Protests at small boats reflect a broken system 

After the claim that just 1% of asylum cases are genuine, an immigration overhaul is vital to placate growing public anger 

STUART BROCK Juliet Samuel @citysamuel 

Tony Smith remembers well dealing with fraud as a British immigration officer in 1970s Bangladesh, some decades before he became head of the UK Border Agency. The most popular ruse was the “bogus children” trick. A Bangladeshi man with some connection to the UK would get a work visa, and then apply to bring over his family. Upon application, the family size would suddenly swell. The extra members were always children, usually a neighbour or cousin’s teenage boys, behind which lay some deal far from the eye of the British state. With no paternity tests or reliable birth records, immigration officers were left trying to piece together vast family trees by interviewing extended family and cross-checking what they said. They had one handy tactic, though. Just before the immigration interview started, the family would be warned through the interpreter that if a single bogus member was found, everyone would be refused entry. And the officials were allowed to trust their views of the evidence about who was lying. “In most cases, the family would shuffle out into the waiting room for a discussion, then come back in ten minutes later with a slightly smaller group,” Smith recalls in his book Changing Borders. Incentives, eh? Such brazen applications of common sense would obviously be illegal in the modern UK migration system. Immigration long ago ceased to be a question of patriotic border guards exercising their judgment to keep order and protect the kingdom from people who aren’t meant to be there. Immigration policy became a forum in which a just world was to be built on universalist, liberal principles.

 And then, because the world is dangerous and corrupt and humanity is flawed, it became a racket. Just how much of a racket was indicated by a Home Office whistleblower earlier this week who told The Times that just one in a hundred asylum claims is likely to be genuine. One per cent. In the year to June 2026, 38 per cent, or 42,000 claims, were granted, down on 68,000 in 2023 but still much, much higher than it used to be. In 2022, we granted 77 per cent of claims but the total was far smaller — just 18,000. And none of these figures include most of the shenanigans happening under the aegis of the ECHR’s infamous Article 8, “the right to a family life”, which is the only aspect that Labour’s The UN agrees that Britain is handing out asylum irresponsibly Immigration Bill attempts to tackle. The Home Office whistleblower told of failures to conduct even basic evidence tests. A popular method for Bangladeshis claiming asylum now, they said, was to profess support for a banned political party and cite their fear of political persecution, which has to be taken seriously even when the applicant can’t name a single party policy. The Pakistani fashion is to say you’re gay, as evidenced by a letter from a chap who, according to the whistleblower, seems to have several hundred asylum-seeking boyfriends. The even more outlandish version practised by many Kurds is to suggest that you are dating the Kurdish prime minister’s daughter. She sure gets around. Still, just in case you aren’t convinced by testimony from inside the Home Office, the UN’s very own refugee commission agrees that Britain is handing out asylum in a wildly irresponsible manner. Just half of Britain’s asylum decisions even meet its own standards, the UN audit states. It sampled 60 Home Office interviews with claimants and said that 19 failed even to establish on what basis the migrant was making their claim. Case workers are incentivised to resolve cases quickly, and the quickest path through is “yes”. This is not a “far-right” talking point. It is the official conclusion drawn by the UN’s refugee team.

 Should anyone wonder that groups of angry white men in balaclavas have now started occupying Dover and blockading coaches sent to ship more and more men into this utterly negligent system? It’s astonishing it hasn’t happened sooner. I don’t mean I want to see gangs of masked bricklayers marauding around ports. I don’t. But I do think that if you have spent three years allowing masked Gaza activists to take over the streets because police are too scared to stop them, and five years blocking policies such as Rwanda that would actually stop the boats, you cannot start hyperventilating the moment working-class British men take to the streets non-violently, as in Dover if not Portsmouth, to make their feelings known. The non-violence is obviously critical. This was not a riot, as we saw in 2024. It was not a campaign of harassment. It did not target random people. And unlike the Gaza marches or “stop oil” stunts, its demands represent a consensus view across the country and relate to something Masked protesters who surfaced in Dover could become a familiar sight under the government’s direct control. They amount to: “Can the government please do what it promised and stop ferry-loads of undocumented foreign men arriving on our beaches to fill up regional hotels and roam around town centres?” They might reasonably also ask for the Home Office to stop handing out asylum to the thousands who falsely claim it while visiting on student or work visas.

 The leading parties claim to agree with these positions. There is even now a consensus between Labour, the Tories and Reform that tribunals, lawyers and the industry of charities and consultants serving them have been allowed to play far too large a part in immigration decisions. Labour’s Immigration Bill seeks to move decisions away from judges to “lay magistrates”. Reform’s specific Ben Riley-Smith gets political Renowned political journalist Ben Riley-Smith has taken up the post of Political Editor at The Sunday Times, leading our agenda-setting coverage of British politics. policy is (naturally) unclear, but it’s bound to involve fewer lawyers. And the Tories have, with surprisingly little controversy, laid out the most radical policy of them all. They have proposed moving responsibility for all immigration decisions and appeals back into the Home Office, leaving only the narrowest of grounds for legal appeal, which they say will remove 98 per cent of all immigration cases The Tories’ policy idea could wind back 40 years of legal overreach from the courts. 

It’s a policy that, if it were actually implemented (and it probably requires ECHR withdrawal), could wind back 40 years of ever-deeper legal overreach. It would re-establish the principle that it is for the elected government, and not judges or treaties, to make decisions about who comes into the country. And once that is done, many other things may become possible again: detaining and deporting illegal entrants, throwing out fraudulent claims and allowing the needs of the country to be put before time-wasting and ideology. The alternative is that we are going to get very used to seeing those white men in the black balaclavas. And if they can genuinely refrain from violence and rioting, their next move will be even more terrifying. They will start voting. politics newsletter