Do you think there's actually a "let everyone in" policy in place? There isn't.
Firstly, there is demand. Even if Britain announced it was closing the country tomorrow, roughly the same number of asylum seekers would arrive, and Britain would still be obligated to rescue them from its seas. If there were some war or instability in regions of the world that made people there feel they should move to Britain, that would also boost the numbers. That's entirely outside the UK's control.
What is within the UK's control is:
1) agreements they make with other countries for processing asylum claims. In the EU, which they chose to leave, the Dublin III Regulation would prevail, meaning most asylum claimants trying to reach Britain would be processed in the "first safe (EU) country" [0]
Even though they lost access to that sweet deal by "taking back control", France offered to negotiate a deal with Britain, and urged it to allow asylum claimants to make their claim in France and remain in France until they're approved/rejected by Britain. [1] Britain chose not to agree to that. Instead, all it chose to agree was to pay the French to patrol their beaches more often [2]
2) How how quickly they process with asylum claims. The UK Government has an enormous backlog, and it's just getting bigger, because there aren't enough caseworkers, and the amount of time taken to process each case has grown. There is no exact reason why the time taken has grown, but explanations include high staff turnover, and the lack of having a top-level policy focusing on reducing the backlog. Such a policy used to exist in the previous government, it was removed. [3]
In that same report's second graph, you can see the previous Labour government (1997-2010) had a massive backlog of asylum claims by 1999 (much of it sprang from the Bosnian War), they cleared it down and kept it low for the rest of their governance. Since the Conservatives took over in 2010, it has spiraled out of control and is a full blown crisis today.
Regardless of where you lie on the "too many!/too few!" ideological line, the current UK asylum crisis is caused by internal incompetence alone.
On 2), it wouldn't surprise me if that's intentional:
If you process asylum requests quickly, that would take some minimum amount of legal & investigative work. And as 'reward', many asylum requests could turn out to be valid, granting applicants a permanent status.
But if you let asylum seekers hang in a backlog, few costs for legal etc. Just a minimum for temporary housing. From which asylum seekers may disappear, after which they're 'not your problem' (probably still are, but somebody else's problem).
Or situation in their home country improves, upon which you can hasten procedure, deny asylum & send 'em off.
In the meanwhile, temp status asylum seekers could be subjected to all kinds of dehumanizing measures that wouldn't fly for permanent status holders or regular citizens.
Yes it's dirty. But much shameful acts have already been used to counter the inflow of (undesired) migrants.
Do you think there's actually a "let everyone in" policy in place? There isn't.
Firstly, there is demand. Even if Britain announced it was closing the country tomorrow, roughly the same number of asylum seekers would arrive, and Britain would still be obligated to rescue them from its seas. If there were some war or instability in regions of the world that made people there feel they should move to Britain, that would also boost the numbers. That's entirely outside the UK's control.
What is within the UK's control is:
1) agreements they make with other countries for processing asylum claims. In the EU, which they chose to leave, the Dublin III Regulation would prevail, meaning most asylum claimants trying to reach Britain would be processed in the "first safe (EU) country" [0]
Even though they lost access to that sweet deal by "taking back control", France offered to negotiate a deal with Britain, and urged it to allow asylum claimants to make their claim in France and remain in France until they're approved/rejected by Britain. [1] Britain chose not to agree to that. Instead, all it chose to agree was to pay the French to patrol their beaches more often [2]
2) How how quickly they process with asylum claims. The UK Government has an enormous backlog, and it's just getting bigger, because there aren't enough caseworkers, and the amount of time taken to process each case has grown. There is no exact reason why the time taken has grown, but explanations include high staff turnover, and the lack of having a top-level policy focusing on reducing the backlog. Such a policy used to exist in the previous government, it was removed. [3]
In that same report's second graph, you can see the previous Labour government (1997-2010) had a massive backlog of asylum claims by 1999 (much of it sprang from the Bosnian War), they cleared it down and kept it low for the rest of their governance. Since the Conservatives took over in 2010, it has spiraled out of control and is a full blown crisis today.
Regardless of where you lie on the "too many!/too few!" ideological line, the current UK asylum crisis is caused by internal incompetence alone.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/france/20211129-french-minister-...
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63615653
[3] https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/th...