@EasternStandard
Asylum claim numbers pre 2002, or at any point in time pre-Brexit, has nothing to do with Brexit or UK returns policy. People coming and people going are two very distinct things to be simple about it.
The total numbers of people arriving claiming asylum doesn’t speak to the numbers we could or did remove under the Dublin Convention. I’m sure you know that the DC wasn’t a removal policy for “every” claimant.
So while there’s no correlation with who arrives here and which party is in power/how restrictive immigration policy is, the UK leaving the EU closed down some capabilities it previously had and so far has not made any new arrangements (well, aside from the one in one out still in it‘s infancy) .
Asylum claimants have always come here via various transport means and it’s at the UK borders (as it were) that either their claims can be “fast-tracked”, dealt with via the Third Country Unit (that was under the Dublin Convention), dealt with by a certification unit or processed in the way that most people will be aware of i.e. detained while claim is assessed, released with reporting restrictions (and possibly therefore “housed”).
The latter is supposed to be those with potentially genuine claims (who don’t automatically qualify for asylum e.g. under policies that automatically allowed grants of asylum (which are or were ;country and time specific) on arrival.
in fact is often people who are stuck in a backlog for consideration and probably on a longer list if their country of origin is either harder to return to because of safety or, more likely, negotiations between the UK and countries of origin in agreeing travel documentation.
Before 2002 most asylum claimants to the UK came from Iraq, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Serbia and Montenegro, Rwanda, and China. I remember a lot of claims from safe countries too - Albania for instance.
I don’t work in the HO any more so rely on the good old internet for anything in the last 9 years - the figures for the UK top asylum claimants are reportedly Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran.
The difference between what the countries of the top asylum claiming nationalities around 2002 relates of course to what was happening in those countries at that time.
But the international situations and those successfully arriving in the UK as opposed to being detained in Italy for instance, has nothing to do with the Dublin Convention unless those claimants claimed asylum in a European country prior to arriving in the UK - it was usually directly flights or travel by lorry at that time, so less demonstrable that the person had chosen to depart to the UK from a safe country (France). It has to be demonstrable where someone comes from as well as who they are (and whether they travelled through an EU country where the Dublin Convention might have applied) or they are going nowhere. We can’t make people stateless.
The implementation of the principle of “return to the country where one claimed asylum first” (the Dublin Convention) by any other signatory State is not something I can comment on - I don’t know why either Germany or Ireland does or doesn’t do whatever they could do. I haven’t worked for either government and I’m not an expert on the world’s asylum systems.
The UK also lost Eurodac with Brexit which was an effective method of ascertaining criminals entering and also in facilitating removals to third countries by successfully identifying that the individual had already made a “third country” claim (ie the country the person first claimed asylum in).
Behind all of the legal routes though are practical considerations, such as which countries accept returnees either on travel documentation from the UK and which countries don’t comply easily with UK requests for assistance with issuing Emergency Travel Documents or of those discovered to have criminal convictions (eg France won’t often accept such returnees).
We can’t return people without travel documentation - but we could return people to third countries if we had Eurodac hits without travel documentation, leaving it to Italy or Spain or whichever country they claimed in first (who might have better relations internationally with the claimant’s country of origin than the UK does) to process the claim and obtain travel documentation.
Some of what doesn’t get reported on (travel documents) is the biggest hold up of removals from the UK. Airlines won’t carry undocumented people.
Eurodac and the Dublin Convention was a tool in aiding removals, gone at the moment because of Brexit. I’m sure the UK will endeavour to modify the situation eventually.