1. So, what's *really* going on with the UK asylum system? Here's a deep dive briefing for #RefugeeWeek2022 and five key charts. 🧵
I like charts.
2. First, number of asylum claims. They've gone up, but only very recently and they are still way below the peak of 2002. Most arrivals are by small boat now, though.
3. Next, success rate. Asylum seekers or refugees? Both. The success rate is the highest it has been since the 1980s: 75% of all claims for asylum succeed, and that is before appeals. And it is higher for some nationalities, like Afghans, Iranians and Syrians.
4. Delays. They are getting really, really bad. This is recent and things have deteriorated on Priti Patel's watch. These waits are really bad for refugees as well as being expensive for the public purse.
5. Resettlement. This is right down on previous years, although that does not include Ukraine nor Afghanistan. Afghan resettlement has almost completely halted in 2022, though.
6. Removals. There were 113 enforced asylum removals in the whole of 2021, down from around 20,000 in 2005.
7. Finally, a bonus chart from the new UNHCR Global Trends report. The UK is way behind Germany, France and Spain within even just Europe.
1. Abandoning the Rwanda scheme would be a massive win for the Home Office. The department has limited budget, staff, time and energy. For years that has been frittered away on developing and implementing ideas that are not just impractical but actually make the situation worse.
2. The latest version of the Rwanda scheme involves declaring all asylum claims 'inadmissible' and a legal ban on refugee status being granted. Unless tens of thousands of asylum seekers can be removed to Rwanda then it creates a perma-backlog of asylum claims.
3. There are direct and indirect costs. We hear a lot about direct costs but the indirect ones are very important too. The direct cost is the perma-backlog, which is hugely expensive in money, staffing, management, barges, etc. As well as the terrible politics of asylum hotels.
🧵 1. The Illegal Migration Act prohibits any person arriving illegally after 7 March 2023 from being granted asylum or legal status. One of three things can happen to them: (a) be removed to a third country, (b) voluntarily depart to their own country or (c) stay in the UK with no legal status.
2. Voluntary departures likely to be tiny. So unless no. of removals to Rwanda is equal to or greater than number of new arrivals, there will be an ever-growing perma-backlog of asylum seekers who can never be granted status. More people will enter the backlog than leave it.
3. No-one thinks more than a couple of thousand of people a year can ever be removed to Rwanda, if that. So new arrivals have to reduce from c.70-80k per year to around c.2k per year or less.
1. I don’t think preventing care workers bringing their family will cause a shortage of care workers. I agree with @alanmanning4 and @robfordmancs on this. Plenty will still want to come here without family.
2. It is possible the average profile of care workers might change from women with partners and children to women or men without dependent children or partners. Not likely though.
3. The countries of origin may change. Some countries from which care workers traditionally originate have a long tradition of emigration for work and sending remittances home to families.
1. I don’t know about you but I’m totally exhausted. Doesn’t help that I’ve been bed-ridden for most of the last week, admittedly. The recent government “climbdown” on the minimum income rule for spouses and partners is a good illustration of why I’m so, so tired of it all.
2. The pattern is a deliberately or incompetently over-egged govt announcement which is so stupid or outrageous it will have a calamitous effect. Outcry and reality intervene. The government “compromises”. But the new plan is still a terrible one.
3. It looks to the media like a government climbdown and a victory for the campaigners. That’s the story. They move on. All the energy goes out of the campaign. We’re stuck with the compromise, no matter how terrible it is.
1. When Braverman (and many others) claims that refugees who passed through safe countries aren’t real refugees, she is arguing those safe countries should do more than they do already. Think about it in the real world for a moment.
2. In the UK we receive VERY few refugees compared to, say, France and Germany. Never mind Poland or Turkey or further away. Are we seriously telling those countries to “step up” or whatever, while we do so little?
3. And what are those countries supposed to do anyway? Detain refugees to prevent their onward movement? Accept transfer from us even though they already receive far, far more refugees than us?