Privatized Asylum Industry: Corporate Profits, Political Connections, and Exploitation Concerns. Serco the Manure of Evil
The UK’s asylum accommodation system has been transformed into a highly profitable private industry worth billions of pounds annually. The Home Office expects to have spent £3.1bn on hotels in the financial year ending in March 2024 alone, with the Asylum Accommodation and Support Contract (AASC) estimated to cost the government £4 billion over its ten-year duration. This system is dominated by three major contractors: Serco, Mears, and Clearsprings, alongside a network of hotel operators and accommodation providers who have built substantial business empires around housing asylum seekers.
A Cartel Of Providers
Serco was awarded UK asylum support services contracts with an estimated value of £1.9bn, representing Serco’s largest ever contract award. The company was awarded a 10-year contract worth a record £1.9 billion by the Home Office in 2019 and is already housing at least 30,000 asylum seekers in 6,000 homes. Serco’s business model operates through a sophisticated network of subcontractors and property arrangements. Serco’s operating model is based on leasing properties from a wide network of landlords, investors and agents and acting as a tenant. This arrangement allows the company to profit from both its primary contract with the Home Office and its relationships with property owners across the country. Outsourcing firms Mears and Serco have between them won £2.9bn of contracts for asylum seeker accommodation. The housing contracts are divided between 3 private companies: Serco, Mears and Clearsprings, creating an oligopoly that controls virtually all asylum accommodation provision in the UK.
Serco represents one of the most controversial examples of how privatization of essential government services has created opportunities for systematic exploitation while generating enormous private profits from public failure. With a history spanning multiple scandals across healthcare, criminal justice, immigration, and emergency services, Serco has established a business model that thrives on government dysfunction while consistently failing to deliver promised services at acceptable quality standards. The company’s recent acquisition of ORS Group for £39 million has expanded this exploitative model across Europe, creating an international network that profits from human vulnerability while contributing to the dehumanization of asylum seekers and other vulnerable populations.
Serco’s History of Scandals and Failures
Serco’s involvement in healthcare services demonstrates a pattern of systematic failure that has put vulnerable patients at risk while extracting substantial profits from public healthcare budgets. In 2012 Serco admitted giving false data to the NHS 252 times on the performance of its out-of-hours GP service in Cornwall, representing one of the most egregious examples of systematic fraud in NHS outsourcing history. In April 2014, Serco revealed that it would lose almost £18 million on three of its NHS contracts. It had made provisions for losses in its Braintree and Cornwall contracts, which were cancelled early, and had also made provisions for losses in its contract for services in Suffolk. Despite these massive losses and documented failures, when Serco handed over the community care contract in Suffolk to new providers, the company noted that the £140 million the company was paid for the contract was “not adequate” for the work. The company’s healthcare failures extend to more recent operations, with Serco accused of using “strong-arm tactics” to try to force workers in a Scottish NHS board to accept a change to their contracts, wanting to move hundreds of employees at NHS Forth Valley from weekly to monthly pay, creating financial hardship for healthcare workers during a period of economic difficulty.
Electronic Tagging Fraud and Criminal Justice Failures
Serco’s most serious criminal scandal involved systematic fraud in its electronic tagging contracts with the Ministry of Justice. Serco, as well as its rival G4S, was accused of overcharging the Ministry of Justice on its contract to tag offenders. The firm issued a profit warning for 2014 as a result of the costs of becoming embroiled in an electronic tagging scandal. Serco repaid £68.5 million to the government. The scale of this fraud was extraordinary, with Serco accused of charging the Government for the electronic monitoring of people who were dead, in jail, or had left the country. The Serious Fraud Office ultimately fined Serco £19.2 million with an additional £3.7 million in costs, for a total penalty of £22.9 million, representing one of the largest fraud settlements in UK government contracting history.
COVID-19 Contract Failures
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Serco received substantial additional government contracts despite its history of failure. As Serco’s share price soars, the government is accused of “shovelling huge sums of public money to a handful of outsourcing companies without competition, rigour or accountability”. The contact tracing system – which Serco is leading – launched this week but is not expected to be fully operational until the end of June. Last week, Labour called for an investigation after it emerged that Serco had accidentally shared the email addresses of hundreds of contract tracers.
