At least 230 citizens of the United Kingdom applied for asylum in Australia in the last year, in the latest sign that the refugee system is being abused by people who want to stay in the country longer.

As Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke finalises his plan for deterring non-meritorious asylum claims as part of a broader tightening of the migration system, data from the last financial year shows 21,600 refugee claims were made between July last year and June this year.

During that period, almost 28,000 claims were assessed – and about 85 per cent were rejected. The list of people now living in Australia with a failed protection visa claim exceeds 111,000 for the first time.

This backlog of failed asylum applicants has become a headache for the Albanese government as so-called “visa overstayers” become a hot political issue pursued by the Coalition and One Nation.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson added to debate over immigration this weekend with a new policy that would ban arrivals from countries to which Australians were advised not to travel, such as Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan and Russia.

Labor minister Chris Bowen responded by saying: “Australia needs an Australian immigration policy, not one from Donald Trump.”

“Look at some of the countries on that list. Some of the countries on that list have provided Australia with wonderful migrants,” Bowen said. “[Minister for Home Affairs] Tony Burke is reviewing the entire migration program, every stream of it, temporary and permanent, and he’ll have more to say.”

For years, experts have warned that long wait times for protection visas create a backdoor for people whose temporary visas have expired to keep working by applying for asylum, and then appealing the decision.

The government’s attempts to deter dodgy applicants by speeding up processing in the last two years has had some effect. There was a decline in the number of claims made last financial year (down 2000), and the backlog of people waiting for a decision dropped to 20,300 (down 6900).

But the list of those with rejected claims nonetheless keeps growing, adding to the number of people in Australia without valid visas, leading Burke to propose a tougher regime to his cabinet colleagues earlier this month.

This masthead on Friday reported that Burke wanted to boost compliance by sending out more immigration officers to track down and deport overstayers exploiting the system. The plans concerned some ministers who wanted to make sure it was not seen by migrant communities as an ICE-style, Donald Trump-like move, or weaponised by the Greens in a similar light.

Other reports from the ABC also said Burke wanted to restrict the work and appeal rights of asylum seekers. There were 37,503 protection visa refusals being appealed in the Administrative Review Tribunal at the end of June – and these cases take a median of almost three years to finalise.

In the last financial year, 8 per cent of asylum appeals were successful, while 75 per cent maintained the original visa refusal.

Burke’s prospective crackdown is being fiercely resisted by the Refugee Council of Australia, which has warned that stripping work rights and due process from genuine refugees would jeopardise the country’s humanitarian program.

“The answer to backlogs is better decision-making, not fewer rights,” the council said in a statement.

“People seeking asylum must be able to work legally and support themselves while their claims are determined. Removing that right will instead increase the risk of poverty, homelessness and reliance on charities that are already under significant pressure.”

The council emphasised that a wrong decision could have devastating consequences for someone fleeing persecution. “Removing safeguards that allow decisions to be challenged does not solve delays or backlogs: it makes it harder to identify and correct mistakes,” it said.

Data from the latest financial year shows that applicants from China (2814) and India (2786) continued to lead the volume of claims. There’s also been an increase in applicants from Indonesia (1487) and Fiji (1073) in the last two years.

A small portion of applicants from those countries were deemed to be genuine refugees last financial year.

But the 198 applications that were reported from UK citizens in 2025-26 were a sign that the system remains susceptible to non-meritorious claims, given recent data suggests no UK citizens have been successful in their applications. An additional 32 people from the UK applied for asylum in July.

An uptick in UK claims from September, October and November 2025, and March and April 2026, marked the first time that British applicants made enough applications to be publicly reported in department data.

There were also 105 protection visa refusals being contested by UK citizens in the Administrative Review Tribunal at the end of June, of which 87 had been launched in the last 12 months.

The Department of Home Affairs believes British and Irish people are being encouraged to apply for asylum by migration agents as a backdoor to stay in Australia longer.

The department issued warnings on social media earlier this year, with posts saying it had seen indications that more UK and Irish nationals were being told to apply for asylum “just to extend their stay in Australia”.

“This is seriously bad advice,” it said in one post, accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek graphic targeted at working holidaymakers.

The post encouraged UK migrants to enjoy “an Aussie ‘winter’, WA sunsets, the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk, feeling ‘at home’ in St Kilda and travelling halfway across the globe just to flat-share with someone from the same zone”.

Not on that list of behaviours, it said, was “abusing Australia’s visa system to extend your stay”.

Immigration expert Abul Rizvi said the government’s investment in processing resources had helped it reduce the asylum application rate, which was now lower than the 10-year average.

“What they haven’t done is put more money into compliance,” he said. “The key is targeting the money well. This is a space where you can waste money easily and achieve very little – just ask Mr Trump.”

He said neither Labor nor the Coalition had been able to get the situation under control while in government and pushed for targeted strategies for different groups of people.

“The focus should be people who have most recently been refused because they have not embedded themselves into the community,” he said.

“There’s also a balance between carrots and sticks here. If you can find a way of encouraging someone to depart, it’s less expensive than deporting them.”

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Natassia Chrysanthos is Federal Political Correspondent. She has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect via X or email.