Who arrives by illegal entry routes, who claims asylum and what happens to the claims — the published nationality tables side by side, calendar year 2025 and Year ending June 2026.
Read this first
This page places separate official tables near each other; it never merges them. Arrivals, asylum claims and prison counts are different populations measured on different dates and different counting bases — a nationality appearing in more than one table is not evidence that the same people appear in each. Numbers describe system flows by recorded nationality; they say nothing about any individual.
Illegal-route arrivals and their asylum claims
The ten largest nationalities detected arriving by illegal entry routes (calendar year 2025), beside the asylum table for the same nationality (Year ending June 2026). The two sources use different periods — the columns are published, not derived.
Grant rates are at initial decision; appeals change final outcomes. The full asylum-by-nationality table, including nationalities that rarely arrive by illegal routes, is on the asylum page.
How each nationality's arrivals moved, 2018–2025
Detected illegal-route arrivals per complete calendar year, one panel per nationality — the twelve largest in 2025, exactly as published.
Eritrea 7,583 in 2025
Eritrea: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Afghanistan 4,801 in 2025
Afghanistan: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Iran 4,505 in 2025
Iran: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Sudan 4,447 in 2025
Sudan: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Somalia 3,806 in 2025
Somalia: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Ethiopia 1,745 in 2025
Ethiopia: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Iraq 1,706 in 2025
Iraq: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Syria 1,531 in 2025
Syria: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Vietnam 1,440 in 2025
Vietnam: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Yemen 1,332 in 2025
Yemen: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Refugee 1,256 in 2025
Refugee: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
Turkey 1,158 in 2025
Turkey: detected illegal-route arrivals per calendar year. Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office).
A different register: foreign nationals in prison
This table is deliberately separate from the arrivals and asylum tables above, and the site does not join them: prison nationality is recorded citizenship, not immigration status — "foreign national" includes people living here lawfully for decades — and the prison snapshot has no counting basis in common with arrivals or claims. It is shown because a watchdog should publish it, not because it connects to the tables above.
Largest foreign-national groups in prison, England and Wales
By nationality: arrivals, claims and outcomes. Migration Watchdog, data as of 2026-09-02.
https://migrationwatchdog.com/nationalities
Underlying figures: UK official statistics, re-published under OGL v3.0 — every figure links to its source on the page.