Red Hot Asylum Summer

We love a theme in the UK. We also love a summer activity: for some it’s tennis or hiking - padel is very popular - and for the more rowdy contingent it’s protesting illegal immigration. On this topic especially be warned - OPINIONS DO VARY. In his Lunch with the FT interview last weekend Reform’s golden boy Zia Yusuf voiced the party line that Britain is being invaded by tens of thousands of immigrants who do not share British values and who pose a severe threat to the country’s safety. Others, like the journalist who was interviewing him, say that most people escaping conflict or dangerous situations have no legal routes to enter the country in order to claim asylum in the UK, and suggest that fixating on immigration in the context of crimes like the Stockport attacks is to blame for stoking public anger and protest.

This week the UK is starting to return people who arrive on small boats to France after the European Union gave Starmer and Macron’s “1 in 1 out” deal the green light. The treaty allows the Home Office to return some illegal migrants back across the English Channel in exchange for people who have been granted asylum via a safe route.

In this immigration special we break down the events and survey the landscape of opinions so that you can get an idea of what’s really going on. Let’s get into it!

Channel crossings

• The focal point of the debate is the number of people who are crossing the Channel in small dinghy-type boats; they set off from France, often overseen by the French coast guard, and in most cases are intercepted by the UK coast guard who take them on board and deliver them to safety. Up until now, the French coastguard have been prohibited from intervening once the boats are afloat because of a French legal provision designed to avoid any risk of provoking panic or disaster on the boats.

• 25,436 people have arrived by small boats this year - a 51% increase compared to the same point in 2024 and 73% more than in 2023.

• In the year ending March 2025 small boat arrivals made up around a third of all asylum claims in the UK.

• The majority of people arriving on these boats are from six countries - Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Albania, Syria and Eritrea - which together made up around 70% of arrivals over the last 5 years. In the most recent year, Afghanistan, Syria and Eritrea were the top nationalities, accounting for nearly 60% of arrivals. Most of the people arriving are also men - in 2024 an overwhelming 76% were adult males, with women accounting for under 10% and under 18s accounting for around 14%.

Hotels and controversies

• Under the UN Refugee Convention, the UK has a legal obligation to house people while they are waiting for a decision on their claim to refugee status. Responsibility for housing asylum seekers lies with the Home Office, which has contracts with three private companies to offer accommodation.

• Hotels have historically been a small part of this housing, only used for short-term emergency cover when housing in the private rental sector is unavailable.

• June 2023 saw the height of hotel usage, with 51,000 asylum seekers housed in more than 400 hotels across the UK, costing the Home Office £8 million a day.

• By March 2025, this had fallen to 32,345 asylum seekers in 218 hotels.

• This was highly profitable for those offering accommodation. (do we smell some procurement fraud?) and in May 2025, the three providers contracted by the government to deliver housing were reported to have made £380 million in profit from their accommodation contracts. The Britannia Hotels chain alone reportedly made over £150 million in profit since first accommodating asylum seekers in 2014.

Protests

• Police National Computer (PNC) data published in March this year was quoted in The Telegraph and elsewhere as showing that people originally from Afghanistan and Eritrea now living in the UK are over 20 times more likely to be convicted of sexual offences than British citizens.

• However, these headline-grabbing stats have been widely criticised as unreliable. Firstly, the data does not account for either gender or age (Afghans and Eritreans in the UK are generally much younger than the British average, and young men generally are more likely to commit crimes); it also doesn’t reflect the number of repeat offenders. In addition, the PNC data actually refers to charges or cautions, not crimes committed. As Anoosh Chakelian points out in the New Statesman, the proportion of foreign nationals serving sentences for sexual offence convictions in England and Wales is actually slightly smaller than their population share.

• Violence erupted outside the Bell Hotel in July after an asylum seeker was charged with attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl. Police officers were injured, protesters arrested, and Keir Starmer warned of a second summer of riots.

• Last summer saw riots break out after three young girls were killed in Southport at a Taylor Swift–themed yoga and dance workshop.

