00:00Kemi Badenoch has claimed that many illegal migrants arriving to the UK are not refugees.
00:05But the numbers tell an entirely different story.
00:09I think a lot of these people should not be here. They are not refugees.
00:12They are people who see our country as a soft touch and they exploit our kindness.
00:18Now, around 90% of people arriving to the UK illegally arrive via boat.
00:23So we decided to look into those numbers.
00:26How many people arriving to the UK by boat actually get refugee status?
00:31If we look at the statistics from last year, 61% of the people who arrived by boat were granted
00:38refugee status.
00:40So that's a majority being recognised by the UK government as refugees.
00:45Now, you might be wondering, are many of these people being granted refugee status, cheating the system?
00:52The UK process is actually really strict.
00:54The basis for the claim is consistent with what is known about both the individual and their country of origin.
01:01On the balance of probabilities, that's a tougher threshold than other European countries have, by the way.
01:06That also explains why the grant rate for asylum, being granted asylum in the UK, has fallen quite substantially in
01:12recent years.
01:13And the data shows that people from countries like Albania, India and Pakistan actually have really low success rate of
01:20claiming refugee status.
01:22That's because the country that they're coming from does not meet the criteria for the UK government to grant that
01:29status.
01:29They come from some of the most chaotic parts of the world, from Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq.
01:38What they would have to demonstrate is that if they were returned to those countries, they would be persecuted.
01:44It's just because of their political views or their membership of a particular group.
01:49Now, here's where it gets a bit awkward for Kemi Badenoch making this claim.
01:53These approval ratings were actually higher under a Conservative government.
01:58More importantly, the party that she was serving in.
02:01And under Conservatives, it was even higher than it is now.
02:04It was upper 60s, 70%.
02:06So, the data makes it clear.
02:08Most people arriving by boat to the UK are asylum seekers and many successfully passed the refugee vetting system.
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