The ORS Group Acquisition: Expanding Exploitation of Asylum Seekers Across Europe
Serco Group acquired ORS, an immigration services provider in Europe, for up to CHF44mln (£39mln). Swiss-based ORS provides immigration services to public sector customers in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy and generated CHF110mln in revenue in 2021. This acquisition represents a strategic expansion of Serco’s asylum accommodation business model across multiple European countries. The ORS Group currently has over 2,000 employees and ensures that refugees receive professional care from their arrival and housing, through the care they receive during their asylum proceedings, to the assistance given to them with their professional and social integration, though this corporate description masks the reality of profit extraction from vulnerable populations.
Creating a European Network of Exploitation
Following the ORS acquisition, Serco acquired European Homecare, a leading provider of immigration services in Germany, with Serco Group Chief Executive stating: “This strategic acquisition will complement our ORS operations and strengthen our position as a leading partner in immigration services for European governments”. This expansion strategy demonstrates Serco’s systematic approach to building a continental network that profits from immigration enforcement and asylum accommodation. Serco Industrial operations across Europe represent the industry of dehumanisation, exploitation of Asylum Seekers and Human Beings captured by unscrupulous criminal corporate entities, in violations of all Human Rights Charter and the European Human Rights. Serco operations across Europe as a rogue corporate entity, on behalf of the UK, it’s the utmost threat to Europe. The expansion across Europe enables Serco to leverage economies of scale in what is essentially the industrialization of human detention and control. By operating similar services across multiple countries, the company can standardize cost-cutting measures, share technologies for surveillance and control, and create integrated systems that treat asylum seekers as commodities to be processed rather than human beings deserving dignity and respect.
The Business Model of Systematic Exploitation while Profiting from Government Dysfunction
Serco’s business model fundamentally depends on government failure and social crisis. The company thrives in situations where public services are overwhelmed, underfunded, or politically controversial, positioning itself as a solution to problems that are often exacerbated by privatization itself. This creates perverse incentives where the company benefits from continued dysfunction rather than the successful resolution of social problems. The asylum accommodation sector represents the perfect embodiment of this model, as immigration remains a politically sensitive issue that governments prefer to outsource rather than handle directly. This political sensitivity enables companies like Serco to extract substantial profits while operating with minimal oversight or accountability, as government officials are reluctant to admit the extent of problems in services they have chosen to privatize. Serco’s contracts are structured to create long-term dependency relationships that make it extremely difficult for government agencies to terminate services or switch providers, even when performance is inadequate. The complexity of operations, the specialized knowledge required, and the substantial infrastructure investments involved in these contracts create switching costs that enable Serco to maintain contracts despite poor performance. This dependency is particularly pronounced in asylum services, where the urgent need for accommodation and the political pressure to remove asylum seekers from public view create situations where government agencies cannot easily terminate contracts without creating immediate humanitarian crises. Serco exploits this vulnerability by maintaining minimal service standards while maximizing profit extraction, knowing that government agencies have limited alternatives.
International Expansion and Human Rights Charter Violations Concerns
Serco’s expansion across Europe through acquisitions like ORS Group represents the industrialization of immigration control and asylum processing, creating standardized systems for managing human movement that prioritize efficiency and cost control over human dignity and legal rights. This industrial approach treats asylum seekers as units to be processed rather than individuals with complex needs and legal entitlements. The standardization of services across multiple countries enables Serco to implement cost-cutting measures and surveillance technologies that might face resistance if introduced individually in each country, but become normalized when implemented as part of an integrated European system. This creates risks of systematic human rights violations that span multiple jurisdictions while making accountability and legal challenges more complex and difficult.
