“I tried to claim asylum, but they said my word alone wasn’t credible, and they rejected the evidence I did provide,” Adams, a bisexual man from Ghana said. “It’s so difficult to get evidence of your sexuality, especially as a black African man. No-one wants to associate with you, so you can’t be out, or live openly as a bisexual man.”
As an immigration barrister at Garden Court Chambers and a consultant lawyer at Rainbow Migration, a charity which supports LGBTQI+ people through the asylum and immigration system across the UK, we are finding that Adams is far from alone in his struggle to prove his sexual orientation to the Home Office – with the situation for people seeking asylum becoming even more impossible over the past two years.
Since the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (NABA) came into law, we are in fact seeing a clear correlation between the higher standard of proof and more refusal decisions, a greater evidential burden on people seeking asylum, and higher expectations from decision makers. For LGBTQI+ people in the asylum system, there’s been a disproportionate impact.
