Immigration - wanting some stats

Don’t fret. You are the first, and better info has been on this thread. I don’t talk politics in real life.

Probably about as many as bought the soundbite 'immigrants are good for the economy' without applying any critical thought or recognising that some immigrants are, some aren't, and it's not impossible to tell the difference when deciding on immigration strategy...

Scary thing is… I wonder how many people that poster has told this story to, who have taken it as gospel

You just found Rachel some savings.

Completely agree. He was talking absolute rubbish.

He was showing off to his FIL that he had insider information that was in fact… fiction

It seems that the 30k illegal arrivals a year who we decide don't have an asylum case - after all that work analysing their case, costing maybe £2billion for those failed applicants alone (£5.5 bn total for asylum seekers a year) we still can't get them out of our country.

That's what the biggest problem, and can't continue.

We seem to have slightly higher acceptance at first decision than France, but not a huge difference. This doesn't take onto account how we deal with appeals though, which seem to be absolutely standard, and just used to string out the process. Not allowing appeals seems like it should be a political choice we could make, but the human rights lot would make a lot of noise!

Interestingly Denmark have similar initial acceptance at first decision to us - but are known to be really tight on what asylum means. No permanent right to adylum - it's reassessed periodically - and no right to bring in dependents. It's those restrictions which have made the difference to their numbers .

Anecdotally, at the tail end of the pandemic, I was in a restaurant earwigging a young man explaining to his father in law that the UK is just waving applications through to clear the backlog because our internal rules make it so difficult to say no. He worked in the civil service reviewing applications. He remarked that our approval rate is six times that of France.

Now obviously, I was eavesdropping on an unverified stranger. But, if there is any truth to it, we have made ourselves a soft option. This will only turn around if we sort out our administration, including laws.

Identifying where they come from is tricky since we don't have surveillance data from overseas, especially the countries they originate from like Syria, Eritrea, Sudan. So it is pretty tricky to know where to deport them to. The Rwanda scheme did allow for resettlement of successful asylum seekers as well as processing. I think resettlement elsewhere (regardless of origin) might end up being the only way to stem the flood - but it will get a lot worse before we accept that. What I find interesting is that in the reports, they do seem to know where the asylum seekers came from - but somehow that isn't enough to deport them back there.

We do actually have enough surveillance in the UK that people can pretty much be tracked. I'd expect that if the political will was there, we could set up a system where we take photos of all illegal arrivals and then use existing techniques to look for them on publicly-managed surveillance if they go into hiding.

Our coastguards are aware of a good number of the small boats arrivals so if we chose to, we could have most of the new arrivals in custody when they arrive: for either deportation or to register them for tracking if they go into hiding.

Who knows how many more come in unnoticed into small harbours, but that could fairly easily be tightened up with more surveillance and explicit responsibilities on the harbour masters. It's a loss to our relaxed way of life for legitimate boats: this is the kind of social enshittification we're forced into into by bad actors, which tbh does really piss me off.

What I find really amazing is that in the age of suicidal empathy and incredible over-reach by the humans rights lobby, even though all this is technically possible - and necessary, the sooner the better - none if it will happen.

It's amazing that in the age of such surveillance technology and AI, simply throwing your passport away or hiding means that no one can deport you. Technology really can't solve everything.

Op won’t be bothered to do that. Not a chance. Doesn’t genuinely want to understand the issue.

This is toe-curling

can anyone help me out with this logic?

we don’t have what I suspect would be the hours necessary for you to work out any kind of logic OP

I’m a HO Civil Servant and agree your thought process is odd.

At least look at the rate of initial decisions (under HO control) compared to the appeals backlog (Not under HO control). The majority of people get a decision fairly quickly and then start on the rounds of endless appeals, human rights appeals, Judicial Reviews, new claims for modern slavery or domestic abuse. Etc etc.

You’re also making the mistake of thinking the applicants prefer a quick decision. It’s not in their interests to get this. The longer they’re here the better their chances are.

Making decisions on claims isn’t going to lead to removals and an end to all the problems. People just disappear, go asylum shopping around Europe (See Ireland). It’s very hard to remove anyone who has no documents or may have lied about their identity or even their nationality.

So it's not so much the increased numbers, but rather the weaponisation of human rights. That suggests to me that an offshore processing scheme like Rwanda would make a big difference to demand. What us the general feeling on that approach in the Home Office @overlyfragrant ?

OP, have you seen this government paper on asylum statistics It doesn't answer your question, but gives some really interesting background.

Your figures make no sense at all. What are you even referring to as an "immigration backlog"? In 2010 there will have been backlogs on most of PBS.

At the end of March 2024, the Home Office employed over 51,000 people in a wide range of roles, across the UK and overseas
So to summarise 2010 there were around 28k staff with a backlog of around 4000 migrants/asylum seekers
today - we have a backlog of 91000 applications with a total number of home office staff at 51000

can anyone help me out with this logic?

🤦‍♀️ Well it would help if you actually started employing some logic. Are you under the impression that each one of that 51,000 could just pick up one or two cases each and resolve the backlog in less than a week? The NHS hired quite a few staff too. Let’s get one of the medical secretaries to scrub up and they can help reduce the backlog in knee replacement surgery. Or perhaps a porter could nip over to A&E on a Saturday night and help out with the triaging. If a brain surgeon is twiddling his thumbs with no one to operate on, perhaps he could nip into the hospital kitchens and whip up a moussaka for dinner? After all, they all work for the NHS, so they should all be able to turn their hands to anything in a hospital.

You very clearly don’t understand anything about immigration or the asylum process.

All you can do is a freedom of information request asking these exact questions. Who would randomly be on the internet who a) knows or b) is willing to tell you?

I'm one of those Home Office bods you refer to.
To be clear, my role has absolutely nothing to do with immigration. Think policing and regulation.
I know some that work in immigration and do casework, their cases have become infinity more complicated over the years due to the theme of human rights cases becoming more and more, lawyers writing in drip feeding relevant information at a glacial pace (this is believed to be deliberate so the clients time in the UK is extended so they can get more time in the UK), incredibly slow, cumbersome IT systems that hinder rather than help, and of course there usual efficiency savings that mean less people doing more work.
Cases are more complex as most in the boats dont carry ID to prove their origin, age etc and their movements throughout Europe. We can request data from EU countries via interpol but this is slow and costly so not done routinely. Interviews are done in person, and quite often need to be done with an interpreter which is again, expensive and hard to arrange.

Message deleted. My mistake

Again, the CS doesn’t just deal with immigration. Comparing headcounts (FTEs?) over two years tells you absolutely nothing about immigration, or the wider operational requirements of managing UK plc. Besides, the increase is pretty small.

Rather than look at the overall number, you need to look at how many are in each department. You can submit an FOI request for more detail.

There has been chronic underfunding in some areas… in both staff & systems, that has led to the backlog