UNHCR’s warning on the UK’s asylum plans: why ‘long temporary’ status harms integration
UNHCR has published detailed observations on the UK Government’s Restoring Order and Control statement on asylum and returns. The document is unusually direct about the risks of redesigning protection around short, renewable grants of stay paired with delayed or harder settlement.
Read the full observations: UNHCR – Observations on “Restoring Order and Control” (UK asylum and returns)
UNHCR’s core message is that a protection system built on repeated review and long waits for settlement can:
- create prolonged uncertainty (with serious mental health and social costs),
- weaken incentives and capacity to integrate (work, training, stable housing),
- increase administrative churn and casework over time,
- and ultimately make returns and compliance harder rather than easier.
In other words: when “temporary” lasts for years, it stops functioning as a bridge and becomes a structural limbo.
Unfortunately the same “long temporary” problem already exists outside the asylum system. Ukrainians on the UK’s Ukraine schemes can work and rebuild their lives here, but still have no defined settlement endpoint — and time on Appendix Ukraine Scheme is excluded from the 10-year Long Residence route, grouped with clearly short-term categories. This means that, in settlement terms, many Ukrainians are already in a position that is at least as insecure as the model UNHCR warns against.
Sources: UNHCR – Observations on “Restoring Order and Control” (UK asylum and returns) | UK Immigration Rules – Appendix Long Residence (excludes Appendix Ukraine Scheme) | Home Office – Long residence guidance (exclusion of Appendix Ukraine Scheme)