ALT What is an asylum seeker? An asylum seeker is a person who has left their country and is seeking protection from persecution and serious human rights violations in another country, according to Amnesty International. While the term "refugee" is sometimes used in a more general sense, it usually refers to a legal status someone has been given after arriving while they await a decision on their asylum claim. The term "migrant" is a broad one, but is recognised by Amnesty to mean people staying outside their country of origin, who are not asylum seekers or refugees. The chart below shows the overall number of asylum applications that are granted plotted against total UK net migration to give the extent to how small that number is. In 2023, there were 4,330 successful applications and a total net migration figure of nearly 1.2 million people Data also shown as a graph

ALT Two graphs showing How does this compare to past decades? The number of asylum applications to the UK peaked in 2002 at 84,132, according to parliamentary research, after which the number fell to a 22-year low of 17,916 in 2010. The number then began to slowly rise to 32,733 in 2015, dipped in 2020 during the pandemic, and then rose again to 81,130 in 2022, which was the highest annual figure since 2002. The tables show the overall trend between 1993 and 2003, including initial decisions on asylum applications, which included a considerable number of rejections in 2001.

ALT This chart gives an idea of the long-term backlog of cases.