Profiting from Dehumanization and Human Rights Violations, amounts to Crime Against Humanity
The corporate approach to asylum accommodation fundamentally contributes to the dehumanization of asylum seekers by treating them as sources of revenue rather than human beings deserving dignity and respect. The profit motive creates systematic incentives to minimize costs associated with human comfort, dignity, and well-being while maximizing extraction of value from government contracts. This dehumanization is not merely a byproduct of corporate involvement but is essential to the business model, as recognition of asylum seekers’ full humanity and legal rights would require service standards and cost structures that would make these contracts less profitable. The corporate messaging around “care and respect” serves to obscure this fundamental contradiction between profit maximization and human dignity.
Political Connections, Far-Right Activists, Genocide Apologetic Influence Operations. The Threat to Europe
Serco maintains extensive networks of former government officials who move between public sector roles and corporate positions, creating conflicts of interest that enable preferential contract treatment and reduced oversight. These relationships are particularly important in the immigration sector, where policy decisions directly impact contract values and service requirements. The movement of personnel between Serco and government agencies creates institutional knowledge transfer that benefits the company while potentially compromising government oversight capabilities. Former government officials bring understanding of procurement processes, policy priorities, and regulatory weaknesses that enable Serco to structure bids and operations in ways that maximize profit while minimizing compliance costs.
Lobbying and Policy Influence
Serco operates substantial lobbying operations designed to influence immigration policy in directions that increase demand for its services while reducing regulatory oversight and quality requirements. This lobbying extends beyond direct contract negotiations to broader policy discussions about immigration enforcement, detention policies, and asylum processing procedures. The company’s lobbying efforts often align with political movements that promote harsh immigration policies, increased detention, and reduced legal protections for asylum seekers, as these policies create market opportunities for privatized immigration services. This creates situations where corporate profit motives may influence public policy in directions that increase human suffering while generating private revenue.
Systematic Exploitation and Human Rights Violations
The fundamental structure of Serco’s asylum accommodation contracts creates systematic incentives for exploitation that cannot be resolved through minor regulatory adjustments or improved oversight. The profit motive requires minimizing costs associated with human comfort, dignity, and legal rights while maximizing the extraction of value from government payments. This creates predictable patterns of abuse, including inadequate housing conditions, insufficient food provision, limited access to healthcare and legal services, and restrictions on movement and association that exceed what is legally required or operationally necessary. These conditions are not accidents or management failures but logical consequences of a business model that treats human suffering as an acceptable cost of profit generation.
Institutionalized Vulnerability
The privatized asylum system creates institutionalized vulnerability that goes beyond individual cases of abuse to encompass systematic structures that make exploitation inevitable. Asylum seekers housed by Serco and its subcontractors face comprehensive dependency relationships that eliminate virtually all personal agency while creating multiple opportunities for exploitation. This institutionalized vulnerability includes financial exploitation through controlled access to basic necessities, social isolation through geographic placement decisions that separate asylum seekers from support networks and legal assistance, and psychological pressure through uncertain accommodation arrangements and constant surveillance that undermines mental health and legal advocacy capabilities.
Serco’s acquisition strategy across Europe represents an attempt to create integrated control systems that can manage human movement across national boundaries while generating profits from government immigration policies. This continental approach enables the company to leverage political tensions around immigration while offering governments technical solutions that appear to address public concerns without requiring fundamental policy changes. The integration of asylum services across multiple European countries creates opportunities for arbitrage that can maximize profits while minimizing service quality, as asylum seekers can be moved between countries and facilities based on cost considerations rather than individual needs or legal requirements. This mobility of vulnerable populations serves corporate interests while making oversight and accountability more difficult for government agencies and civil society organizations.
Normalizing Exploitation Across Jurisdictions
The expansion of Serco’s business model across Europe contributes to the normalization of exploitation by creating standardized practices that become accepted as inevitable aspects of immigration control rather than policy choices that could be changed through democratic processes. When similar conditions and practices are implemented across multiple countries, they acquire the appearance of technical necessity rather than political decisions that prioritize corporate profits over human dignity. This normalization process is facilitated by corporate messaging that presents exploitation as humanitarian assistance and profit extraction as efficient service delivery. The corporate capture of language around immigration services makes it more difficult for critics to articulate alternatives that prioritize human rights and dignity over cost control and corporate profits.
