Feb. 23 (UPI) -- People claiming asylum in Britain will be required to fill out a questionnaire in English instead of being interviewed in person as part of efforts to clear a backlog of as many as 166,000 claimants.
The Home Office began sending out the 11-page document Thursday to about 12,000 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria and Yemen.
The news came as the Home Office released figures showing a 60% jump in the number of people arriving in small boats, most of whom go on to claim asylum.
Stopping small boats is one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's five pledges that he set out in January as part of his vision for a better, more secure, more prosperous future for Britain.
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The introduction of the questionnaire is aimed at expediting the time it takes for claimants to be granted leave to remain in Britain, or deported.
However, the change has been criticized by immigrant rights groups because it requires claimants to fill out the answers to complicated questions in English.
"After living in worry and uncertainty for months and even years without hearing anything about their claims, it cannot then be fair or reasonable to expect people to complete a lengthy form only in English in a matter of weeks," the Refugee Council said in a Twitter statement.
"Especially for those who don't have access to legal advice and don't speak English."
Claimants must complete and submit the questionnaire within 20 working days and that failure to do so may lead to their claim for asylum being canceled.
The Home Office rejected criticism that the change is effectively an amnesty for asylum seekers, arguing it will merely streamline the system for the five nationalities.
The announcement came as tensions over the number of asylum seekers being hosted in the country are mounting, sparking sporadic protests that have spilled over into violence.
Earlier Thursday, the Home Office released the latest figures showing the number of asylum claims hit a 19-year high of 75,000 in 2022 while the number of people arriving on Britain's shores in small boats jumped 60.4%.
The number arriving in 2022 was 45,755, up from 28,526 in 2021 but the number of boats increased by just 75, indicating the people smugglers bringing people to Britain, primarily from France, were cramming more and more people -- often over 40 -- into small boats.
More than 12,000 arriving on the boats were from Albania, mainly from May onwards, after making up only a tiny minority prior to last year.
The number of Afghans arriving on small boats has been increasing since summer 2021. There were 8,633 arrivals in 2022, the majority in the months from August onward. That compared to 1,437 Afghan arrivals in 2021, 494 in 2020, 69 in 2019 and just three in 2018.
The opposition Labor leader Keir Starmer said the asylum system was "broken", saying many of the people arriving were brought by "criminal gangs who are making money out of human misery."
He said Labor would set up a specialist task force under the National Crime Agency to deal with the problem.
