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Asylum Aid is challenging the Home Office’s changes in Immigration Rules which, with effect from 31 January 2024, make it significantly harder for stateless people to reunite with their families. These changes mean that stateless people’s partners and children now must meet more stringent financial and evidential requirements for leave to enter or remain in the UK than before.

Asylum Aid’s client (referred to as EG), a 52-year-old man from Cote D’Ivoire seeking protection in the UK, will receive an apology and compensation from the Home Office for waiting four years and two months for a decision on his asylum claim. The client’s win comes on the back of Asylum Aid’s fight against one of the biggest problems in the UK asylum system – delays in decision making on asylum claims.

This research found that young people seeking asylum in the UK are often very particularly vulnerable due to their life experiences before, during, and after migration. Systems of accommodation and support in the UK, provided by local authorities and the Home Office, increase this vulnerability. Behaviours that arise from this increased vulnerability (such as offending behaviours) are surveilled and disciplined through contact with the police.

The current state of immigration and asylum advice is dire – 63% of the population in England and Wales do not have access to an immigration and asylum legal aid provider. Even those that do live near one of the remaining providers face significant barriers in accessing legally aided advice, due to saturated provider capacity precipitated by years of unsustainable legal aid fees, heavy administrative burdens and burnt-out practitioners. The provision of immigration and asylum advice in England and Wales is ‘not even adequate for first-time adult asylum applications, with a deficit of at least 6,000 for asylum applications and appeals’. 

As the second year of working towards our 2022-2024 strategic priorities, 2023 was an exciting year of growth for Asylum Aid. But we also faced challenges from many directions: a government hostile both to our clients and to our work; a crisis in the availability of legal aid representation for people seeking asylum, as a result of years of underfunding and the declining sector; a constant cycle of new and complex legislation that seeks to restrict the right to asylum; and a failing system of accommodation and support for those prohibited from working that leaves many in appalling living conditions and surviving on barely adequate subsistence. Against this context, we are delighted to share this report, which showcases the real progress that Asylum Aid has made over the last year. We are now in a position to help more people get the protection they need; we have increased our partnerships with others in the sector, improving the advice that those fleeing persecution can get elsewhere; and we have demonstrated leadership and courage in taking forward legal challenges to unfair, unsafe and unworkable policies.

We are horrified and extremely concerned about the far-right racist attacks on asylum hotels and violence against people seeking asylum, refugees, migrants, and minority communities, particularly Muslims.   These disturbing images and threats of more organised attacks are taking a huge toll on the mental health of the people we work with – those who have survived some of the worst forms of human cruelty and have arrived in the UK in hope of finding protection.

At a hearing in the High Court this morning, the Home Secretary confirmed that no flights to Rwanda are currently scheduled or are intended to be scheduled. Surprisingly, despite what the Prime Minister said at the weekend, her lawyers were not yet able to confirm that the Rwanda policy is “dead and buried”. Consequently, it has not yet been withdrawn. As a result, Asylum Aid’s legal challenge to that policy remains live, while the new Home Secretary undertakes a review. The Home Secretary should now urgently confirm that there will be no flights ever, withdraw the policy and all Rwanda notices of intent. She should also start the process of repealing the Safety of Rwanda Act, which is an affront to the rule of law.

Asylum Aid has filed a claim in the High Court challenging the Home Office’s ‘Safety of Rwanda’ guidance (Policy). The charity argues that the Home Office’s Policy unlawfully instructs decision makers to ignore compelling evidence put forward by individuals showing that they would be at individual risk of being sent from Rwanda to another country where they face a risk of persecution, torture or even death. The Policy, Asylum Aid believes, is unlawful and misinterprets the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, which was given Royal Assent on 25 April.