The Profit Structure and Shareholders’ Dividends
Private companies contracted to run Government-funded accommodation for asylum seekers in the UK have collectively paid £121m in dividends to shareholders since securing the most recent contracts in 2019. This figure represents substantial profit extraction from contracts nominally designed to provide humanitarian assistance to vulnerable populations. The hotel sector has emerged as a particularly profitable component of the asylum accommodation industry. Hotel chains and tycoons, including those dubbed the ‘Asylum King,’ are making tens of millions a year from housing asylum seekers while providing substandard conditions that would be unacceptable for paying customers.
Landlords in parts of England are being offered five-year ‘full rent’ agreements to provide homes for asylum seekers, creating financial incentives that often exceed normal rental market rates. These arrangements guarantee income streams for property owners while removing typical rental market risks associated with tenant default or property damage.
Documented Exploitation and Poor Conditions
Families seeking asylum face inhumane conditions in temporary housing, including rat infestation and mould, experiencing daily struggles to get food their children will eat, as well as mental and physical health problems and serious disruptions to their children’s education. These conditions persist despite the substantial public funding directed toward accommodation provision. The Home Office recorded 1500 asylum hotel complaints in 2023, with just under 30,000 asylum-seeking people living in hotels run by the government or its contractors as of June 2024. This complaint rate suggests systematic problems with service quality across the accommodation network.
Institutional Accommodation Concerns
Claimants at facilities like RAF Wethersfield have complained of inadequate support, poor and dirty living conditions, inadequate healthcare and restrictions on movement, with evidence suggesting a hostile and inadequate regime. These conditions raise serious concerns about the treatment of vulnerable populations in institutional settings designed for profit rather than care.
Government Failure and Complicity in the System of Mass Exploitation
The government fails to monitor firms with £4bn contracts to house asylum seekers, with the three companies often acting as middlemen, placing asylum seekers in hotels or other accommodation owned by firms in their networks. This lack of oversight enables a system where accountability is diffused across multiple layers of contractors and subcontractors. Without significant reforms, the cycle of poor housing and financial management will continue, to the detriment of both asylum seekers and the public purse. The current system represents a failure of both humanitarian objectives and public financial management.
The Business Model of Exploitation and Middleman Profit Extraction
The asylum accommodation industry operates through a complex web of contracts, subcontracts, and property arrangements that maximize profit extraction while minimizing direct accountability for service quality. Primary contractors like Serco, Mears, and Clearsprings function as intermediaries who secure government contracts and then subcontract actual service provision to networks of smaller operators, property owners, and accommodation providers. This structure enables multiple layers of profit extraction from the same government funding stream. The primary contractor extracts profit margins from the overall contract value, subcontractors extract profits from their specific service provision agreements, and property owners receive rental payments that often exceed market rates while facing minimal quality standards or accountability measures.
The concentration of asylum accommodation contracts among a small number of large operators has created market conditions that favour these established players while creating barriers to entry for potential competitors. The specialized nature of asylum accommodation, combined with the political sensitivity surrounding immigration issues, makes it extremely difficult for new entrants to compete effectively with established contractors who have developed relationships with government officials and an understanding of complex procurement processes. This market concentration enables pricing strategies that may not reflect true market competition, as government agencies have limited alternatives when contracts come up for renewal. The substantial size of these contracts also creates significant barriers to entry, as smaller operators lack the financial capacity to bid for multi-billion-pound contracts that require substantial upfront investment and financial guarantees.
