Thousand migrants claim they are children to secure asylum
More than 29,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL
Matt Dathan, Home Affairs Editor
Tuesday December 28 2021, 12.01am, The Times
More than 1,100 asylum seekers have falsely claimed to be children over the past year, according to official figures.
Two out of three cases where age was disputed and resolved were found to be 18 years or older in the 12 months to September.
It is the highest proportion since the Home Office began recording the figures in 2006. The average for the past five years was 55 per cent.
Migration Watch UK, a think tank that campaigns for lower immigration, said the figures exposed the need for tougher age assessment checks. In one case a balding man in his forties was placed in a school.
Priti Patel, the home secretary, has announced a crackdown on adult asylum seekers who pose as children in order to be treated more favourably.
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Unaccompanied asylum seekers are treated equally to all other children in the care of local authorities, with their asylum claims fast-tracked. Children are more likely to be granted asylum and less likely to be detained or removed if their claim is rejected.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “What the data doesn’t show is that a significant number of decisions are very poor with children being incorrectly assessed as adults causing them huge distress and anxiety.”
Priti Patel has announced a crackdown on asylum seekers who pose as children
LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES
More than 29,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year — there were 8,420 last year. Yesterday 36 migrants crossed in one boat, with the French stopping a further 72. On Christmas Day 67 migrants crossed in two small boats. This month 1,700 have crossed, eight times as many as December last year.
An asylum seeker who claims to be under 18 is treated as an adult only if they appear over 25. Patel has vowed to tighten the threshold to those who look “significantly over 18”.
Migration Watch UK has claimed that the Home Office has watered down the plan by dropping it from the Nationality and Borders Bill, which is due in the House of Lords next month.
Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch, said: “The risks to the safety of our children are obvious. It is high time the government stopped pandering to the immigration industry and dealt with adult migrants as such and not as what they claim to be.” But the Home Office said it had removed the clause from the bill only because it no longer needed primary legislation to make the change after winning a legal challenge in the Supreme Court.
Tom Pursglove, minister for tackling illegal migration, said the government would still change the threshold to bar those who look “significantly over 18” from being treated as children. “The sooner the House of Lords backs the bill in the new year, the sooner we can protect children at risk of harm.”
Patel has announced new age assessment methods, including x-rays of migrants’ forearm bones, which are said to be the most accurate way of estimating age, and DNA analysis techniques. The x-rays would be compared with a database of images of children of a similar age. Age assessment experts will also be dispatched to councils across the UK to bolster checks.
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The Home Office has scrapped plans to use dental checks to assess migrants’ age after the British Dentists’ Association told MPs they were not sufficiently accurate for age checks.
Age assessments are such an inexact process, I occasionally work with young people who need them for various reasons and they frequently end up with two or three completely contradictory assessments. The last YP I worked with who was age assessed was assessed as being 15 and 19 in the same week.
Those that are proven to had lied, should have their claims rejected, those that lied and were allowed entry, should be later revoked, investigated fully to ensure no one was harmed and later imprisoned and deported.
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So many here will moan, but by claiming to be a child, they have a Human right to an Education, this means we’re unintentionally throwing adults in to children schools or Children shelters BASED ON A LIE, we’re putting REAL children in to very real risks of being abused, only a scumbag would find this to be perfectly fine and would allow it to go on unpunished or to ignore investigating this.
I know a woman from Ghana who came here 30 years ago and claimed she were 15. In fact she was 21.
Her asylum claim turned out to be successful, but she encountered a problem now- her real retirement age gonna be 74.
No shit. We knew this years and years ago – we were told we was not allowed to use dental dating to verify a claimants age however.
From what I’ve seen most of them want our bloody children too!! Countries finished mate I really think it’s gone
>Patel has announced new age assessment methods, including x-rays of migrants’ forearm bones, which are said to be the most accurate way of estimating age,
Radiography is a shortage occupation and many hospitals don’t have enough of them to do actual *medical* x rays.
But magically we’ll have enough to do these checks?
Or are Border Force going to become trained radiographers? That’s an expensive degree course.
There was this pair of brothers who arrived at my school and they were 100% grown men. Meant to be 14 and they had full on beards, sideburns and looked mid to late 20s. They were pretty chill, kept to themselves and everything but its still creepy.
Perhaps you should listen to actual people WORKING with refugees, rather than Tory propaganda ….??
10 comments
Thousand migrants claim they are children to secure asylum
More than 29,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL
Matt Dathan, Home Affairs Editor
Tuesday December 28 2021, 12.01am, The Times
More than 1,100 asylum seekers have falsely claimed to be children over the past year, according to official figures.
Two out of three cases where age was disputed and resolved were found to be 18 years or older in the 12 months to September.
