Record asylum figures prompt accusations of ‘stealth amnesty’

‘This cannot go on: we don’t have enough homes, GPS or schools to support this level’

A RECORD number of asylum seekers were granted permission to stay in the UK last year, fuelling accusations that Rishi Sunak has overseen a “stealth amnesty”.

Official figures also showed

1.4 million people were granted UK visas last year, as more foreign workers arrived in the UK than at any point since at least 2005 and officials cleared thousands of applications in an effort to cut a huge post-pandemic backlog.

There is growing alarm over Mr Sunak’s failure to get a grip on net migration, with the Conservative Party presiding over the fastest rise in modern history.

The Home Office figures showed 62,336 people were granted “refugee status or other protection” in 2023, the highest since records began in 1984 and almost double the previous peak.

Asylum applications fell in 2023, along with the overall acceptance rate, but for some countries the proportion of claims granted neared 100 per cent.

Acceptance on the whole fell from 61 per cent to 52.5 per cent, though 91.6 per cent of applications from Afghanistan were approved, up from 87.9 per cent the year before.

Afghans also made up the largest share of asylum seekers arriving in small boats last year, accounting for a fifth of all small boat arrivals in 2023.

Figures show that the overall acceptance rate would rise from 52.4 per cent to 60.8 per cent if Albanians were removed from the equation.

The number of people applying for asylum from Albania fell by almost 80 per cent following a deal struck by the Government last year to make it easier to return them to their country. Only 5.5 per cent were granted.

Many migrants are helping to plug gaping staff shortages at British hospitals and care homes, though the data also revealed a surge in the number of visas granted to the families of students and migrant workers ahead of a crackdown on dependants.

The number of asylum seekers recorded as withdrawing their applications also rose four-fold, with the vast majority withdrawn by the Government after the person stopped engaging with the system.

Greg Smith, Tory MP for Buckingham, said: “This stealth amnesty system is just absurd. You can’t just withdraw a claim without deportation. They shouldn’t be taken out of the numbers until the moment they leave the United Kingdom.

“When the acceptance rate is so radically different between the UK and other Western European countries, you’ve got to be asking the question of why. It makes no sense. That’s the bigger question I want answers to.”

Suella Braverman warned that Britain risked becoming “unrecognisable if this carries on” as she called on the Prime Minister to introduce “a cap on overall numbers”.

The former home secretary said the UK does not have enough homes, GPS or schools to support the current numbers as she reiterated her call for an overall cap to be introduced.

She tweeted: “1.4 million people were granted visas here last year. Asylum approvals at a record high. Work & student visa numbers, including many dependants, are appalling. This cannot go on: we don’t have enough homes, GPS or schools to support this level. The PM must adopt policies I pushed for that would have prevented this national disaster: we need a cap on overall numbers. Britain will be unrecognisable if this carries on. It’s not what the British people, including me, voted for.”

The data also showed there were 279,131 visas granted to dependants of people receiving a work visa, an 80 per cent increase from 2022. The rise was driven by health and care workers bringing their families to the UK, with NHS employees’ families accounting for 73 per cent of such visas last year.

The Government announced in December that it would tighten the rules to prevent care workers from bringing their families to the UK, as well as raising salary thresholds and increasing application fees.

Health and care staff will not be affected by increases in salary thresholds that will be brought in this April from £26,200 to £38,700. However, from next month, care workers will be unable to bring their dependants when they come to the UK.

Nigel Farage said the combination of work, health and study visas showed immigration was “completely out of control” in the UK.

Mr Farage, the honorary president of Reform, said: “The population explosion in Britain is continuing, and its bad effects on people’s lives just get worse,” he said. “They’ve failed.”

The backlog of people waiting for an asylum decision is now 128,786, down significantly from 160,919 a year ago.

The statistics confirm this backlog of cases had not been cleared by the end of 2023, despite a claim to the contrary from the Prime Minister that he had fulfilled a promise to do so.

As of Dec 31, 3,902 legacy cases – those where applications were made before the end of June 2022 – awaiting an initial decision.