Political Corruption and the Xenophobic, Genocide Apologetic Far-Right White Supremacist Agenda
The asylum accommodation industry exhibits characteristics typical of sectors with close government relationships, including the movement of personnel between government agencies and private contractors. Former Home Office officials and immigration service managers often move to senior positions with major contractors, bringing with them intimate knowledge of government procurement processes, policy priorities, and decision-making structures. This revolving door creates potential conflicts of interest where individuals involved in designing procurement processes or setting service specifications may later benefit from their inside knowledge when working for companies bidding for these same contracts. The specialized nature of immigration services makes these personal relationships particularly valuable, as the number of individuals with relevant expertise is relatively small. Major contractors in the asylum accommodation sector maintain substantial lobbying operations designed to influence government policy in directions that benefit their business interests. These lobbying efforts often focus on promoting continued privatization of immigration services, resisting quality standards that might increase costs, and advocating for contract structures that provide long-term revenue certainty. The lobbying activities extend beyond direct contract negotiations to broader immigration policy discussions, where contractors may advocate for policies that increase demand for their services or create operational efficiencies that improve their profit margins. This creates potential conflicts between public policy objectives focused on humanitarian concerns and private sector interests focused on profit maximization.
Documented Abuses and Exploitation
The drive for profit maximization in asylum accommodation has resulted in documented cases of exploitation that raise serious ethical and legal concerns. Accommodation providers frequently house asylum seekers in properties that would be considered substandard for any other population, including facilities with persistent mould problems, inadequate heating, overcrowding, and pest infestations. The vulnerable status of asylum seekers makes them particularly susceptible to exploitation, as they typically lack the legal knowledge, financial resources, or social connections necessary to challenge poor treatment or advocate for better conditions. This power imbalance enables accommodation providers to maintain cost structures that would be impossible with any population that had meaningful alternatives or advocacy support.
The asylum support system enables various forms of financial exploitation beyond substandard accommodation. Asylum seekers receiving support payments of approximately £7 per day often find themselves dependent on services and products provided by the same companies that house them, creating opportunities for additional profit extraction through commissary services, transportation, communication services, and other necessities. Restriction of asylum seekers’ right to work in most cases creates complete dependency on accommodation providers and support services, eliminating any market pressure that might otherwise improve service quality or reduce exploitative practices. This dependency relationship enables systematic exploitation that would be impossible in normal commercial relationships where customers have alternatives.
Accommodation providers often fail to provide adequate access to healthcare, education, and social services that asylum seekers require, particularly those with complex medical needs, trauma histories, or specific cultural requirements. The profit-focused business model creates incentives to minimize costs associated with specialized services or complex cases, leading to systematic neglect of vulnerable individuals who require additional support. Children in asylum accommodation face particular risks, as their educational and developmental needs often receive inadequate attention from accommodation providers focused on minimizing costs rather than ensuring proper child welfare. The disruption to education and social development experienced by children in the asylum system represents a form of institutional harm that extends far beyond immediate accommodation quality.
Regulatory Capture and Accountability Failures, a system designed on the Nazi Germany Concentration Camps Industry of Exploitation
The Home Office’s oversight of asylum accommodation contractors demonstrates characteristics typical of regulatory capture, where the agencies responsible for monitoring private sector performance become overly dependent on the same companies they are supposed to regulate. The complexity of asylum accommodation contracts and the specialized knowledge required to evaluate performance create information asymmetries that favour contractors over government monitors. The lack of meaningful performance standards, combined with contract structures that prioritize cost containment over service quality, enables systematic underperformance without significant financial consequences for contractors. This creates business environments where companies can maximize profits by cutting corners on service provision while facing minimal risk of contract termination or financial penalties.
Public Accountability Gaps
The complex web of contracts, subcontracts, and property arrangements that characterizes the asylum accommodation industry makes it extremely difficult for public oversight bodies, parliamentary committees, or civil society organizations to trace accountability for service failures or document systematic problems. This opacity serves the interests of contractors by making it difficult to establish clear responsibility for problems while protecting them from public scrutiny and political pressure. Commercial confidentiality that typically surrounds government contracts with private sector providers further limits public accountability by preventing disclosure of specific performance standards, financial arrangements, and service delivery requirements that would enable meaningful evaluation of whether public money is being used effectively and appropriately.
