Waits sometimes take more than five years, and the number of applications has quadrupled in recent years
Tens of thousands of migrants are waiting more than a year for a decision on your application for asylum, with hundreds waiting more than five years, according to figures from British authorities.
The number of people waiting for an initial decision on their asylum application in United Kingdom almost quadrupled in the last five yearsrising from 29,522 in December 2017 to 122,206 in June 2022, according to UK Home Office data obtained by the Refugee Council under freedom of information laws.
The figure was 64,891 in December 2020, which means that nearly doubled in 18 months.
A third of the applicants –40,913– they have been waiting between one and three yearswhile 725 people, including 155 children, have been “living in limbo awaiting a decision” for more than five years, the organization has indicated.
The Minister of the Interior, Suella Braverman, has been subjected to a increasing pressure to fix the asylum system from the UK, which both she and her predecessor, Priti Patel, described as “broken”.
The government is spending 6.8 million pounds (7.7 million euros) a day to house migrants in hotels. Interior Ministry figures released in August showed that the cost of the UK asylum system has exceeded £2bn a year for the first time, with the highest number of applications for two decades and record delays for people waiting for a decision.
At that time, the Ministry of the Interior announced the creation of an action group to study how to speed up the processing of applications of asylum in an attempt to increase the number of decisions made on cases on a weekly basis.
Enver Solomon, CEO of the charity, said: “Immediate steps must be taken to address the enormous backlog of men, women and children trapped in limbo as they wait years for a decision on their asylum claim, costing them millions of pounds a day by putting them up in often shoddy hotels.
“These people came to the UK seeking safety, but they are being sentenced to years of worry and uncertainty, with a serious cost to your mental healthinstead of being able to put down roots in their new community and rebuild their lives,” added Solomon.
The Refugee Council called on ministers to introduce a series of measures to tackle the problem, including the creation of a task force dedicated to eliminating backlog and establishment of a deadline for its elimination.
Solomon has assured that there are “clear measures that this Government could take immediately to address this situation. We are willing to work constructively to help you do so”, and added that the “unspeakable human misery that this situation causes is simply unsustainable”in addition to assuming an enormous cost for the public treasury.
Likewise, he has warned that, if measures are not taken, next year “another appalling episode is likely” like the overcrowding at the Manston immigration processing center in Kent.
“We urgently need to move to a fair, orderly and compassionate asylum system that always see the face behind the case and deals with requests in a timely and efficient manner,” he concluded.