Immigration

(asked on 25th October 2016) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people who have applied for leave to remain as a stateless person in the UK have claimed asylum in each of the last five years.


Answered by
Robert Goodwill Portrait
Robert Goodwill
This question was answered on 30th November 2016

The Home Office Stateless policy is designed to assist those who do not qualify for protection but are unable to return to the country of their former habitual residence because they are stateless and would not be admitted to any other country. The requirements are set out in the Immigration Rules and reflect our obligations under the 1954 UN Convention relating to the status of stateless persons.

Home Office records indicate a total of 1665 people have applied for leave to remain as a Stateless person since 2013. Of these applications, 41 have been granted leave.

The number grant leave as stateless is low, in all cases, the burden of proof rests with the applicant to provide information to demonstrate they are stateless and that there is no country to which they can be removed. Paragraph 403(d) of the Rules requires applicants to obtain and submit all reasonably available evidence to enable the Secretary of State to determine whether they are stateless and whether they qualify for stateless leave. It is not enough, for example, for the applicant to rely upon a simple and unsupported assertion of statelessness, or to provide no explanation or evidence in support of the application, particularly where this runs contrary to previously available factual information.

Paragraph 404 of the Immigration rules sets out the general reasons for refusal of Limited Leave to Remain as a stateless person. It states that an applicant will be refused leave to remain in the United Kingdom as stateless person if: (a) they do not meet the requirements of paragraph 403; or (b) there are reasonable grounds for considering that they are: (i) a danger to the security of the United Kingdom; (ii) a danger to the public order of the United Kingdom; or (c) their application would fall to be refused under any of the grounds set out in paragraph 322 of these Rules.

Home Office records indicate that a total of 241 people who applied for leave as a stateless person have applied for Asylum in the past 5 years. This breaks down as 43 in 2011, 59 in 2012, 41 in 2013, 52 in 2014, 33 in 2015, 13 in 2016 (up to and including 30 June 2016). Data has been provided by the Performance Reporting and Analysis Unit and internally quality assured. These statistics have been taken from a live operational database. As such numbers may change as information on that system is updated.

The information requested on the reason people have been successful in their application is not readily available and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

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