At least 230 citizens of the United Kingdom applied for asylum in Australia in the last year, revealing how migration agents are exploiting vulnerable workers desperate to extend their stays. The Department of Home Affairs believes British and Irish people are being encouraged to apply for asylum by migration agents as a backdoor to stay in Australia longer, issuing social media warnings earlier this year that called out this "seriously bad advice."
The surge in UK applications marks a troubling pattern in Australia's refugee system, where 21,600 asylum claims were made between July last year and June this year. During that period, about 85 per cent of the almost 28,000 assessed claims were rejected. The list of people now living in Australia with a failed protection visa claim exceeds 111,000 for the first time.
Who Bears the Burden
For years, experts have warned that long wait times for protection visas create a backdoor for people whose temporary visas have expired to keep working by applying for asylum, and then appealing the decision. The government's attempts to speed up processing in the last two years has had some effect, with claims declining by 2,000 last financial year and the backlog of people waiting for a decision dropping to 20,300. But the list of those with rejected claims nonetheless keeps growing.
There were 37,503 protection visa refusals being appealed in the Administrative Review Tribunal at the end of June, and these cases take a median of almost three years to finalise. In the last financial year, 8 per cent of asylum appeals were successful, while 75 per cent maintained the original visa refusal. The uptick in UK claims from September, October and November 2025, and March and April 2026, marked the first time that British applicants made enough applications to be publicly reported in department data. Recent data suggests no UK citizens have been successful in their applications.
Enforcement Without Cruelty
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke is finalising his plan for deterring non-meritorious asylum claims as part of a broader tightening of the migration system. This masthead on Friday reported that Burke wanted to boost compliance by sending out more immigration officers to track down and deport overstayers exploiting the system. The plans concerned some ministers who wanted to make sure it wasn't seen by migrant communities as an ICE-style, Donald Trump-like move, or weaponised by the Greens in a similar light. Other reports from the ABC also said Burke wanted to restrict the work and appeal rights of asylum seekers.
Burke's prospective crackdown is being fiercely resisted by the Refugee Council of Australia, which has warned that stripping work rights and due process from genuine refugees would jeopardise the country's humanitarian program. The council said, "The answer to backlogs is better decision-making, not fewer rights." It also said, "People seeking asylum must be able to work legally and support themselves while their claims are determined. Removing that right will instead increase the risk of poverty, homelessness and reliance on charities that are already under significant pressure."
The council emphasised that a wrong decision could have devastating consequences for someone fleeing persecution. "Removing safeguards that allow decisions to be challenged does not solve delays or backlogs: it makes it harder to identify and correct mistakes," it said.
Targeting the Real Problem
Immigration expert Abul Rizvi said the government's investment in processing resources had helped it reduce the asylum application rate, which was now lower than the 10-year average. Rizvi said, "What they haven't done is put more money into compliance." He added, "The key is targeting the money well. This is a space where you can waste money easily and achieve very little – just ask Mr Trump."
He said neither Labor nor the Coalition had been able to get the situation under control while in government and pushed for targeted strategies for different groups of people. "The focus should be people who have most recently been refused because they have not embedded themselves into the community," he said. "There's also a balance between carrots and sticks here. If you can find a way of encouraging someone to depart, it's less expensive than deporting them."
Data from the latest financial year shows that applicants from China (2,814) and India (2,786) continued to lead the volume of claims. There's also been an increase in applicants from Indonesia (1,487) and Fiji (1,073) in the last two years. A small portion of applicants from those countries were deemed to be genuine refugees last financial year. There were also 105 protection visa refusals being contested by UK citizens in the Administrative Review Tribunal at the end of June, of which 87 had been launched in the last 12 months.
Labor minister Chris Bowen responded to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson's new policy that would ban arrivals from countries to which Australians were advised not to travel by saying, "Australia needs an Australian immigration policy, not one from Donald Trump." Bowen also said, "Look at some of the countries on that list. Some of the countries on that list have provided Australia with wonderful migrants," and, "[Minister for Home Affairs] Tony Burke is reviewing the entire migration program, every stream of it, temporary and permanent, and he'll have more to say."
Why This Matters:
The exploitation of asylum seekers by migration agents reveals how market failures in the immigration advice industry can undermine both border integrity and humanitarian protections. When unscrupulous operators prey on temporary workers desperate to extend their stays, they don't just abuse the system—they clog it for genuine refugees fleeing persecution. The three-year median wait time for appeals means people with legitimate claims face years of uncertainty while frivolous applications waste limited tribunal resources. Any enforcement response must distinguish between workers misled by bad advice and the agents profiting from that exploitation. Stripping work rights from all asylum seekers would push vulnerable people into poverty and underground employment, creating worse outcomes for workers and communities alike. The solution requires targeted compliance against dodgy migration agents, adequate resources for faster decision-making, and preserving due process protections that prevent devastating errors in life-or-death refugee determinations.