prisoners of war and were unable to return if their home country was behind the Iron Curtain. Modernisation would require legislation and lots of international diplomacy.
All I hope is that a few of good people in the Lib Dems (of which there are many!) will read this thread and perhaps open their eyes as to what is really going on. I support the LDs precisely because most have their ‘sensible heads on’ most of the time. Unfortunately, there is a minority of people who prefer to take the easy route of uncritical support for immigration in all its forms and making compassionate soundbites over facing what is often the harsh reality of exploitation and organised crime on a grand scale.
To oppose unrestricted immigration isn’t racist or inhuman. It’s basic common sense.
Germany has taken in 300,000.
They try fot the UK because a many of them speak English rather than other European languages. The French welfare system is quite as generous as ours.
We took in German jews with great reluctance and not nearly as many as we should have done.
Studies show that immigrants contribute to the economy. My part of London would fall apart without immigrants..
“Studies show that immigrants contribute to the economy.”
The legal ones might well do. The illegal ones don’t pay tax! You’ve also got to remember that much of their money is sent out of the UK – billions are leached out of our economy that way.
Look, I don’t want to be controversial or upset you, but you need to look at the reality that much of what is going on in Calais is organised crime, pure and simple, and there is a dedicated and efficient organisation waiting for them in the UK to spirit them away, arrange false documentation and get them in under the radar to work illegally on behalf of organised crime. Trust me – I do actually know what I’m talking about (as you’ll see if you read the above posts). I’ve worked for the UN abroad as a Human Rights investigator as well as in this area of law enforcement in the UK.
All I’m asking anyone to do is to research the mayor thoroughly – from both sides of the argument- and be prepared for some shocks. Everything in the garden certainly ain’t rosy!
No – I don’t want you to research the mayor (he mightn’t like that!). Rather research the MATTER thoroughly!