Democratic Accountability
Privatization of asylum accommodation has effectively removed democratic accountability from humanitarian service provision by transferring operational control to private companies that operate according to commercial rather than public service principles. Restoring democratic accountability would require either bringing these services back under direct government control or creating regulatory frameworks that subject private contractors to the same transparency and accountability standards that apply to public sector organizations. This democratization of asylum accommodation would enable meaningful public oversight of how taxpayer money is spent on humanitarian services while ensuring that service provision prioritizes human dignity and legal compliance over profit maximization. It would also create opportunities for asylum seekers and their advocates to influence service provision through normal democratic processes rather than being dependent on the goodwill of private contractors. The privatized asylum accommodation industry represents a systematic failure of public policy that has prioritized commercial interests over humanitarian obligations while creating opportunities for exploitation that would be unacceptable in any other context. The substantial profits extracted by shareholders from government contracts nominally designed to provide humanitarian assistance demonstrate how market-based approaches to social services can create perverse incentives that undermine both service quality and public financial management.
Concentration of asylum accommodation contracts among a small number of large operators, combined with weak government oversight and limited public accountability, has created conditions that enable systematic exploitation of vulnerable populations while generating substantial private profits from public funding. This represents not only a humanitarian failure but also a failure of public administration that enables private sector actors to extract value from public services without providing corresponding public benefits.
Internal law and Human Rights Charter and Treaties establish the recognition that asylum accommodation is fundamentally a public service that involves legal obligations to vulnerable populations rather than a commercial opportunity for private profit extraction. Until this fundamental principle is recognized and implemented through appropriate regulatory and contractual arrangements, the current system will continue to enable exploitation while failing to meet either humanitarian objectives or public value standards.
The Legal Right to Seek Asylum: How “Illegal Immigration” Legislation Undermines International Law and Enables Exploitation
The Fundamental Legal Principle: The Right to Seek Asylum
International Legal Framework
Under international law, seeking asylum is not only legal—it is a fundamental human right. The 1951 Refugee Convention, to which the UK is a signatory, establishes that refugees have the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution. This right exists regardless of how a person arrives in a country or whether they possess valid travel documents. Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” This principle is not contingent on the method of arrival or possession of documentation, recognizing that people fleeing persecution often cannot obtain official documentation or travel through regular channels.
The Principle of Non-Refoulement
The cornerstone of refugee protection is the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits states from returning refugees to territories where they face threats to their life or freedom. This principle is considered jus cogens—a fundamental norm of international law that cannot be derogated from under any circumstances, including during states of emergency or war. The 1951 Refugee Convention explicitly states in Article 31 that refugees should not be penalized for their illegal entry or presence, provided they present themselves to authorities without delay and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence. This provision recognizes that refugees may have no choice but to breach immigration laws to reach safety.
Genuine Asylum Seekers Cannot Be “Illegal Immigrants”
The term “illegal immigrant” when applied to genuine asylum seekers represents a fundamental misunderstanding or deliberate misrepresentation of international law. Several legal principles make it impossible for a genuine asylum seeker to be classified as an “illegal immigrant”:
Legal Status Pending Determination: From the moment a person expresses an intention to seek asylum, they acquire a legal status under international law that supersedes immigration law violations. The asylum claim must be properly examined before any immigration enforcement action can be taken.
Protection Against Criminalization: Article 31 of the Refugee Convention explicitly prohibits states from imposing penalties on refugees for illegal entry or presence when they are seeking asylum. This protection exists specifically because refugees often have no choice but to breach immigration laws to reach safety.
Presumption of Refugee Status: International law requires that asylum seekers be treated as potential refugees until their claims are properly determined. This presumption of refugee status provides protection against treatment as ordinary immigration violators.
The Fiction of “Safe Third Countries”, Deportation Apologetic and Rwanda Genocide History
Recent UK legislation has attempted to circumvent international law through concepts like “safe third countries” and inadmissibility procedures that seek to prevent asylum claims from being properly considered. However, these concepts conflict with fundamental principles of refugee law:
Individual Assessment Requirement: International law requires individual assessment of each asylum claim. Blanket assumptions about country safety or alternative protection options violate the principle that refugee status must be determined on an individual basis, considering the specific circumstances of each case.
