The actual cost to process these migrants, according to Migration Watch is £956 million ($1,265,512,790 USD). And among the migrants, abuse, lies, deceptions and exploitation of the UK’s generosity (or foolishness) are rampant, as is the incompetence of British officials: “Separately, millions are wasted per year on cancelled flights for failed asylum seekers obstructed by legal challenges.”
The UK government also admits that “in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, they allowed people to remain in their accommodation even after their asylum decision has been made, positively or negatively, resulting in ‘an enormous strain on the system.”
Even prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the UK couldn’t afford the nearly 1.3 billion dollar USD tab for these unvetted economic migrants; many of whom have magically disappeared, including jihadists.
“The top five most common countries of nationality for asylum seekers are from Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Pakistan and Albania. Two-thirds of resettled refugees in the UK are Syrian nationals.” 2020 alone has seen 7500 migrants illegally cross into the UK.
British citizens are being treated as sitting ducks, exposed to the risk of jihad terror attacks, while their resources are being drained during a severe economic downturn due to coronavirus lockdowns to support these illegal, unvetted migrants.
“An Asylum System Overwhelmed and Abused,” Migration Watch UK, November 18, 2020:
Summary
1. The asylum system is being overwhelmed following a rapid rise in the number of claims (most of which have been submitted by ‘clandestine’ entrants), as well as by growing costs, falling productivity, disintegrating enforcement, ballooning backlogs and significant (and, according to the government, “increas[ing]”) abuse. We estimate that, should Channel crossings be able to continue on the present scale, housing/payments for asylum seekers deemed eligible after arriving via this route will cost nearly a quarter of a billion pounds over a decade. Asylum-related accommodation is under ‘enormous’ and growing ‘strain’[1] – with about £400 million spent this year to house 60,000 asylum seekers and failed claimants (the total number of people housed tripling since 2012). There are nearly 10,000 people in hotels. Separately, millions are wasted per year on cancelled flights for failed asylum seekers obstructed by legal challenges. Nearly £40 million is claimed each year for legal aid for asylum cases. Reform is needed to end asylum abuse and to stop the waste of taxpayer money.Total annual cost of asylum operations = £956 million
2. The total cost of the asylum operations has more than doubled since 2013/14, from £450 million to £956 billion (Figure 1 below).3. Although much remains unclear about where the bulk of the money is spent, we know that £470 million was spent in the most recent year for procuring goods and services for asylum-related activities (nearly £200 million more than in 2016/17).
4. The Home Office (HO) says[2] that the total amount spent on managing asylum operations includes taxpayers’ money devoted towards:
Deciding a case (screening clients, interviews and decisions), managing appeals, detention costs (where detention has been used) and enforcement costs (escorting and assisted voluntary returns)
Housing/payments for a current total of 60,000 asylum claimants/failed claimants.
5. We detail the scale of each of these functions below:a) i) Asylum decisions/appeals
6. These costs are not reported separately in the Home Office accounts. What is clear is that the number of asylum cases that officials are dealing with has risen substantially in recent years, from 60,400 in 2014/15 to just under 110,000 in 2019/20. The majority of this latter caseload consists of 66,700 rejected or withdrawn applications (which has increased by just over a third since 2015) while there are 42,700 cases waiting for an initial decision (which has more than tripled since 2015).[3]
7. As the workload has increased and backlog ballooned, staff numbers have risen by 50% from just over 400 to nearly 600 which is not commensurate with the 80% rise in workload. Not surprisingly there has been falling productivity[5], while the number of people waiting more than six months for an asylum decision has tripled in three years. While 87% of applications were completed in the first six months in 2014, the share fell to 26% in 2019.[6]
8. Meanwhile, the amount spent on agency staff working at UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI – the department which oversees the asylum system) has nearly doubled from £20 million in 2015/16 to just under £40 million in 2019/20.[7]
a) ii) Enforcement / detention
9. Immigration Enforcement believes asylum abuse to be worsening and ‘cites an increase in individuals making late or spurious claims for asylum while in detention, claiming for medical reasons or that they are victims of modern slavery. It believes many of these claims are used to delay removal’.[8] The existence of such abuse is well-documented by a range of independent organisations, including the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders (ICIBI).
10. Well over 200,000 asylum claims failed between 2004 and 2018 and enforcement action is often required to monitor and remove rejected claimants who have no right to be here. The overall net budget for Immigration Enforcement is currently £392 million and has declined by £47 million since 2015/16 when it was £439 million.[9] Only an (unknown) portion of this budget will be devoted to enforcing the rules as they relate to failed asylum seekers. The latest HO figures show that 41,600 failed applicants are still in the country despite being “subject to removal”, up from 24,700 in 2011.
11. Pakistan is the single largest source country for people who have had an asylum claim refused but remain here (4,000) and is a major contributor to the Migration Refusal Pool (14,000), according to the National Audit Office (NAO).[12] The Home Office also believes there is a severe risk that individuals from minority groups in some countries, including Afghanistan, Eritrea and Syria, are ‘misrepresenting their status in asylum claims’.[13]
12. Within the overall net budget for enforcement, the total spent on the function which includes detention and escorting services declined from £194 million to £167 million in the most recent year. A portion will be asylum-related. Despite the fact that, as the ICIBI said recently, clandestine entry is the ‘most common method of entry’ for asylum claimants, asylum-related detention is currently low. In May 2020, the government said: ‘There is no-one currently detained and going through the Detained Asylum Casework process’.[14] This comes in a context which has seen the government ‘significantly reduce the size of its detention estate since 2016, reducing its costs by £40 million (21%) [while] detaining people for a shorter time’.[15] The ICIBI suggests that some HO staff believe more use should be made of detention to expedite returns of those illegally entering on small boats….