Legal advisers help migrants pose as gay to get asylum, undercover BBC investigation finds. 12 minutes ago. Billy Kenber,Politics investigations correspondentand. Phil Kemp,Politics reporter. A shadow industry of law firms and advisers is charging thousands of pounds to help migrants pretend to be gay in order to stay in the country, the BBC has found.. In the first part of a major undercover investigation, we reveal how migrants whose visas are due to run out are being given fake cover stories and instructed in how to obtain fabricated evidence, including supporting letters, photographs and medical reports.. They then apply for asylum claiming to be gay and in fear for their lives if they return to Pakistan or Bangladesh.. In response to our findings, the Home Office said: “Anyone found trying to exploit the system will face the full force of the law, including removal from the UK.”. The UK’s asylum process offers protection to people who can’t return to their home countries because they would be in danger.. But the BBC News investigation reveals the process is being systematically exploited by legal advisers extracting fees from migrants who want to stay in the country.. These are often people whose student, work or tourist visas have expired, rather than those who have just arrived in the country on small boats or through other illegal routes.. This group now makes up 35% of all asylum claims, which topped 100,000 in 2025.. After gathering initial evidence, including tip-offs, we sent undercover reporters to investigate how willing immigration advisers were to help people make up false asylum claims.. The reporters posed as international students from Pakistan and Bangladesh whose visas were due to expire.. The investigation discovered:. One law firm charged up to £7,000 to bring a fabricated asylum claim and promised that the chance of refusal by the Home Office was “very low”. Fake asylum seekers visited GPs pretending to be depressed in order to get medical evidence to bolster their cases, with one even lying about being HIV positive. One immigration adviser boasted that she had spent more than 17 years helping bring fake claims and said she could arrange for someone to pretend they’d had a gay sexual relationship with a client. Our undercover reporter was even told he could bring his wife over from Pakistan once he had got asylum in the UK and she could then make a fake claim pretending to be a lesbian. A lawyer linked to another firm told an undercover reporter he had helped people pretend to be gay or atheists to successfully obtain asylum. He offered to help with a fake claim for a fee of £1,500 and said it would cost a further £2,000-£3,000 to create evidence. ‘Nobody is gay here’. On a Tuesday evening at a community centre in a quiet corner of Beckton, east London, more than 175 people have gathered for an event.. Some have travelled from as far as South Wales, Birmingham and Oxford to attend a meeting organised by Worcester LGBT,
