An undercover investigation by the BBC revealed the existence of a “shadow industry” helping migrants pretend to be gay to attain asylum status in the U.K.
The BBC published the first part of its investigation on Wednesday morning, which found that law firms and legal advisers are charging “thousands of pounds” to individuals whose U.K. visas are due to expire to help them deceive authorities by claiming that they’re “gay” and requesting asylum on grounds that they “fear for their lives” if they return to Pakistan or Bangladesh due to their purported sexual orientation.
The law firms, the BBC shockingly found, provide the individuals with fake cover stories and instructions to how to obtain fabricated evidence such as supporting letters, photos, or medical reports, to substantiate the false asylum claims.
According to the report, U.K. asylum is being “systematically exploited” through this method not by illegal migrants entering through small boats or other illegal routes, but by individuals on expired student, work, or tourist visas — which said group now reportedly making up 35 percent of all asylum claims.
To conduct its investigation, the BBC detailed that it sent reporters posing as international students from Pakistan and Bangladesh “whose visas were due to expire” to law firms and GPs pretending to be “depressed.”
The reporters found that one law firm charged 7,000 British pounds to bring a fabricated asylum change, with the promise that the chance of refusal by the U.K. Home Office was “very low.” One immigration adviser reportedly boasted that she had spent “more than 17 years” helping bring fake claims and said she could arrange for someone to pretend they’d had a gay sexual relationship with a client.
“Our undercover reporter was even told he could bring his wife over from Pakistan once he had got asylum in the UK and she could then make a fake claim pretending to be a lesbian,” the BBC wrote.
Another lawyer told the undercover reporter that he helped people pretend to be gay or atheists to successfully obtain asylum — offering his services for 1,500 pounds, with an additional 2,000 to 3,000 pounds to help create false evidence.
A BBC reporter also attended a meeting organized by Worcester LGBT, a purported support for “gay and lesbian asylum seekers, finding that such claim was “not as it seems.”
“Most of the people here are not gays,” one man called Fahar says.
“Nobody is a gay here. Not even 1 percent are gay. Not even 0.01 percent are gay,” another man, identified as Zeeshan, commented.
The reporter spoke with the group’s founder, paralegal Mazedul Hasan Shakil, who initially told the undercover reporter he “had no grounds” to claim asylum under fear of persecution but, “within a few hours, out of the blue,” the reporter received a call from a woman identified as “Tanisa” who, in Urdu, discussed how he could claim asylum by pretending to be gay.
“Listen to me. There is nobody who is real. There is only one way out in order to live here now and that is the very method everyone is adopting,” the woman said when the reporter disclosed that he was not gay.
The woman met with the reporter at her residence in east London, where she said, “At the moment there is only one route from where you can get a visa and it is open.”
“It is the asylum visa, it is on human rights and it is called gay case or same sex. There is no hope for any other visa,” she claimed, offering insight as to how the deception makes it difficult for officials to spot it.
“There is no check-up to find out if the person is a gay,” Tanisa told the BBC reporter. “The main thing is what you say. You just have to tell them that ‘I am a gay and it is my reality’.
“Anyone found trying to exploit the system will face the full force of the law, including removal from the U.K.,” the Home Office reportedly told the BBC.
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