An East African asylum seeker who was granted leave to remain in Britain was reportedly given a newly refurbished studio flat by a London council, only for officials to be forced to find a four-bedroom house weeks later when his wife and children joined him under the government’s refugee family reunion scheme.
The case was highlighted by British journalist Alice Thomson in The Times, who relayed the experience of a senior councillor in a London borough. “That’s like finding hen’s teeth,” she cites the councillor as saying, noting that larger properties are already vanishingly scarce in the capital.
The asylum seeker in question is understood to be unemployed, speaks no English, and relies on welfare benefits; his wife requires medical treatment and the children school places. The family went straight to the top of the council’s waiting list, leapfrogging more than 2,000 local residents, she claimed.
Other tenants in the original block had already complained of noise and overcrowding before the family was moved.
Thomson reported that the strain is being felt not just by local communities but also by council employees.
“The staff in my friend’s housing department, mainly young millennials, have finally had enough,” she wrote. “Many can no longer afford to live in the capital on their salaries; they are often commuting for an hour, struggling with the cost of living, and putting off having children themselves because they’re so financially squeezed.”
One official, she claimed, has been separated from his South African wife, a teacher, who was deported while their young child remained in the U.K., despite the couple paying thousands to meet visa requirements.
While British citizens must prove a minimum income of £29,000 to bring over a foreign spouse, more than 20,000 refugee family reunion visas were issued in the year to June 2025 — a policy that the Labour government has finally admitted is “unfair” and sought to reform.
The number of asylum applications in the U.K. reached a record high in the year ending June 2025, with 111,084 people claiming asylum, the highest figure since records began in 1979.
Reform U.K. MP Richard Tice recently compared the numbers to “an invasion double the size of the British Army.” Regular serving personnel in the British Army is actually around 74,000.
“That’s how people talk about it in the pubs and clubs and bus stops and sports fields up and down the country. I know that makes people in Westminster uncomfortable — tough,” Tice added.
While the Labour government says it will find alternative accommodation to expensive hotel contracts by the end of this parliament, Thomson notes that council staff are concerned the burden of housing migrants will fall on them. “Again, where do they think we are going to put them all?” she cited the London councillor as asking.
Conservative shadow justice minister, Robert Jenrick, called this week for asylum seekers to be “detained in camps,” insisting the facilities available to them will need to be akin to “rudimentary prisons.” This, he believes, is the only way to deter new arrivals.
The post Unemployed East African Asylum Seeker Jumps London Housing Queue After Family Is Flown Over appeared first on American Renaissance.
American Renaissance