Effective Protection Standard: The concept of “safe third countries” is only legally valid if the alternative country can provide effective protection, including access to fair asylum procedures, protection against refoulement, and the possibility of integration or permanent status. Most countries designated as “safe” by UK legislation do not meet these standards.
Right to Remain During Assessment: Asylum seekers have the right to remain in the country where they seek protection while their claims are being assessed. Attempts to remove asylum seekers to third countries before proper assessment violate this fundamental right.
Legislation made by Ethically and Morally Corrupt Politicians, Creates Exploitation Systems. The Nationality and Borders Act 2022: Institutionalizing Illegality
The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 represents a systematic attempt to circumvent international refugee law by creating artificial legal categories that enable the treatment of asylum seekers as immigration violators despite their protected status under international law.
Two-Tier Asylum System: The Act creates different treatment standards based on mode of arrival rather than protection needs, directly violating Article 31 of the Refugee Convention, which prohibits penalizing refugees for illegal entry. This artificial distinction has no basis in international law and serves primarily to justify reduced protection standards.
Inadmissibility Procedures: The Act expands inadmissibility procedures that prevent proper consideration of asylum claims based on theoretical possibilities of protection elsewhere, often in countries with no connection to the asylum seeker and no obligation to provide protection.
Criminalization of Rescue: The Act criminalizes assistance to asylum seekers, including rescue at sea, effectively making humanitarian assistance illegal while forcing asylum seekers into more dangerous routes that benefit smuggling networks and create justification for increased enforcement spending.
The Illegal Migration Act 2023: Abandoning International Law
The Illegal Migration Act 2023 goes further in abandoning international legal obligations by creating a system designed to prevent any asylum claim from being properly considered if the person arrived through irregular means. Duty to Remove: The Act creates a legal duty to remove asylum seekers without considering their claims, directly violating the principle of non-refoulement and the right to have asylum claims properly assessed. Exclusion from Protection: The Act attempts to exclude entire categories of asylum seekers from protection based on mode of arrival rather than protection needs, fundamentally undermining the individual assessment requirement of international refugee law. Indefinite Detention Powers: The Act provides for indefinite detention of asylum seekers pending removal, even when removal is impossible, creating a system of arbitrary detention that violates both refugee law and human rights law.
Manufacturing the “Illegal Immigration” Crisis
The designation of asylum seekers as “illegal immigrants” serves specific economic and political functions that benefit private contractors and enable systematic exploitation. In making legal routes to asylum virtually impossible while maintaining legal obligations to provide accommodation, the government creates artificial scarcity that drives up contract values and enables poor service standards to be presented as unavoidable necessities. The false crisis of “illegal immigration” justifies extraordinary spending on enforcement, detention, and removal that benefits private contractors while creating conditions that make humane treatment appear impossible or unaffordable. The criminalization of asylum seekers enables treatment that would be legally and politically unacceptable for any other population, allowing contractors to maximize profits through cost-cutting that violates human dignity and legal standards.
International Law Violations and Crimes Against Humanity. Systematic Violation of International Law
The UK’s recent immigration legislation creates systematic violations of international law that may constitute crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute. The legislation creates widespread and systematic persecution of asylum seekers based on their status as people seeking protection, involving arbitrary detention, denial of legal rights, and inhuman treatment.
Deportation and Transfer: The forced removal of asylum seekers to countries where they face persecution or where no effective protection is available constitutes deportation or forcible transfer of population, prohibited under international law.
Crimes Against Humanity Elements: The systematic nature of these violations, their implementation as state policy, and their targeting of civilian populations may satisfy the elements of crimes against humanity under international criminal law.
