LONDON:
In 2024, the largest group of asylum seekers was from Pakistan, followed by Afghanistan. In previous years, they mainly came from Syria and Iran.
The British Labor Government has committed to reducing a backlog in asylum requests and ending “the costly use of hotels to house asylum seekers”, saving a billion pound sterling per year, Minister of Finance Rachel Reeves said on Wednesday.
“The financing that I have provided today … will cut the back of the asylum, will hear more cases of appeal and will make people who have no right to be here, which saves one billion pounds per year,” said Reeves in his expenditure examination which defines expenses and cash savings in the coming years.
The number of British asylum seekers has increased sharply in recent years, with tens of thousands of requests waiting to be decided, according to official figures.
The work, which came to power last July, began to tackle the situation.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer began official talks with unrecognized countries to create “return centers” outside the United Kingdom for those who have exhausted all legal avenues to stay in the country.
The number of asylum seekers in the United Kingdom tripled at 84,200 in 2024, compared to an average of 27,500 between 2011 and 2020.
In 2022, there were around 13 asylum applications for 10,000 people in the United Kingdom, compared to 25 asylum applications for 10,000 people in the EU at the same time.
Some 11% of migrants in the United Kingdom were asylum seekers or refugees in 2023 – almost twice as high as the figure of six percent 2019.
The number of people crossing the chain in makeshift boats, a path that practically did not exist before 2018, has in the meantime increased sharply in recent years.
