by Elisabeth Dampier, Statement
On 6 September, The Times published the testimony of a Home Office decision-maker who said he had assessed thousands of asylum applications. His conclusion was extraordinary.
“At best 1 per cent of asylum seekers are genuine. There’s almost no aspect of the asylum system that isn’t either a massive fraud or just really dysfunctional”, said the official, identified only as “J”.
The figure cannot be independently verified and another official has called it an “exaggeration”. Yet the examples J describes paint a disturbing picture of an asylum system vulnerable to organized abuse and structured in ways that can make granting a questionable application easier than refusing it.
Among the most striking examples are what officials reportedly call “package claims”: groups of applicants arriving with remarkably similar stories.
J said hundreds of Iraqi Kurdish men had claimed to fear persecution because they had been involved with the daughter of the Kurdistan region’s prime minister. Hundreds of Pakistani men, he said, claimed to be gay and at risk because of relationships with the same supposed boyfriend in Pakistan, who provided supporting letters.
Some applicants even submitted photographs taken at the same London venue. Bangladeshi applicants allegedly claimed senior positions in the Awami League or its student organization but struggled to demonstrate meaningful knowledge of the movement beyond political slogans.
Migrants Are Taking Britain for a Ride – and We’re Letting Them by Steven Tucker, The Daily Sceptic