Creating Conditions for Abuse in Source Countries
The UK’s immigration policies also contribute to conditions that enable human rights violations and crimes against humanity in countries of origin and transit. Immigration enforcement cooperation and return agreements often involve supporting authoritarian regimes that commit human rights violations, providing legitimacy and resources to governments that persecute their own populations. Military and security assistance provided as part of migration control agreements often fuels conflict and instability in source countries, creating the very conditions that force people to seek asylum. Return agreements and cooperation with countries known to commit systematic human rights violations make the UK complicit in torture, arbitrary detention, and other abuses inflicted on returned asylum seekers.
International Complicity and Global Impact
The UK’s “illegal immigration” framework and privatized enforcement model is being exported globally, creating international networks of exploitation that enable systematic human rights violations. The threat to Europe, through Brexit and the agreements on immigration enforcement, extends UK immigration policies into EU countries, enabling systematic violations of refugee rights across multiple jurisdictions. Immigration enforcement partnerships with countries in the Global South often involve supporting human rights violations and authoritarian governance in exchange for cooperation on migration control. The export of surveillance and control technologies developed for UK immigration enforcement enables human rights violations in countries with weaker legal protections and democratic oversight.
Creating Global Apartheid
The “illegal immigration” framework contributes to a system of global apartheid that restricts human movement based on nationality and economic status. The system creates different mobility rights based on passport and economic status, enabling wealthy individuals to move freely while criminalizing movement by people seeking protection from persecution. Immigration enforcement systems systematically target racialized populations while providing privileged treatment to wealthy, predominantly white migrants, institutionalizing racial discrimination in migration governance. The restriction of legal migration routes creates vulnerable populations that can be exploited by employers and traffickers, enabling systematic labor exploitation and modern slavery.
The UK’s Authoritarian Framework sets the Path to Pariah Rogue Country
The current UK immigration system represents a systematic abandonment of international legal obligations and human rights principles in favour of a privatized enforcement industry that profits from human suffering. The designation of asylum seekers as “illegal immigrants” serves to obscure this abandonment while enabling treatment that violates fundamental principles of human dignity and international law. Recognition that seeking asylum is a fundamental human right that cannot be criminalized or commodified without abandoning the legal and moral foundations of international society. The privatization of immigration enforcement has created structural incentives for systematic human rights violations that cannot be addressed through improved oversight or contract management but require fundamental restructuring of how immigration and asylum policies are developed and implemented.
The international legal framework for refugee protection exists because the international community recognized that states cannot be permitted to refuse protection to people fleeing persecution without undermining the foundations of international law and human rights. The UK’s recent immigration legislation represents a systematic attempt to circumvent these obligations while maintaining the appearance of compliance, creating conditions that enable systematic exploitation while generating private profits from human rights violations.
The ultimate responsibility for addressing this crisis lies not only with private contractors who profit from exploitation but with the political and legal systems that have enabled the commodification of human rights and the privatization of fundamental state obligations. Reform requires not only ending the privatization of immigration services but also recommitting to the international legal framework that recognizes seeking asylum as a pillar of human rights.
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European Convention on Human Rights Law Review
Cases Against the UK: The Numbers “ECHR”
Since 2020, 48 cases against the UK have been communicated to the parties and published on the Court’s website: 17 in 2020, 16 in 2021, 14 in 2022, and eight in 2023.13 During the same period, 48 cases were also disposed of judicially (i.e., the result of the application was published as a judgment or decision): ten in 2020, 18 in 2021, 16 in 2022, and ten in 2023.14 These figures are not wildly out of step with the equivalents for previous years. The number of applications lodged and disposed of during this period is likely to be much higher, given that a considerable number of applications are dismissed via single-judge formation without being published by the Court. The figures presented here are necessarily limited to those which were at least communicated to the relevant state parties.
Of the 52 cases disposed of in this period, there were ten judgments involving a finding of a violation of at least one Article, alongside eight judgments involving no such violation. Ostensibly, this might look somewhat troubling for the Government, with the Court being more likely, overall, to issue a judgment involving a finding of a violation than one which finds no violation (although this win/loss rate is more favourable to the UK when compared with the scoresheet for previous years).15
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/asylum-hotels-sexual-harassment-racism
https://brill.com/view/journals/eclr/5/1/article-p65_005.xml?language=en
