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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Mon Sep 7 07:25:25 2026
Times of London
Just 1% of asylum pleas are genuine, says insiderOnly one in 100 asylum claims are genuine, according to a whistleblower who has revealed widespread fraud and dysfunction in the system.
The Home Office official, who has worked for years as a decisionmaker on asylum and has assessed thousands of claims, said asylum seekers from certain countries use the “same script” in what he and colleagues describe as “package claims”.
He said he had encountered a large number of Iraqi Kurds claiming asylum who said they had been in a relationship with the daughter of the prime minister of the Kurdistan region. The official said it had become a “running joke” among colleagues that the number of Iraqi Kurds who said they were involved with the daughter was in the “hundreds”.
He also said that “hundreds” of claims from Pakistanis were based on the assertion that they were in fear of their lives in their home country because of their gay relationship with the same man who had provided letters supporting their claims.
The source also disclosed suspicions about large numbers of Bangladeshi claimants purporting to be dissidents of the former governing party, which is now banned, even though they were unable to provide basic information about the group.
Hundreds of protesters descended on Portsmouth on Sunday night to demonstrate against the arrival of a group of asylum seekers.
Migrants on a small boat heading towards the English coast were intercepted earlier and brought to be processed in Portsmouth, with the arrivals filmed on social media.
About 500 people took part in the protest, with some dressed in all black. Daniel Thomas, an associate of Tommy Robinson, filmed a livestream from Portsmouth, urging viewers to take part.
The protests followed the arrival of a dinghy carrying 140 people, which crossed the Channel on Sunday after launching from a beach near Cherbourg, in Normandy, nearly 200 miles from Calais. It is believed to be the furthest west smugglers have ever launched a small boat. French officials said it was not safe to stop the dinghy at sea. The migrants were brought to the UK by British lifeboat crews.
The whistleblower, referred to as “J”, was speaking to The Times on condition of anonymity. He has blown the whistle on widespread perceived asylum fraud and frustration among staff, who feel unable to challenge even the most obviously false claims.
He said: “At best 1 percent of asylum seekers are genuine. There’s almost no aspect of the asylum system that isn’t either a massive fraud or just really dysfunctional. Nothing works as it should.”
He said the industrial scale of fake claims was made possible by the interview system used by the Home Office to check asylum applications.
Asylum seekers undergo a brief “screening interview”, in which basic information is gathered, when they arrive in the UK or lodge an asylum claim after their visa expires. J said asylum seekers were often “extremely vague” in the interview. A “substantive interview”, often lasting several hours, takes place months later. “This gives them time to prepare, time to get advice, time to see exactly what fake evidence they can get before committing to a story at full interview,” he said.
He said that the government should change the process so applicants were forced to explain their reasoning immediately upon claiming asylum. J said: “Delaying this only gives them more time to prepare, when they shouldn’t need to prepare because it’s already happened to them.”
He acknowledged that the Home Office had sped up decisionmaking on asylum claims, which had shortened the time between the initial screening interview and the substantive interview, but added that many “just get a sick note”. J said: “This buys them another couple of months, maybe more, to prepare, time to get advice, time to see exactly what fake evidence they can get before committing to a story.”
He said the culture within Home Office teams created an inherent bias towards accepting claims. An asylum decisionmaker must grant the claim if they believe the claimant is “more likely than not” telling the truth. Approving an asylum claim takes “half an hour tops”, while rejections can take many hours.
When an official decides to reject a claim, the official must respond to every claim made by the asylum seeker, often to an extent that he describes as “infantile”.
J gave the example of situations in which an asylum seeker will say they fear being killed if they return to their home country and they “don’t know how” to report their fear to the police at home. In that situation the asylum decisionmaker will have to tell the claimant how to contact the police. The official may also have to include a list of the claimants’ constitutional rights at home.
J said that officials were instructed by their Home Office bosses to call asylum seekers “customers”, which he believed reflects a culture in which “you’re providing a service to them, not a service to the country”.
The Home Office has been investigating a growing trend of fake claims from asylum seekers pretending to be gay and launched a fresh inquiry this year after an undercover BBC investigation exposed a shadow industry of law firms and immigration advisers charging thousands of pounds to help asylum seekers lodge fake claims pretending to be gay.
One immigration lawyer told an undercover reporter pretending to be an asylum seeker that the Home Office never followed up to check the veracity of a claim and instructed them to say at interview: “I am a gay and it is my reality.”
J said he and colleagues had encountered “hundreds” of claims from Pakistani asylum seekers claiming to have the same boyfriend, who had provided letters supporting their claims to be gay men. He said: “He’s provided hundreds upon hundreds of very obviously fake letters of support.”
He said claims from Pakistani men claiming to be gay also featured photographs from the same east London gay venue, Legs 800 Club, which closed permanently last year. “You get these photographs and there would be ten Pakistani guys all standing there topless in the club with their arms around each other taking pictures to try and prove they’re gay.”
J said there had been a large number of Bangladeshi asylum seekers in the past couple of years who claimed they faced political persecution because of their membership of the Awami League, which held power for 15 years until 2024. All party activities have been banned in Bangladesh.
However, J said that many Bangladeshi asylum seekers claiming to be members of the party, or its student wing, Chhatra, were often unable to provide substantive details about its policies or “anything more than just the slogan: ‘Education, peace, prosperity’.”
This was in spite of the asylum seekers almost always claiming they held senior positions of responsibility within the party, such as president, vice-president or general secretary.
J said he would ask about their responsibilities and they would all say the same thing, “to help students who had financial difficulties during their education”.
J said fraudulent Bangladeshi claims had been a trend for years. “The only thing they needed to do when the government fell was change the name of the party that they feared,” he said.
Claims are often supported by “fake police documents” that used the “same judge’s name again and again, the same magistrate again and again and the same location”.
However, J said asylum decisionmakers were not allowed to contact origin countries to confirm whether documents were legitimate because of international confidentiality rules to protect the applicant against persecution in their country.
Pakistan and Bangladesh are among the top nationalities claiming asylum in the UK and almost nine in ten of all claims are lodged from individuals who entered the UK on a work, study or visitor visa and overstayed.
Since the immigration system in 2021 after Brexit made it easier for non-EU nationals to come to the UK, Pakistanis have consistently been the top nationality claiming asylum.
A 2024 Home Office study of asylum claims based on sexual orientation found that Pakistan also accounted for the largest number of asylum seekers claiming to be gay or bisexual.
The rate of asylum seekers granted asylum has fallen significantly in recent years, with the latest statistics showing that 42,394 people were granted refugee protection in the year to June out of a total of 115,394 initial decisions — a rate of 38 percent.
This grant rate is down from a high of 77 percent in 2022.
In response to the revelations, the Home Office said that asylum claims were considered on an individual basis by trained decisionmakers who assess all available evidence, including an applicant’s account, supporting documentation and relevant country information.
It insisted it had well-established processes to assess the credibility of claims and to identify fraud.
The department said international rules protecting “confidentiality obligations” prevented it from contacting an applicant’s home county about their asylum claim, as doing so could place individuals at risk if their claim was genuine.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We do not comment on anonymous briefings. We have robust processes to test credibility and identify fraudulent claims. If any evidence of fraud or misrepresentation is discovered during the process, those individuals will have their claim revoked. This has seen the asylum grant rate falling from 77 percent in 2022 to 38 percent this year. Our new immigration and asylum bill will ensure asylum processing is swift and fair, allowing us to further bear down on those who abuse the immigration system. The home secretary has been clear that those trying to defraud the British people to remain in the UK will have their application refused and find themselves on a one-way flight out of Britain.”
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