Times of London: Hundreds of Iraqi Kurds tricked into seeking asylum in the UK

According to KurdPress, a whistleblower at the UK Home Office has claimed that a significant portion of asylum applications in the country are accompanied by fabricated claims or pre-prepared stories, and hundreds of Iraqi Kurdish applicants are among those who, according to him, have used similar patterns to advance their cases.According to the Times of London, a Home Office official who goes by the pseudonym “J” and has worked as a decision-maker on asylum cases for years claimed that in some cases applicants use “the same text or narrative,” a practice he and his colleagues call “closed files.”

Describing examples he has encountered, the anonymous official pointed to hundreds of Iraqi Kurdish applicants who have claimed in their files to have had an affair with the daughter of one of the most senior officials in the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

He also spoke of similar examples among Pakistani and Bangladeshi applicants, claiming that in some cases, individuals repeat almost identical narratives without being able to provide sufficient detail to substantiate their claims.According to the whistleblower, the process of examining asylum applications in the UK is such that the gap between the screening stage and the main interview gives some applicants time to prepare their evidence and narrative. He also criticised the administrative culture of the Home Office, saying that staff are advised to refer to asylum seekers as “customers”.

In a highly scathing statement, the Home Office official claimed that “at best one per cent” of asylum seekers are actually eligible and that almost no part of the asylum system is working as it should. However, this claim is a personal assessment by an anonymous official and does not constitute official confirmation of such a figure by the UK government.

Official figures published on asylum decisions also show that the rate of granting asylum protection in the UK has fallen.According to the figures cited in the report, in the year to June, 42,394 people were granted asylum out of a total of 115,394 initial applications, or about 38 percent. In 2022, the figure was about 77 percent.

The Home Office said it did not comment on “anonymous reports” but stressed that it had “robust” monitoring and control processes in place to check the credibility of applicants’ claims and identify fraudulent applications.

The allegations of similar narratives being used in asylum cases come as the UK government has come under increasing pressure in recent years to tackle the influx of migrants via the Channel and people-smuggling networks.Meanwhile, the asylum cases of nationals of various countries, including Iraq, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, have become one of the most controversial issues in British immigration policy.