By Anna Scott
People watched from hotel windows this summer as demonstrators gathered below, calling for their deportation from the UK.
These men, women, and children are waiting for the Home Office, the government’s immigration department, to decide whether to accept their asylum claims and offer them refugee status – a process which took more than a year for 66% of applicants in 2024.
“It’s very difficult for us, you don’t have peace of mind, you’re always thinking how things will be for you,” said one woman, currently waiting for an asylum decision in a UK city.
Some UK media organisations have published accounts of the summer’s anti-asylum demonstrations which perpetuate a very particular angle, consolidated over the last 10 years of coverage, since a small boy, Alan Kurdi, was photographed by journalist Nilüfer Demir after he drowned in the Mediterranean after fleeing Syria with his family.
“A lot has changed since that day 10 years ago when a viral photo caused a surge of compassion for refugees at sea,” journalist Mathilda Mallinson told her podcast, Media Storm, earlier in September.
While some media coverage still focuses on humanitarian protection, reporting often presents people seeking asylum as a costly security threat, according to a study published by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). “Media coverage frequently relies on and perpetuates common narratives around migrants,” the IOM researchers wrote in the paper.
Many UK outlets are increasingly framing people seeking asylum as threatening, undeserving, and a burden to the UK taxpayer.
“Rights of asylum seekers trump local Epping residents,” The Daily Mail wrote in August, following anti-asylum rallies outside a hotel housing people waiting for Home Office decisions.
“Migrants force tourists out of town as hotels fly flags to prove they’re NOT housing asylum seekers,” GB News headlined in September.
Even the BBC, known for its claims of impartiality, has repeatedly referred to hotels as “taxpayer-funded” which is, in a simplistic way true, but in the wider context of the article came across more antagonistic than neutral.
Following this summer’s coverage, I could have written a response systematically debunking media misconceptions, blatant inaccuracies, and cases of disinformation, but I have not.
Instead, thinking of what is and is not reported, I had the idea to sit down with a group of people in the UK asylum system to hear what they had to say.
The Story of The Story
A local asylum charity allowed me to ask questions during their monthly roundtable discussion group, designed for members to share ideas and feedback, and participants said their answers could be quoted here.
I have named neither my sources nor the charity to protect peoples’ identities while anti-asylum demonstrations take place across the country.
Following publication, I will return to the group and share translated copies of this article with members, inviting their feedback and further thoughts.
The Missing Angles
During the roundtable, I asked people about work and money, following an article published by The Telegraph in May.
“Illegal migrants flock to Britain for ‘easy money’ food delivery jobs,” the headline read, very much setting the tone for the piece to follow. While journalists spoke to multiple people claiming asylum, they included minimal context on their sources’ right to work in the UK, how they’re impacted by employment legislation, and why they work in the gig economy.
“The couriers, many of whom are banned from working because of their immigration status, are then wiring cash back home,” the journalists wrote, making the article’s most direct mention of UK work laws.
There is, however, far more to this story. Legislation forbids people from working for 12 months after they first claim asylum in the UK.
Only if a person has not received an asylum decision after one year of waiting, can they apply for permission to work. However, if accepted, they will just be eligible for specific jobs.
“It’s not good [to wait] one year. I think for three, four, or even five months is okay, but not long term…it’s too much if people are waiting one year,” said a man, who had been refused when he applied for the right to work after waiting one year.
Home Office case workers took less than a year to reach 34% of initial asylum decisions made in 2024, meaning 66% of those receiving a decision were in the system long enough to work, according to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford’s analysis of government data.
While traditional, face-to-face employers will not employ people without the right to work, due to the virtual registration processes of app-based food delivery, there are various hacks enabling people to earn some income from these roles, even if doing so is in breach of the immigration conditions placed on them by the government.
Shortage of Jobs
“I think there is a big issue for the asylum seekers here…when you get a permit to work, you can do very specific jobs, not all jobs,” one man shared with the group.
The law states that even if an application to work is approved, it only permits employment in specific roles defined as understaffed by the government’s Immigration Salary List.
“They’re waiting for one year…and then when they can finally apply for the right to work, they find that there are specific jobs and you need a level of English to do health care or something like that,” he added.
