Help challenge the myths

Even well-meaning people can believe harmful myths about asylum seekers. You can help set the record straight — in conversation, online, and in your community.

Here are some key facts you can share:

🌍 The UK receives a tiny proportion of the world’s refugees

— less than 1% (and fewer than many European neighbours).

📌 People don’t come to the UK because it’s easy.

People seeking asylum in the UK come from places where life is unsafe — due to war, persecution, or political repression. Many have faced torture, violence, imprisonment without trial, or threats because of their religion, ethnicity, political beliefs, or sexuality.

Some of the main countries people came from in recent years include:
• Afghanistan – especially after the Taliban takeover
• Iran – where dissent is brutally punished
• Eritrea – where indefinite forced conscription is common
• Sudan and South Sudan – both facing terrible conflict and instability
• Syria – after more than a decade of war
• Iraq, Ethiopia, Yemen, Vietnam, Nigeria, and others – ongoing conflict and political violence

Many asylum seekers are families, young people, and survivors of trauma. Some are LGBTQ+ people fleeing deadly persecution.

Others are political activists, journalists, or religious minorities targeted in their home countries.

Often, they come because they already have a connection here – family, community, language – or because they believe the UK will offer fairness and protection.

⚖️ Seeking asylum is legal.

People in hotels are not “illegal”. There is no “asylum visa” — you can only claim asylum once you’re already here. That’s why people are forced to take dangerous journeys, like crossing the sea in small boats. Once in the UK, they are exercising a legal right: to ask for protection.

These are not “luxury hotels”

These are not “luxury hotels” – they are former hotels taken over and run by private companies working for the Home Office.

People living in them are part of a legal process – they are doing nothing wrong and must go where they are sent. They are simply waiting for their asylum claims to be assessed.

While they wait, they must cope with:

  • Shared rooms and lack of privacy. 
  • No access to cooking facilities – they can’t prepare their own food – and the food that is provided is often very poor quality and low in nutritional value.
  • Just £9.95 per week – less than £1.50 a day – for clothes, toiletries, phone credit and all personal needs except food.
  • No right to work – even though many are highly skilled and eager to contribute.
  • Long periods of waiting, with little to do and no control over what happens next.
  • Isolation, and physical and mental health struggles.
  • Hostility and racism.

You can hear more about life in asylum “hotels” in our podcast from 2023.

💬 Hateful views often come from people who’ve never met an asylum seeker.
You can be a counter-voice. If someone you know repeats a myth, gently challenge it.

❤️ You can also share your own journey – how you came to support or volunteer with Asylum Welcome. Stories build bridges. And they show what’s possible when people are treated with care and dignity.