UK squeeze on asylum hits Afghans and Iranians

Afghans and Iranians are increasingly being denied asylum in Britain since Keir Starmer's government took power, an analysis of the UK's migration crackdown by The National reveals.

New data for last year shows refugees from the Middle East and North Africa being rejected at the highest rate in years as the UK battles to clear a backlog of asylum seekers living in hotels.

Mr Starmer was warned he still has much to do to meet key pledges on immigration as new applications keep coming in, even as the system is overhauled to tighten the grounds for approving claims as well as raise the volumes processed.

Evidence also emerged that Syrians – who have had their claims put on ice since the fall of Bashar Al Assad's regime in early December – saw their acceptance rate in Britain falling to its lowest since 2012 even before rebels captured Damascus. People from Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco were also refused asylum more frequently than before, according to figures published on Thursday.

Afghans seeking refuge in the UK had overwhelmingly been granted protection in the years since 2021, when the Taliban took power amid a messy evacuation from Kabul that brought former British Army translators to Britain. But last year the rejection rate leapt from 0.7 to 18 per cent as more than 2,800 Afghans were denied.

The vast majority of the refusals came after Labour's general election victory in July. Iranians similarly saw their hopes dashed, with a rejection rate more than doubling to 29 per cent across last year, and higher still after Labour came to power.

In all, according to Home Office data analysed by The National, just over half of Middle East asylum seekers were granted protection in Britain last year, a figure that had been higher than 80 per cent as recently as 2021. People from North Africa have similarly seen their prospects decline.

'Restoring order'

Angela Eagle, a Home Office minister responsible for border security and asylum, said on Thursday that the Labour government was “restoring order” to the system. She said the rate of decision-making had “collapsed” in the last months of Conservative rule, pushing up the backlog of people waiting in hotels.

“We have spent the summer and autumn reversing that damage, increasing asylum-decision making by 52 per cent in the last three months of 2024, putting us on track to close more asylum hotels next month,” she said. “And we have already taken action to reverse some of the loosening of visa requirements introduced by the last government where we have found evidence of abuse.”

Before Mr Assad's downfall there was no similar rise in rejections for Syrians, although the 82 per cent approved was a lower figure than the near-universal acceptance rates during much of Syria's civil war. Many of the rest had their cases closed for administrative reasons rather than being formally refused.

The Refugee Council, a charity, said in a statement to The National that it was concerned about more than 7,000 Syrians now waiting in applicant limbo while the UK considers its policy towards the new regime.

“This is not only distressing for those affected, but also costly,” said the council's chief executive Enver Solomon. “We recognise the government still needs to determine the future situation in Syria, but it is in everybody’s best interest to find a faster way to move forward.”

Deportation push

Even rapid-fire rejections do not necessarily ease Labour's problems, instead creating a further backlog of people awaiting appeals or deportation and who may no longer receive Home Office housing. That number more than doubled to 60,000 last year.

The Home Office said it deported more than 2,300 people in the last quarter of last year after they failed to win a right to stay in the UK. However, thousands of people are still in Britain waiting to appeal their case, and the government “has so far struggled to reduce the number of asylum applicants in supported accommodation”, said Mihnea Cuibus, a researcher at Oxford University's Migration Observatory.

“The combination of more refusals, a long appeals backlog in the courts, and a moderate increase in asylum applications towards the end of the year have all contributed. As a result, the Labour Party has not so far made much progress towards its goal of ending the use of hotels for asylum seekers.”

Labour's election manifesto promised to hire more case workers and enforcement staff to end the asylum jam, using £230 million ($291.4 million) saved from clearing out hotels and ending the previous government's Rwanda deportation plan. It vowed to “turn the page” so that the asylum system “operates swiftly, firmly, and fairly, and the rules are properly enforced”.

With the anti-immigrant Reform UK party overtaking Labour in some opinion polls, Mr Starmer has sought to make a show of tough border policies. He recently announced plans to increase returns to Iraq and vowed to close what he called a legal loophole that allowed a family from Gaza to stay in the UK after applying to a scheme for Ukrainians.

Reform MP Rupert Lowe renewed the party's anti-immigrant rhetoric on Thursday by saying asylum seekers “broke into our country” when they crossed the English Channel on small boats. “Every single one should be detained and deported,” he said.