The number of asylum seekers being granted UK refugee status has soared to the highest number since records began nearly 40 years ago, official figures released Thursday show.
A total of 67,978 asylum claims were granted by the Home Office in the year to June, more than triple the 21,436 in the previous year, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Migrants who arrived by crossing the Channel on small boats accounted for more than a third of the decisions – some 35,176, over four times more than in the year ending June 2023, when there were just 7,888, according to the Home Office data seen by the outlet.
The Telegraph report details the exact numbers:
Home Office caseworkers made just under 92,000 initial decisions on asylum claims in the year – the highest level in two decades.
Of those, 58 percent were given asylum or another form of humanitarian protection, down from 71 percent in the year ending June 2023 after the Tories tightened the rules.
Before the pandemic, the “grant rate” – the proportion of asylum applications which lead to refugee status at the initial stage – was about a third.
The sheer volume is even higher than during the asylum crisis in the early 2000s.
The introduction by former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of fast-track schemes and trebling in the number of caseworkers making decisions has been pinpointed as the moment approvals started soaring.
The schemes were introduced in an attempt to clear a backlog of cases as Sunak scrambled to deliver on his pledge to “abolish” the list.
The surging number of migrants being granted asylum shows no sign of diminishing under the new left-wing Labour government of Sir Keir Starmer.
As Breitbart News reported in July, since the new government came into power over 3,000 illegal boat migrants have crossed the English Channel from France, throwing into question Starmer’s ability to “stop the boats”.
Starmer has said his government will seek to “smash the gangs” behind the people-smuggling trade behind the continued waves of mostly young men arriving illegally in the country.