Asylum is a special category of immigration that is NOT economic, but fundamentally routed in demonstrated and/or feared threats to life, and demonstrated and/or feared persecution through physical, psychological & legal means, commonly due to the asylum-seeker belonging to a persecuted minority (from political and religious, to sexual & gender minorities).
Definition (Wikipedia) of an asylum seeker:
An asylum seeker … is a person who flees their home country, enters another country and applies for asylum, i.e. the right to international protection, in this other country. An asylum seeker is a type of migrant and may be a refugee, a displaced person, but not an economic migrant. Migrants are not necessarily asylum seekers. A person becomes an asylum seeker by making a formal application for the right to remain in another country and keeps that status until the application has been concluded.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_seeker
Index of topic pages:
Making an asylum claim — http://needtoknow-immigrationuk.com/making-an-asylum-claim/
The asylum caseworker — http://needtoknow-immigrationuk.com/the-asylum-caseworker/
Asylum check-ins — http://needtoknow-immigrationuk.com/asylum-check-ins/
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Traditionally, until the advent of the Hostile Environment, asylum seekers were recognised as fellow human-beings, commonly amongst the most that deserve humanity to be shown to them, as they were coming from extreme circumstances in settings overseas.
Famously the Kinder Transport of 2038 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertransport — in which the UK welcomed Jewish children fleeing Nazi Germany. It would have been inconceivable to at that time imagine, that 80 years ago, many of the mechanisms of key de-facto aspects of the Hostile Environment at operational level, and the latter’s very ethos, were used against the Jewish community (and indeed other ethnic minorities such as Gypsy, and all gay people/sexual minorities) by the Nazis, would be at the heart of the UK’s ‘Hostile Environment’ 80 years latter. The same dynamics and many of the same approaches being found in 1933 – 1938 Nazi Germany, and in early 21st Century Hostile Environment Britain.
The biggest common denominators between the two being targeting & demonising of genuine asylum seekers who collectively are members of specific minority communities, particularly ill-equipped to defend themselves (particularly at individuals targeted level) by all-powerful government departments bureaucracies bullying (from psychological to physical. The latter especially in detention and deportation settings) to in particular using and subverting by carefully planned multifaceted means, existing legal frameworks and through courts and tribunal systems.
Under the former Home Secretary and former Prime Minister, Theresa May’s ‘Hostile Environment’ implemented at operational level by Whitehall civil servants through the Home Office & its Hostile Environment direct and indirect/associate implementing agencies and entities, and overseas under the FCO, the name of asylum-seeker has been purposely demonised.
Asylum seekers per se (both the vast majority who are genuine ones, and the small minority of false applicants) are especially targeted of all visa and entry and settlement applicants. This is reflected in both refusal of application rates, and also treatment of demonstrated/evidenced genuine applicants by HMCTS Immigration Tribunal. LGBT genuine asylum seekers are perhaps the most targeted for refusal by the Home Office (about 67% in 2018: see research briefings. parliament link below) & Tribunal, as statistics show, and yet are commonly as a population group the most at risk of death, torture, forced marriages. Some links:
https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN01403
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/11/30/the-uk-has-rejected-thousands-of-gay-asylum-seekers/