Blogs

1. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, on 24 February 2022 has led to Europe’s fastest growing refugee crisis since the Second World War – with 2.5 million people now having fled the country. Poland has taken in more than 1.2 million refugees, Hungary over 190,000 refugees, Germany over 50,000 refugees,

The first visa statisticsfor the full year of 2021 were published by the Home Office on 24 February 2021. As suspected there was a large rise in all categories, and a rocketing share of asylum grants, alongside plummeting asylum refusals, falling removals and diminished use of detention to keep the public

For months we’ve been keeping track of reported illegal entries with our Channel Tracking Station. Now these figures have been essentially echoed by the Home Office after it released its first ever statistics detailing irregular migration to the UK– this bulletin covering the full year 2021. On boats, they confirmed the numbers

Just 2% of the thousands who have made their way to the UK illegally in small boats via the English Channel were found to be in possession of a passport at the time of being processed in the UK. The finding emerged in the wake of official data being published

Nearly £2 billion per year is being spent on hotel rooms for migrants (£4.7 million per day). Recently, the government confirmedthat, between April 2021 and March 2022, just under £1 billion was spent on hotel accommodation for 25,000 asylum seekers. More has likely spent since then – with illegal boat arrivals

In October 2021, while giving evidence to a House of Lords Committee regarding the government’s pledge to open up the UK to tens of thousands from Afghanistan, the Home Secretary made the following key admission: “We simply do not have the infrastructure or the accommodation” (Q2, p.3 of testimony to House of Lords