• The perpetrator, born in Britain to Rwandan parents, was falsely reported to be a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived on a small boat (by Nigel Farage, amongst others) – disinformation that led to rioters attacking a mosque and setting an asylum hotel on fire.

• However, in the aftermath many criticised the police for failing to dispel false rumours and provide accurate information about the perpetrator quick enough. Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp, amongst others, referred to an "information vacuum" which had resulted in misinformation which "fuelled" the riots which followed the attack. In response the police changed their approach to crime reporting by releasing key suspect details more quickly and working with community leaders to counter disinformation.

The politics

• Rishi Sunak vowed to ‘stop the boats’ while Keir Starmer is focusing on ‘smashing the gangs’ (gangs = people smugglers based across Europe who advertise and organise the voyages).

• The failed Rwanda policy saw the Conservatives say that they would remove migrants to Rwanda while their applications were processed, as a deterrent. It faced a series of setbacks from the European Court of Human Rights and was scrapped by Labour, costing £700 million (and voluntarily relocating just four migrants).

• Immigration, especially illegal immigration is the raison d’etre of Reform and Nigel Farage’s career (à la Brexit - ‘take back control of our borders’), and he seems to be increasingly capturing a large proportion of the public zeitgeist on this topic.

• This is not only a UK problem. The UK government has to work with the rest of Europe in order to tackle the people trafficking gangs and manage the routes that they take (and we know how difficult that can be).

• The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) sets legal limits on what the UK government can do to asylum seekers and migrants - and the UK courts enforce these limits via the Human Rights Act. Specifically, the ECHR stops the UK from sending migrants to unsafe countries, requires fish processing including allowing appeals for deportations, protects against breaking up families, and lets individuals challenge removals in the Strasbourg court.

Recent news

• Rupert Lowe - formerly a spokesperson for Reform and now an independent MP - recently mistook charity rowers for illegal immigrants and reported them to the British coastguard. “If these are illegal immigrants, I will be using every tool at my disposal to ensure these individuals are deported. Enough is enough. Britain needs mass deportations. NOW,” he said. They were actually four men attempting to row from Land’s End in Cornwall to John o’Groats in Scotland to raise money for motor neurone disease.

• The government has announced that migrants who have entered the country on small boats could be returned to France by the end of the month. The Home Office released videos showing several men being escorted to an immigration removal centre.

• Nigel Farage has called on the UK police to release data around the ethnicity of alleged offenders, accusing authorities of covering up rapes by asylum seekers last month.

• The UK will now spend an extra £100m on border security and speeding up asylum appeals, says Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.

• Sick children from Gaza are to be evacuated and brought to England for taxpayer funded NHS treatment.

Ellie’s take

Recently I was wondering if I could claim asylum under Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to marriage and found a family. The UK has become such a hostile place for business and wealth creation that the men I am interested in do not want to live in the UK. I could argue that systemic policies leading to economic decline and social atomisation are infringing on my ability to exercise my Article 16 right in practice. Could I be the first dating refugee?

This might sound like a theoretical legal fantasy, but aren’t we seeing absurd cases like this the whole time?

Because it is also pretty absurd that people are entering the UK illegally and then being put up in four star hotels (in some cases) while the country continues to run up a deficit. It is also concerning from a Budget standpoint that the UK is going to set a precedent of offering NHS care to victims of wars that the UK has (arguably) nothing to do with.

Olga’s take

It’s obvious that this small boats crisis continues to have a stranglehold on successive UK governments, threatening to only worsen over time as climate change drives more people out of their home countries. Predictably, our post-Brexit retreat from EU cooperation has left us with fewer tools to address it effectively. What’s more, Labour’s inability to articulate a distinct, principled position—beyond mimicking the language of its political rivals—undermines both credibility and capacity for meaningful action. It also leaves a vacuum for Farage and Reform to fill with anger and hatred (rather than serious, humane solutions). A smarter path forward could combine expanded safe and legal asylum routes, stronger joint operations with European partners against trafficking networks, and faster, fairer asylum processing to restore order without sacrificing humanity.