The UK taxpayer is set to pay over $2.5 billion on looking after 150,000 migrants currently waiting for their asylum claims to be processed.
The backlog for migrants seeking asylum in Britain has reached an all-time high, with their now being 150,000 people in the UK waiting for their claims to be processed by authorities. The claim comes as the government seeks to slash the backlog of migrants waiting to be processed by simply rubber-stamping applications en masse.
The waiting migrants — many of which have arrived in Britain vias small boats crossing the English Channel from France — now have to be looked after by the UK government, with the state now said to be spending £7 million (~$8.4 million) a day on housing some 40,000 in hotels.
According to a report by The Telegraph, this will likely add up to a bill of £2.1 billion (more than $2.5 billion) every year, which will have to be paid for by the British taxpayer at a time when the price of inflation, food and fuel have surged.
“The only solution is to stop the illegal influx,” Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, reportedly remarked regarding the record figure, who described the “ballooning” number of migrants as “inevitable” considering the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants coming over the English Channel.
Mehmet however warned that the UK cannot take the easy way out of simply waving the migrants through and accepting their asylum claims for the purpose of clearing the backlog.
“What the Government must not do is reduce the backlog by effectively declaring an amnesty in all but name,” he said. “That would prove disastrous.”
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