UK posts record number of asylum requests

LONDON: Over 108,000 people applied for asylum in Britain last year, government figures showed on Thursday, the highest number for any 12-month period since records began in 2001.

The 108,138 applications are an 18 percent increase on the 91,811 requests lodged in 2023, according to the Home Office. The previous record was 103,081 in the 12 months to December 2002.

The figures come after Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged this month to toughen immigration rules to make it almost impossible for undocumented migrants who arrive in the UK on boats from across the English Channel to later receive citizenship.

Starmer´s Labour government is under pressure to reduce migration after Nigel Farage´s anti-immigration Reform UK party won roughly four million votes during the last general election, an unprecedented haul for a far-right party in Britain.

According to the latest figures, the most common nationality among asylum applicants last year was Pakistani, accounting for 10,542 people or 9.7 percent of the total. There was also a big increase in the number of applications by Vietnamese nationals, which more than doubled to 5,259 from 2,469 the previous year.