What life is like for migrants who arrive on UK shores

if you're one of the 5 000 plus migrants and refugees who've arrived into dover port so far this year one of the first things you'd have seen is the cruise ship disney magic after britannia but as we found out from those who arrived last year where dreams come true can become the nightmare of asylum limbo in recent years the numbers of people claiming asylum are actually down but this way of getting into the country illegally is becoming more and more popular last year around eight and a half thousand people came across in this way this year it could turn out to be over double that these men are sudanese the gangplank brings them to the tog haven facility here on the western docks in dover over the next 24 hours they'll be arrested under the immigration act their temperature taken tested for covered photographed and fingerprinted according to an inspection report last year although this facility is basic people said they were treated courteously by the staff here boatload after boatload are photographed and filmed by journalists and so-called migrant spotters but no one is live streaming what happens next the group from sudan were bust out of dover a few hours after they arrived driven 140 miles north to the yarlswood detention center north of bedford so from the english channel to the other side of those three sets of security fencing behind me and yarlswood detention center one of the first things will happen to the men is they will go through a screening interview which is the first step in their claim for asylum the men will be here for about 72 hours most of that time spent sleeping recovering from the crossing and their time in the camps of cali a lot of hopes right here cry tear block no get because of that i like it some answer i hate last august we met muhammad in calais a poet from sudan he arrived by dinghy in the uk seven months ago now being put up in this student accommodation block in north london that's a big step up from the jungle in calais yes it's great to me yes but as i told you survivor of the fittest i was in in the tent you know i was living in my palace and now it's my palace if i'm living in the street also it's my palace you know is that right how do you think how do you think not how where you live he had an asylum claim rejected in france came to britain believing he'd get a more sympathetic hearing before the first of january he could in theory at least have been returned to france under eu regulations post brexit though that's no longer the case and that according to muhammad is one of the reasons his claim has been delayed the longer he has to wait the more it costs the state and muhammad is not comfortable with that all these people just they wait they are waiting the opportunity you know to live a good life you know they are not happy to just get food or money and all that they want to do something you know to be like good people in their life because they were in their countries but unfortunately because a lot of reasons like like everything they force it to live delays processing asylum claims predate brexit of course the backlog of cases has been the home offices gordy and not for years now the number of people claiming asylum in this country has actually gone down over the past five years with less than 30 000 claims last year but over the same period watch this line it shows that the number of people waiting over a year for an initial decision on their asylum has increased more than tenfold from just over two and a half thousand people to well over thirty thousand people in twenty twenty we've already found several migrants the bottleneck is not just causing angst for people who arrived on dinghies last year far-right groups have videoed themselves confronting migrants living in hotels at the time they also knocked on allah's hotel room door in slough he didn't answer he's from yemen arrived into dover in july last year still waiting for his substantive home office interviewing [Music] plus eight pounds a week there will be people that will say why are we paying for allah to be in a hotel room another there are around 60 000 asylum seekers in various types of supported accommodation people like allah in hotels or hostels often get what's called section 98 support it's meant to be short-term but the number of people receiving it has also risen dramatically from under two thousand in twenty fifteen to over ten thousand in twenty twenty there's universal acknowledgement even at the home office that the system is broken the pandemic has understandably exacerbated the dysfunction a spokesperson told us that the home secretary's new plan for immigration will clear outstanding cases and speed up decision making but every boat and every person arriving this year will test that claim to the nth degree

Channel: Channel 4 News

Views: 166,876

Keywords: channel 4 news, c4 news, news, uk, united kingdom, channel, england, Border Force, home office, immigration, migration, calais, kent, boats, c4news, sudan, yemen, wales, scotland, northern ireland, britain, migrants, channel crossing, refugee

Id: f_9kwOtCMZk

Length: 6min 29sec (389 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021