Yesterday the BBC uncovered a growing way to game the UK asylum system. Shady legal advisers are charging migrants thousands of dollars to show them how to pretend to be gay and therefore in danger of being persecuted if they are deported to places like Pakistan.
But it turns out that’s just one of many gimmicks that are catching on. Equally useful to migrants looking to stay in the UK was to falsely claim that they were atheists or political activists.
There were three routes to asylum for someone in his situation: as someone who faced persecution for their sexual orientation, their religious beliefs or their political views…
All of the options would take work. For a legal fee of £1,500, Akhand would help him in “preparing your application, preparing you for the interview, taking repeated mock interviews”.
If the reporter wanted to declare himself an atheist, the process would start with making posts on social media insulting Islam or the Prophet Muhammad.
“Religious clerics will start making comments threatening to kill you. Then you will see that your evidence has been created,” Akhand said.
He would be introduced by the lawyer to atheist organisations in the UK and in Bangladesh that ran online blogs or magazines where, for a fee, he could make posts, again lending credibility to his claims. He suggested the reporter could use AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to write blog or article posts.
These gimmicks are fraud under UK law but at least no one is being directly harmed when someone lies and claims they are gay or an atheist. Well, maybe the taxpayers are being harmed for being on the hook for whatever assistance these people will get, but no one in particular is being harmed.
But that’s not the case when it comes to this next gimmick which the BBC covered in a separate article. For some migrants willing to lie, claiming to be a victim of domestic abuse is a shortcut to getting permission to remain in the country.
Migrants are falsely claiming to be victims of domestic abuse in order to stay in the country, a BBC investigation has discovered.
They are exploiting rules brought in by ministers to help genuine victims of abuse to secure permanent residence more quickly than through other routes, such as asylum.
Here’s how this particular gimmick works.
Under Home Office rules, migrants who are the victims of domestic abuse and who are on temporary visas in the UK as the partners of British citizens can apply for a special concession.
Because these migrants are often reliant on their partners not just for their visa but for their food and accommodation, the concession provides support to those whose relationships have broken down because of violence or abuse.
If the application is successful, they are granted permission to stay in the UK for three months and can claim benefits.
During those three months, they can then apply for indefinite leave to remain in the UK, when foreign nationals are given the right to live, work and study in the UK permanently with no time limit…
Someone who lives and works in the UK on a visa would typically have to wait at least five years before an application for indefinite leave to remain can be made.
So you can cut years off your asylum claim. All you need to do is throw your partner under the bus and falsely accuse them of abuse. And it seems hundreds of people are.
According to figures obtained by BBC News using the Freedom of Information Act, a total of 5,596 migrants made applications for indefinite leave to remain as the victims of domestic abuse in the 12 months up to September 2025, the most recent period for which there is data.
Around a quarter of applications – 1,424 of them – were made by men, a rise of 66% compared with the same period two years earlier, with the number being made by women increasing by 47%.
The story goes on to relate the experience of a woman named Aisha who married a man she met on a dating site only to find out later he was not a British citizen as he claimed. She says he raped her in an effort to get her pregnant so he’d be allowed to stay at which she point she left home and reported what had happened to both the police and the Home Office which handles immigration. In response, her husband claimed abuse.
She says his answer was to go to the police and tell them that he was the victim of domestic abuse, not her.
He told officers that she and her family had subjected him to coercive control, and that she had been physically violent as well.
“He told me just before he made the domestic abuse report: “Oh don’t worry, I’ve multiple ways to stay here. I don’t need you to stay in the country’,” she says.
It’s repulsive but some people are willing to do anything to remain in the UK. Here’s the BBC report on this aspect of the story.
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