Yahoo News How many asylum seekers does the UK have?
Campaigners said we must not "accept the frequency and scale" of deaths in the Channel after a 40-year-old man died attempting the perilous crossing.
A 40-year-old man has died trying to cross the Channel from northern France to the UK, bringing the death toll of those making the perilous journey this year to 57.
The man, who was of Indian heritage, was travelling with 50 other men, women and children and suffered a cardiac arrest as the boat deflated minutes after leaving the coast of the town of Tardinghen, the Guardian reports.
While everyone managed to swim back to shore with the man, efforts to resuscitate him on the beach early on Sunday morning were unsuccessful.
Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon said this was "yet another tragic and preventable loss of life" and that "we must not accept the frequency and scale of these tragedies as inevitable".
It comes as the French coastguard said 35 people were rescued from a boat in the Channel and taken to Calais on Friday after screams were heard on the vessel, following the rescue of another 76 migrants on Thursday when they got into difficulty while attempting the journey.
On Wednesday, three people died and dozens of others were rescued when a boat sank while trying to reach the UK, and a baby died in another similar incident last week.
The risk to life does not appear to be deterring people from making the crossing, with UK government figures showing more people have arrived in Britain on small boats this year already than in the whole of 2023.
Here, Yahoo News looks at how many asylum seekers are actually coming to the UK.
What is an asylum seeker?
An asylum seeker is a person who has left their country and is seeking protection from persecution and serious human rights violations in another country, according to Amnesty International.
While the term "refugee" is sometimes used in a more general sense, it usually refers to a legal status someone has been given after arriving while they await a decision on their asylum claim.
The term "migrant" is a broad one, but is recognised by Amnesty to mean people staying outside their country of origin, who are not asylum seekers or refugees.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that in the year ending June 2024, there were a total of 35,648 asylum applications made in the UK. In that same time period, a total of 15,483 asylum applicants were granted some form of protection - mostly refugee status.
These figures are for "initial decisions" and does not account for people going through the appeal process. They also don't account for people who have come through resettlement schemes, which differ to the asylum system, as explained here by the Refugee Council. Figures for the first half of 2024 show 4,402 had been granted some form of resettlement.
How many asylum seekers does the UK take in?
In 2023, 67,337 applications for asylum were made in the UK, relating to 84,425 individuals, according to parliamentary research. Of those, 33% were refused at initial decision.
That same year, 29,437 people arrived on small boats, 36% fewer than in 2022 (45,774), according to the Home Office.
Some 29,578 migrants have made the journey since January this year, up 12% on last year’s annual total, but this is still 22% lower than the 38,129 people making the journey by this time of year in 2022.
Around 424 people in seven boats arrived on on Friday, according to provisional Home Office data.
Between 2004 and 2021, around three-quarters of applicants who were refused asylum at initial decision lodged an appeal and almost one-third of those appeals were allowed.
The chart below shows final outcomes of asylum applications, with green showing those who have been given permission to stay.
A total of 123,282 asylum decisions were made in 2023, with 32,626 applicants allowed grant of protection or some other kind of leave to remain.
This chart below gives you an idea of the long-term backlog of cases.
How does this compare to past decades?
The number of asylum applications to the UK peaked in 2002 at 84,132, according to parliamentary research, after which the number fell to a 22-year low of 17,916 in 2010.
The number then began to slowly rise to 32,733 in 2015, dipped in 2020 during the pandemic, and then rose again to 81,130 in 2022, which was the highest annual figure since 2002.
The tables below show the overall trend between 1993 and 2023, including initial decisions on asylum applications, which included a considerable number of rejections in 2001.
How many asylum seekers are we expecting in 2024?
The answer to this question will likely depend on how successful the new Labour government is in tackling people smuggling gangs, and how effectively it opens up official application channels.
There had been a downward trend in recent years, with the 67,337 applications in 2023 marking a 17% decrease on the previous year.
However, with 35,648 asylum applications made in the UK in the first half of 2024, this trend could potentially start reversing.
Provisional data between 1 January and 21 April shows there were 6,265 small boat arrivals compared to 5,049 in the same period last year, an increase of 24%.
Vietnamese (1,266) and Afghan (1,216) arrivals comprised 40% of the total arrivals in this period and are the top two nationalities arriving so far in 2024.
Of those who arrive in small boats, only about 8% do not claim asylum, according to the Migration Observatory.
As for the backlog of asylum caseloads, as of June 2024, there were 224,700 outstanding cases. Of these, 87,200 cases were awaiting an initial decision and 137,500 cases had received an initial refusal and were awaiting some kind of further action.
Ukrainians coming to the UK under special schemes, such as the Ukraine Family and Homes for Ukraine schemes, are often referred to as refugees but don't have the same status legally.
As of September 2024, 346,200 applications had been received and 263,300 grants issued under the now-closed family scheme and sponsorship (homes for Ukraine) scheme.
How does this compare to legal migration?
According to the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the provisional estimate of total long-term immigration for the year ending December 2023 was around 1.2 million.
The number of people emigrating from the UK long-term in this time period is estimated at 532,000, which is 39,000 higher than the year ending December 2022.
This brings net migration for this period to 685,000 - a number that dwarfs the numbers of asylum seekers.
To give you a snapshot of how this has changed over time, the table below shows an overall drop in net migration after Brexit and a sharp uptick after the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly due to non-EU migration.
The UK has experienced broadly similar levels of migration compared to other high-income countries, on average, over the past few decades, the Migration Observatory says.
It says rising emigration may put downward pressure on net migration from 2024 onwards. For example, many people who come to the UK to study will leave the UK within a few years.
Projections of future net migration are "inherently uncertain", the Observatory adds, adding that in the past 20 years, official projections have usually underestimated the figures.