In January, the Home Office was reprimanded by watchdog the UK Statistics Authority after the Government was accused of lying about clearing part of the asylum backlog when figures were released up to Dec 28.

1 Rise in asylum approvals

Asylum was granted to 62,336 people last year, the highest figure since records began in 1984. Afghans fleeing the Taliban became the largest group to receive asylum in 2023, at 9,500.

The new high last year is double the previous record of 31,641 in 2001, then largely granted to people fleeing Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq. The Home Office said the record number reflected a greater share of applications being processed and more decisions being made last year, as officials tried to clear mass backlogs.

2 Most visas granted in 18 years

The UK last year issued more visas than at any point since at least 2005, although EU citizens were not reflected in the statistics until 2021 as a result of Brexit.

People coming to work, study, accompanying family or fleeing persecution were granted 1.4 million visas in 2023. It marks a slight increase of 5,480 from 2022 and will kill any hopes of an imminent meaningful fall in net migration figures.

Mr Sunak has faced repeated demands to crack down on visas for foreign NHS and care workers to curb net migration, a pledge from the Government’s 2019 manifesto when it was at a rate of 226,000.

People coming to the UK to work and their family members made up the largest share of arrivals at 616,371 – up sharply from 421,565 the year before.

There was a slight dip in the number of international students and their dependants however, falling just under 20,000 to 605,504.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics last November showed net migration had soared past 1.2 million in the two years to June 2023.

The UK population grew by 672,000 people in the year to June alone from higher migration.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies warned earlier this week that higher net migration will put more pressure on already over-stretched public services like hospitals and schools.

3 Work visas continue to soar

Some 337,240 workers received a UK visa in 2023, rising by 26 per cent from the previous year and nearly two-anda-half times more than before the pandemic in 2019.

The Government has sought to clamp down on legal migration by announcing it will tighten the criteria for foreign workers such as increasing application fees, raising salary thresholds and blocking care staff from bringing over family.

But the figures released yesterday suggest the new rules will do little to stem the flow of overseas staff, as they exempt groups like health and care visas from higher salary threshold requirements.

Foreign workers coming to the UK to plug gaping shortages in hospitals and care homes were behind the largest increase in work visas, with the figure nearly doubling to 146,477 from 2022.

4 Fewer small boat arrivals

For Mr Sunak, a small glimmer of good news comes in new data on small boats and other illegal arrivals.

The number of people arriving through irregular means, such as on a small boat or stowed in the back of a lorry, has fallen by a third since 2022 to 36,704.

Four out of five of these migrants arrived on British shores in small boats. Afghans fleeing the Taliban’s brutal regime made up one in five small boat passengers.

Mr Sunak made “stopping the boats” one of his priorities as Prime Minister, though a poll earlier this year found that three-quarters of voters believe the pledge has gone badly.

5 Migrants bring more dependants

Family members arriving with workers and post-graduate students make up an increasingly large share of people coming to the UK.

The 337,000 workers arriving last year brought 279,000 dependants such as children and spouses.

Some 146,000 NHS staff arriving last year also received visas for 203,000 family members while a record 143,595 dependants accompanied 461,909 students in 2023.

It means that for around every three post-graduate students moving to the UK, one dependant also arrived. Five years ago this figure was only 12,806, meaning it has increased tenfold.

Overseas students from Iraq, Libya, Sri Lanka and Nigeria brought the most dependants, with 42,167 Nigerian students bringing 53,584 people with them in the year ending December.

6 Withdrawn asylum bids rise

The number of UK asylum applications withdrawn in 2023 was 24,027, relating to 25,583 people.

This was more than four times the number in 2022, when there were 5,255 withdrawn applications relating to 5,944 people.

The majority of these (79 per cent) were “implicit” withdrawals where the Government declares an application withdrawn if the asylum seeker goes off the radar.

Experts say the high number of withdrawals suggests most of these asylum seekers are still in the country.

Marley Morris, associate director for migration at the Institute for Public Policy Research, said the Home Office has “lost track of them”.

In November, Home Office mandarins admitted as many as 17,000 rejected asylum seekers were missing in the country.

‘The population explosion is continuing, and its bad effects on people’s lives just get worse’