A petition opposing a pilot scheme that awards failed asylum seekers up to £40,000 has reached a significant milestone. The online document has now gathered more than 10,000 signatures, currently standing at 10,123, which means the government is required to issue a response.
Petition Details
The petition was launched on April 10 by Alison Dean-Norman and will remain open until October 10. If it reaches 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in Parliament.
The scheme includes 'incentive payments' of up to £10,000 per person, with a maximum of four per family. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced in March that the government intended to offer these increased payments, describing them as a 'significant saving to the taxpayer'.
Government Stance
Ms Mahmood stated that ministers are consulting on how to remove families with children who refuse to leave voluntarily 'in a way that is humane and effective'. She argued that failing to remove families creates 'a perverse incentive' for migrants to cross the English Channel with children.
The Home Secretary confirmed that the government would forcibly remove failed asylum seekers if they do not accept the incentive payments within seven days.
Petition Author's View
Ms Dean-Norman wrote: 'The UK government should stop its pilot scheme offering failed asylum seekers our hard earned money for them to leave the UK. We feel it is not fair to the UK people to provide our money to failed asylum seekers to get them to leave.'
A separate petition against the same scheme was rejected by the government on April 10, as Ms Dean-Norman's petition was already active. That petition stated: 'I feel strongly against bribery of cash to illegal immigrants, illegally crossing over here jumping on dingys. Expecting to give a lot of cash would just be a massive incentive for them all with the situation of free cash its just going to get made worse.'
Asylum Backlog
The UK asylum appeals backlog has reached a new record high, now more than seven times the level of a decade ago. Figures show there were 87,450 cases in the system at the end of March, a 72% increase from 50,976 a year earlier. In the same period in 2016, the backlog stood at 11,660.
Data from the Ministry of Justice revealed that more than a third (40%) of appeals were successful between January and March this year, down from 43% in the same period last year. The average waiting time to clear an asylum appeal was 67 weeks, up from 54 weeks in the first quarter of the previous year.
