Immigration - wanting some stats

[ITSJUSTBRIDGET]

I’m so so sick of the immigration media headlines

the attached shows the immigration backlog since 1990. I’m wanting to add in the number or home office immigration staff into the graph

how did we go from a low of around 3000 in 2005 to this years figure of 91,000

ive googled home office staff in 2010 which had a total of 28,423 staff

2010, the Home Office had a total of 2811 payroll staff. This figure represents the total number of employees within Additionally, the wider Home Office group included other agencies like the Criminal Records Bureau with 668 staff, the Identity & Passport Service with 3944 staff, and the UK Border Agency with 21752 staff.

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?

TO BE VERY CLEAR, I AM NOT A EXTREME RIGHT WING VOTER, I’M FOCUSED ON WHY OUR GOVERNMENT HAS NOT/IS NOT SEEMINGLY ABLE TO DEAL WITH THE BACKLOG WHICH IS NOT FAIR ON ANYONE

And mumsnet AIBU is where you have decided to seek that “logic”?

Where else would you put it?

Mumsnet wouldn’t be my first port of call

Maybe we all need to look at the stats and ask some difficult questions

Surely you’d need to do quite a lot of research yourself and potentially some FOI requests to the home office but tbh, I suspect they haven’t done much in be way of this analysis themselves

You’d further need to know, at the very least -

how the scope, reasonably and remit of the HO has changed over this period

what the jobs were (i presume you have no reason to think they have been recruited to process asylum applications directly?)

whether here are compensating for merger of consolation of other government departments thus there are reductions elsewhere

Well yes, when you google the home office staff in isolation in 2000 it states that there were 2800 home office staff, that same figure in 2025 is 51000 which is why I added in the other agencies in 2000 that came under the home office

I’m talking about like for like changes, not adding in departments that were there in both 2010 and 2025. For example, how do you know they didn’t add a division of from elsewhere into the home office in 2018? It’s not something you work out by googling

But the HO’s remit is far far far wider than immigration. So how is comparing raw staffing levels remotely relevant to immigration.

Oh and post in ‘Politics’ - though you won’t because you obviously do have an agenda.

No I know all that but how on earth do you get like for like

ok so here are some more figures

2010 total civil service number was 490k - that’s when immigration backlog was around 5000

2025 total civil service number is 510,000 with a immigration backlog of 91,000

the big caveat here was that more staff were hired for brexit

@mumsnet can you please move to politics

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

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.

But isn’t that the whole point? The reason we are sat with nearly 100k migrants not being processed and being held up in hotels/hostels is because our government cut so hard

Message deleted. My mistake

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

This is toe-curling

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

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.

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.