Thursday, July 02, 2026
Calling out the anti-asylum seeker nonsense
The news site says that in a video posted on TikTok by Kiera Marshall she said it was “time to call bullshit” on disinformation and myths circulating about asylum seekers and refugees living in Wales:
The MS listed a number claims made about people seeking sanctuary which she said were false.
Speaking in her social video, Ms Marshall explained that refugees and asylum seekers do not get priority access to the NHS.
“Yes they get free health care, but they are not prioritised over British tax-payers,” she said.
The newly elected Plaid MS also explained that people seeking sanctuary are not eligible for council housing or social housing while their claim is being processed.
Defending the Welsh Government’s Nation of Sanctuary policy, she said that over the past six years less than 0.05% of Wales’ budget had been spent on the scheme.
Reform want to abolish the scheme because the party views it as a “left-wing experiment” that encourages illegal immigration.
The Welsh Government does not control borders or immigration as these are reserved powers handled solely by the UK Government and the Home Office.
The Nation of Sanctuary policy focuses on supporting asylum seekers and refugees by helping them access public services, housing, language lessons, and health care once they are place in Wales by the Home Office.
91% of the £55m spent on the Nation of Sanctuary scheme over six years has gone towards resettling refugees from Ukraine.
Ms Marshall said: “The real issue here isn’t immigration, it’s inequality and its time we stopped blaming people for fleeing wars and conflict and started blaming billionaires and the super rich.”
Will Hayward in his newsletter goes into more detail. He points out that there are 3,308 people awaiting a decision on an asylum application living in Wales, according to the most recent figures released for May 2026, which is fewer than 4% of the 94,000 people seeking refuge who are dispersed around the wider United Kingdom - well below Wales’ population share:
Someone arriving in a country claiming to need sanctuary from war or persecution is legally defined as “seeking asylum”.
People with that status are not allowed to work, so the Home Office provides a very small amount of money to cover the very basic needs of survival and they are given accommodation.
The individual or family doesn’t decide where they are placed, they’re sent wherever there is capacity and the decision is made by the Home Office. That may be Wales, but it could equally be anywhere from Cornwall to Glasgow.
The basic payment is £49.18 a week per person. £7 a day.
That’s to cover everything including food, toiletries, non-prescription medication, clothing, footwear, travel and anything else we might consider a basic need like a mobile phone or access to the internet.
In rare cases, the initial accommodation provides meals in which case the amount of money a person gets will drop to £9.95 a week. If you’re a pregnant mother, or have a child aged one to three, you get an extra £5.25 a week. If you have a baby under one you are given an extra £9.50 a week.
It is difficult to comprehend how little that money is to live on in Wales in 2026.
Importantly, Will Hayward explains that terminology really matters in this debate:
The term “illegal immigrant” isn’t recognised in immigration law and is widely agreed to be a dehumanising way to reference a person.
A person’s immigration status could be unlawful, but a person themselves cannot be “illegal”.
The only way to claim asylum in the UK is to do so once you’re already here. There is no “asylum visa” you can pre-arrange.
That means some people have to travel to the UK through what’s known as an “irregular route” – that might be a channel crossing on a boat. The only other way is to travel to the UK with one type of visa (like a student visa for example). Once in the UK, they can declare themselves to an immigration official and then they are protected by humanitarian law.
If a person has their asylum claim rejected, then they have “no legal right to remain” and they become liable for removal from the country (if their appeal process is exhausted).
There is a lot of misinformation on this subject, it is important to have the facts.
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