There are currently 25 jobs listed on the Immigration Salary List, including care worker and bricklayer, as well as archaeologist, chemical scientist in the nuclear industry, and “skilled classical ballet dancer”. For some roles, including for welding trades and fishing boat deckhand, the government stipulates that experience cannot have been gained through illegal work.
During the first year of waiting, people housed and fed in hotels receive £8.86 per week from the UK government. Meanwhile, people who have registered with the Home Office as living at an independent address get £49.18 per week.
“The value of asylum support payments fell 37% in real terms – that is, accounting for inflation – between 2000 and 2024, despite nominal increases,” said Peter William Walsh and Nuni Jorgensen in a Migration Observatory briefing.
The Other Kinds of Benefits
In contrast to many media narratives implying, or emphasising, that people seek asylum in the UK to cash in on state benefits, several people expressed a willingness to pay tax if they were able to work.
“If you award the right to work, then I can be taxed by the government, yes? It’s good. But if you’re waiting a long time in the home, it’s not good,” the man whose application to work had been refused said.
Longer asylum waiting times have been linked to negative impacts on long-term employment outcomes for asylum seekers, according to research cited by Walsh and Jorgensen in their briefing. “Being unable to work while waiting for a decision is also likely to hinder long-term integration,” they said.
Another man also saw many benefits to allowing people to work sooner, including helping to foster a greater sense of belonging in the UK.
“I think that would be a positive impact for the individual because…given the opportunity, the person will belong. The person will love the job, and most importantly, the person will earn something in return and indirectly there will be a return also to the government, in the form of tax,” he said. “I think that is all what asylum seekers need, to have the opportunity to work,” he concluded.
“I’m free if I’m working. I can pay my rent and all those things. So if the Home Office is not able to give any money, it doesn’t matter, you are working so you are earning your life,” one woman said.
Impact on Health
Other participants looked at the right to work from a mental health point of view.
“It’s a long time if we wait for work…because it’s too much [time for] thinking,” one woman told the group.
“Mentally, it’s not good for us to be in the room all the time, it always feels like everything has ended for you, and I’d prefer a job like coffee shops,” another woman added.
The Telegraph’s article included one quote from a person linking mental ill health to their inability to work.
“A Kurdish man claimed that he was feeling “suicidal” after spending months languishing in a hotel because his immigration status meant that he could not work. He added: ‘I wish I never came’,” the journalists wrote of the man’s experiences.
The article featured multiple quotes from a further 11 people about the logistics of delivery work, clashes with police, and the supposed ease of making money in the UK.
Drip-fed Opinions
Missed voices and perpetuated inaccuracies are not without consequence. A YouGov poll in August found that 45% of people in Britain don’t want any more people to migrate to the country and are also in favour of forcing recent arrivals to leave.
“Those who want to see mass deportations almost universally want to see removals of those who come to the UK to claim benefits (91%), small boat migrants (90%), and those coming without work visas to work in unskilled jobs (85%),” wrote Matthew Smith, head of data journalism at YouGov.
However, a far lower percentage of these self-proclaimed deportation supporters, some 39%, were in favour of removing people arriving via the “correct legal process” to claim asylum.
This percentage difference points to a public knowledge gap over the availability of safe and legal routes through which people can claim asylum in the UK.
The country operates specific schemes for people fleeing Hong Kong and Ukraine, but for many there is simply no access to legal routes, even through the UNHCR’s UK resettlement schemes – the UKRS, community sponsorship, and mandate resettlement.
“No application can be made for resettlement under the first two of these three schemes…a person just has to wait and hope they will somehow be picked,” said immigration solicitor and editor, Sonia Lenegan, in an article written for Free Movement, a Bristol-based immigration training provider.
What happens next will, in many ways, be dictated by the UK’s political leaders, as well as the media, and Labour’s new Home Secretary, Sharoon Mahmood, who has an opportunity to shape the national mood.
Either she can try to position herself as a less-far-right Reform UK, or she could challenge the prevailing narrative of the UK press, countering misinformation so frequently pedalled on its pages.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Media Diversity Institute. Any question or comment should be addressed to [email protected] of the Media Diversity Institute (MDI).
