Bangladeshi migrants figured out the perfect way to find refuge in the UK — pretend to be gay.
Illegal aliens from the South Asian country desiring to get asylum in the United Kingdom have found a novel way to achieve their goals: wear rainbow T-shirts while attending Pride parades, hang out in gay bars, and get plenty of photographs to show their case officers.
In Bangladesh, same-gender sex is outlawed, and LGBT people face harassment, so the pretend-gay migrants can claim they’re at risk if they return home.
Amazingly, British authorities actually did something about the scam and made at least three arrests Tuesday in connection with a suspected criminal network believed to be behind dozens of bogus asylum claims.
It was a sophisticated operation:
Two people were arrested at addresses in London this morning on suspicion of fraud and immigration offences, with Home Office officers also seizing phones, jewellery and thousands of pounds in cash. A third person was arrested on suspicion of being in the country illegally.
Chris Foster, a regional lead for criminal investigations at the Home Office, said the fake claims were connected to a Bangladeshi community LGBT organisation called Apanjon, which is based in Whitechapel, east London.
As one of my colleagues said, “Well, that's... different.”
The arrests come after several journalists' investigations, including this one in April by BBC Politics investigations correspondent Billy Kenber and political reporter Phil Kemp. Here’s what they found out:
The reporters’ visit to an East London LGBT center in the video was almost comical, as some of the attendees could barely suppress their chuckles when asked if they were really homosexual. Hint: Many of them weren’t.
“Most people here aren’t gay,” one attendee told an undercover reporter. “When you go for your (Home Office) interview,” he continued, “you have to be shameless.”
“Are you actually gay?” the reporter asked another man. The pretender just smiled and shook his head. “We shouldn’t talk like this here,” he said. Pressed further, he revealed, “Nobody here is gay.”
The latest arrests reveal the shadowy group is apparently raking in nice profits from the scheme:
"We've got some intelligence that they can provide fake letters and documents, and they could charge anywhere between £1,000 and £4,500," [regional lead for criminal investigations at the Home Office Chris] Foster said.
"It could be letters of support from Apanjon, it could be staged photographs, suggesting that these people are gay, it could be letters from people claiming to be in a friendship or a sexual relationship - [a] same-sex relationship - as the claimants."
[...]
Foster said some of the fake asylum applications would have "undoubtedly" been granted.
Officials are currently reviewing more than 100 asylum applications potentially linked to the operation. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said that scams like this would not be tolerated and offenders will be “prosecuted, stripped of your dirty money and shut down.”
Meanwhile, a recent study found Bangladeshis account for the second largest number of U.K. asylum seekers claiming to be gay or bisexual — only Pakistan has a higher number.
Something tells me that authorities might want to see if there are similar scams in that community, too.