Last year, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government made a last-ditch effort to win over voters with the Illegal Migration Act (IMA), a draconian policy that said anybody arriving in the UK via an ‘irregular’ route – usually aboard a small boat or in the back of a lorry – would not have their asylum application considered.
The law was intended to deter people from travelling to the UK to claim asylum. But vulnerable communities continued to risk their lives to cross over in large numbers only to find themselves caught in a legal no-man’s land with no clear route to asylum.
An investigation by openDemocracy has uncovered more than 31,000 people arrived in the UK in a small boat in the 12 months after the law was passed in July 2023 – compared to 40,000 people in the previous 12 months – and more than 99% of them submitted an asylum application.
