Small boat migrants accommodated in asylum hotels are having babies because they believe it will increase their odds of gaining a British passport, a new documentary has revealed.
Asylum seekers told the programme they were having children in the belief it would automatically ensure the mother and baby both secure the documentation, a hope the show insisted was ‘misguided’.
‘They do believe it gives them more entitlement to benefits, maybe a better choice of accommodation and makes it harder for the Home Office to deport them,’ BBC reporter Sue Mitchell said in the documentary.
‘One of the first babies I meet is proudly held aloft by his father – they arrived from Somalia just weeks earlier and he tells me this is a “British baby”, born on “British soil”, who will one day, he believes, hold a British passport.’
But asylum seekers who have children in the UK can still be deported by the Home Office. However, the Refugee Council’s Jon Featonby insisted they qualified for extra safeguards, which makes this harder.
Elsewhere in the documentary, which saw Ms Mitchell visit four hotels for the BBC’s File of Four programme, migrants described being sent hundreds of miles by cab for NHS appointments at a tremendous expense to the taxpayer.
A failed asylum seeker in an unnamed hotel used by the Home Office told the BBC he had been sent on a 250-mile, £600 taxi ride for a knee check-up.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood asked officials to ‘urgently look into’ the use of taxis after the claims emerged.
Other migrants in hotels visited by the broadcaster said they were working in Britain, despite being barred from taking employment.
One Iraqi man, identified by the alias ‘Kadir’ to shield his identity, said he would have preferred to have gone to his NHS appointment by train.
But he ‘had no choice’ other than to accept the transport laid on by the Home Office.
The taxi journeys take place because when migrants move between hotels, they sometimes keep the same NHS doctors, the broadcaster said.
Kadir’s journey was to see a consultant who had treated him at his old address, he said, and the driver told him the round trip had cost £600.
‘Should the Home Office give me the ticket for the train? This is the easy way, and they know they spend too much money,’ said Kadir.
‘We know as well, but we don’t have any choice. It’s crazy.’
Migrants were not offered the option to travel by public transport or to walk to the appointments, and taxis were booked by an ‘automated system’ at the hotel front desk, it was reported.
Nine years ago, Kadir and his spouse brought two children to the UK from Iraq, and since then, they have welcomed a third.
The family occupies two adjoining hotel rooms – one for the couple and their baby and the other for the 12-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son.
Kadir said he worked as a translator in his home country and claimed he had been targeted by criminals.
His asylum claim was rejected by the Home Office due to a lack of proof. He has had two appeals rejected and has a third appeal underway.
He added that some migrants he knew had converted to Christianity in a bid to increase their chances of staying in the country.
They claimed the religion change would lead to persecution if they went back home.
A woman from Iraq also claimed she paid people smugglers to cross the Channel in order to get treatment for her stage four cancer.
Mohammed, from Afghanistan, said he had arranged a job even before he arrived in the UK a few weeks ago.
After using contacts supplied by his cousin, who was also working illegally in Britain, Mohammed said he was earning £20 a day for shifts that last up to 10 hours.
He told the BBC he had no choice because his family owes money to people traffickers.
One security guard at one of the hotels said, ‘You’ve got nothing to occupy these guys. So of course they’re going to go out there and work.’
Journalists and the public are banned from Home Office migrant hotels but the BBC said it had ‘gained access through migrant contacts who had made the journey across the English Channel from France’.
Ms Mitchell added that she had chatted to families who had been waiting in the country for almost a decade for their cases to be ruled on.
Migrants interviewed on the programme also admitted doing black market jobs, with some paid as little as £20 for shifts of 10 or 11 hours.
Arrivals have previously secured asylum by arguing deportation Article 3 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects against persecution and torture.
With money going back to the asylum seekers’ home country as soon as they were paid, many of these occupations had been arranged before they had even crossed the Channel.
At the end of June, there were just over 32,000 in taxpayer-funded hotels, up eight per cent in a year.
The Home Office has also said an all-time high of 111,084 asylum applications were lodged in the year to June, up 14 per cent on the previous 12 months.
Despite increasing numbers, Labour has said it will close all migrant hotels by 2029.
In August, the Epping Forest District Council was granted a temporary injunction by the High Court to prevent the placement of migrants at the Bell hotel in Epping.
However, the Home Office was successful in contesting the ruling at the Court of Appeal, and the hotel is still operating while any additional legal proceedings are ongoing.
The amount of taxpayers’ money spent on asylum support fell to £4.76 billion in 2024-25, down from £5.38 billion the previous year.
But costs are massively higher than a decade ago, when the figure stood at less than £475 million a year.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘The Home Secretary has asked the department to urgently look into the use of taxis to transfer asylum seekers.’
Ongoing appeals are pointless; if they fail, it’s a failure, period.
Surely it’s not right to keep going in the hope that some loony judge will pass it through. Aside from the cost to the taxpayer, it’s quite unbelievable and completely out of control.
However, illegal boat migrants are only the tip of the iceberg. Muslim babies in the UK are being born at three times the number of British babies, and every single one will grow up to vote for a Muslim parliamentary candidate. The maths does not lie, and in two short generations they will hold the balance of power in the UK. Mark my words, the future is grim, particularly for women.
They treat us like an ATM machine and have everything handed to them when they arrive in the UK.
Taxis at £600 a pop – this is a gravy train if I ever saw one. There is a significant misappropriation of public funds, which is appalling.
Our government is content to give all of this money to migrants but not to its own UK citizens; they just bleed them dry. Let’s be realistic here: the taxpayers of this country are being taken for a ride, plain and simple, and our government are letting it happen.
And what is the cost to the UK taxpayer of a family of four spending nine years in a hotel? This must end because it is ludicrous.
For the British people, this is just another kick in the teeth.
These taxi rides are demented, and we are the sheep who are paying for this. You couldn’t make this up if you tried. Mark my words, all of what is going on will end in bloodshed if we don’t chuck out this insane government.
Britain, the country that keeps giving – to the wrong people.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 