Legal aid for asylum seekers is hard to come by – it’s no wonder criminal advisers are taking advantage
The Home Office is investigating after a BBC report found evidence of a “sham industry” of immigration advisers helping people fabricate asylum claims.
The advisers and lawyers allegedly promised quick routes to refugee status – sometimes for fees of thousands of pounds – by helping asylum seekers present themselves in ways they believed the Home Office would accept. These included false claims based on sexual orientation, atheism, political activism and domestic abuse allegations.
These revelations, while concerning, should not be treated as proof of a widespread problem with asylum seekers. Instead, they show how easily people in precarious legal situations can be exploited when access to trustworthy legal advice has been allowed to erode. While some may knowingly go along with such practices, many others may be exploited by unregulated advisers selling a “quick fix” to a complex system.
In England and Wales, immigration advisers are regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority. They must pass competence exams and can only advise at the level for which they are authorised. Government guidance establishes that they must be regulated and are restricted by their qualification levels. Many of the advisers and lawyers identified in the BBC report are unregulated or operating without a licence. In the UK, providing immigration services without proper authorisation is a criminal offence. Registered immigration advisers found to prepare fraudulent cases can lose their credentials, while solicitors who act dishonestly can face disciplinary sanctions including strike off.
People seeking asylum navigate one of the most complex areas of law, often not in their first language. At the same time, they are living in temporary accommodation and dealing with uncertainty. It may be difficult for them to distinguish between reputable solicitors, informal community brokers, regulated advisers, overstretched charities and opportunists.
Like many others in England and Wales, asylum seekers have been affected by years of legal aid shortages. This has created gaps that are being filled by exploitative advisers. “Insider knowledge” presented as certainty and speed can be easily sold to people who are unable to access reliable advice.
Legal aid is a state-funded scheme providing legal advice and representation for people who do not have the means to pay for it themselves. This is often the only route to getting regulated legal help at all in asylum matters, but the system has been weakened over many years. Large parts of civil legal aid were cut back after the introduction of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act in 2012, and what remains available is financially unviable for providers because fees have failed to keep pace with costs. As a result, there are fewer firms and longer waits for the lawyers who remain.
Between 2022-23, 63% of the population of England and Wales did not have access to an immigration and asylum legal aid provider in their area. And 51% of asylum applicants in England and Wales (37,450 people) were unable to find a legal aid lawyer.
Home Office policies house many asylum seekers in locations where legal aid provision is already absent. Access to regulated advisers is far from guaranteed.
The state has left too much room for under-resourced forms of assistance to become normal. As a result, third sector organisations have stepped in to fill gaps in legal support and basic welfare. This often involves the provision of legal support and information about the asylum process.
Most people seeking asylum do not understand what sort of detail the Home Office will expect, how interviews work, what documents they need to present or what counts as corroboration. They rely on legal representatives where they can find them. Considering the lack of affordable and competent advice, opportunistic actors find it easy to step in.
Why unregulated advice finds a market
These issues are worsened by the way asylum decision-making works. Research with asylum seekers about their experiences has found that immigration officials approach asylum interviews with suspicion. Decision-makers may have an idea of what makes someone’s story plausible and recognisable, which is not always reflective of people’s complex lives. For example, people seeking asylum because they are apostates – people who have left religion in a theocracy – have reported being asked to name humanist philosophers – something many would not be able to do regardless of their beliefs.
Home Office caseworkers make life-changing decisions in a system that has long been criticised for inconsistency and disbelief.
Concerns have been raised about the quality of asylum decisions made amid efforts to speed up the process and reduce the backlog of applications. Reports that caseworkers have been offered bonuses for faster decisions also cast doubt on the quality of decision-making. It is not hard to see why people may be drawn towards anyone claiming they know how to make a case “work”.
Long waits also make people more vulnerable to exploitation. Most of our research participants have spent years in limbo, waiting for application decisions. Many would be tempted by promises of a supposedly safer and faster route through the system.
The real concern is not just that some people may be coached on their story, but the fact that the system makes this coaching lucrative. This market of “insider knowledge” can only thrive in a context where regulated legal aid has collapsed, where the success of the asylum claim depends on knowing how to present oneself in a particular manner, and where delays, precarity and uncertainty are part of claimants’ everyday lives.
We welcome any well-investigated scrutiny of rogue advisers. But the legal aid crisis, the uneven geography of advice provision, the culture of disbelief among asylum officials and the assessment process itself are also worthy of examination.
An investigation that does not consider that wider context will only shift public attention to supposedly suspect claimants, instead of to the system that has left them vulnerable to exploitation in the first place.
Raawiyah Rifath has received funding from the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health.
Diego Garcia Rodriguez serves as a trustee of the LGBTIQ+ asylum charity Time To Be Out (https://www.timetobeout.org.uk).
Nicole Hoellerer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.