It is the highest proportion since the Home Office began recording the figures in 2006. The average for the past five years was 55 per cent.
Migration Watch UK, a think tank that campaigns for lower immigration, said the figures exposed the need for tougher age assessment checks. In one case a balding man in his forties was placed in a school.
Priti Patel, the home secretary, has announced a crackdown on adult asylum seekers who pose as children in order to be treated more favourably.
ADVERTISEMENT
Unaccompanied asylum seekers are treated equally to all other children in the care of local authorities, with their asylum claims fast-tracked. Children are more likely to be granted asylum and less likely to be detained or removed if their claim is rejected.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “What the data doesn’t show is that a significant number of decisions are very poor with children being incorrectly assessed as adults causing them huge distress and anxiety.”
Priti Patel has announced a crackdown on asylum seekers who pose as children
LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES
More than 29,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year — there were 8,420 last year. Yesterday 36 migrants crossed in one boat, with the French stopping a further 72. On Christmas Day 67 migrants crossed in two small boats. This month 1,700 have crossed, eight times as many as December last year.
An asylum seeker who claims to be under 18 is treated as an adult only if they appear over 25. Patel has vowed to tighten the threshold to those who look “significantly over 18”.
Migration Watch UK has claimed that the Home Office has watered down the plan by dropping it from the Nationality and Borders Bill, which is due in the House of Lords next month.
Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch, said: “The risks to the safety of our children are obvious. It is high time the government stopped pandering to the immigration industry and dealt with adult migrants as such and not as what they claim to be.” But the Home Office said it had removed the clause from the bill only because it no longer needed primary legislation to make the change after winning a legal challenge in the Supreme Court.
Tom Pursglove, minister for tackling illegal migration, said the government would still change the threshold to bar those who look “significantly over 18” from being treated as children. “The sooner the House of Lords backs the bill in the new year, the sooner we can protect children at risk of harm.”
Patel has announced new age assessment methods, including x-rays of migrants’ forearm bones, which are said to be the most accurate way of estimating age, and DNA analysis techniques. The x-rays would be compared with a database of images of children of a similar age. Age assessment experts will also be dispatched to councils across the UK to bolster checks.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Home Office has scrapped plans to use dental checks to assess migrants’ age after the British Dentists’ Association told MPs they were not sufficiently accurate for age checks.
Age assessments are such an inexact process, I occasionally work with young people who need them for various reasons and they frequently end up with two or three completely contradictory assessments. The last YP I worked with who was age assessed was assessed as being 15 and 19 in the same week.
Those that are proven to had lied, should have their claims rejected, those that lied and were allowed entry, should be later revoked, investigated fully to ensure no one was harmed and later imprisoned and deported.
​
​
So many here will moan, but by claiming to be a child, they have a Human right to an Education, this means we’re unintentionally throwing adults in to children schools or Children shelters BASED ON A LIE, we’re putting REAL children in to very real risks of being abused, only a scumbag would find this to be perfectly fine and would allow it to go on unpunished or to ignore investigating this.
I know a woman from Ghana who came here 30 years ago and claimed she were 15. In fact she was 21.
Her asylum claim turned out to be successful, but she encountered a problem now- her real retirement age gonna be 74.
No shit. We knew this years and years ago – we were told we was not allowed to use dental dating to verify a claimants age however.
From what I’ve seen most of them want our bloody children too!! Countries finished mate I really think it’s gone
>Patel has announced new age assessment methods, including x-rays of migrants’ forearm bones, which are said to be the most accurate way of estimating age,
Radiography is a shortage occupation and many hospitals don’t have enough of them to do actual *medical* x rays.
But magically we’ll have enough to do these checks?
Or are Border Force going to become trained radiographers? That’s an expensive degree course.
Utter rubbish.
Lets not forget that the british newspapers said exactly the same sort of things in the 1930s about the jews trying to flee to the UK from the Nazis
[https://thehistoriansapprentice.com/2015/08/03/current-reports-of-calais-migrant-crisis-echo-1938-daily-mail-article/](https://thehistoriansapprentice.com/2015/08/03/current-reports-of-calais-migrant-crisis-echo-1938-daily-mail-article/)
and that we turned away ships full of them
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27373131#:~:text=On%2013%20May%201939%2C%20more,were%20killed%20by%20the%20Nazis.
There was this pair of brothers who arrived at my school and they were 100% grown men. Meant to be 14 and they had full on beards, sideburns and looked mid to late 20s. They were pretty chill, kept to themselves and everything but its still creepy.
Perhaps you should listen to actual people WORKING with refugees, rather than Tory propaganda ….??
https://twitter.com/featherytravels/status/1465615223763652609?s=21
https://twitter.com/bridgeecee/status/1475811382599823363?s=21