People smugglers are allegedly circulating covert recordings of fake asylum interviews to train migrants how to lie about their nationality and win refugee status in Britain.
The reported audio captures an Iraqi man posing as a stateless Kuwaiti minority during a Home Office interview. The Express understands he secretly taped the exchange and passed it to smuggling networks, who pushed it out through an encrypted Telegram channel popular among migrants gathered on the northern French coast waiting to cross the Channel.
The recording is said to show how the man worked through a prepared account — claiming he was imprisoned and tortured in Kuwait as a Bidoon, a stateless Arab group whose members were denied citizenship when Kuwait gained independence — before passing a series of scripted knowledge questions designed to confirm his claimed origins.
The term Bidoon comes from the Arabic for “without”, referring to stateless people — largely descendants of nomadic tribes — who were excluded from Kuwaiti nationality in 1961 and have faced discrimination ever since.
Nationality shopping
Inside the Home Office, the practice has a name, reports The Telegraph. Officials call it “nationality shopping” — the deliberate adoption of a false national identity from a country where asylum claims are routinely approved, to maximise the chances of being granted protection.
The tactic is spreading. One insider told reporters that since the outbreak of the Iran war, a growing number of migrants have been falsely presenting themselves as Iranian nationals fleeing the conflict.
Eritrea is another favoured cover. Nine in ten Eritrean asylum applications were approved last year, making it an attractive identity to assume. The problem, insiders say, is that basic internet research is often enough to pass the nationality test.
“I could say I’m from Eritrea, I lived in Eritrea for 10 years, I know the flag, and had a Google, it’s just bonkers,” said the Telegraph source. “It’s hard to differentiate between those nationalities. An Afghani can say he’s Iranian, an Iranian can say he’s Iraqi and so on and so forth. Then all you’ve got to do is Google your nationality questions.”
The Kuwait figures tell their own story. Two years ago, 276 asylum applications were lodged by people claiming Kuwaiti nationality. By 2025 that number had quadrupled to 1,210 — a record.
How officials fight back
The asylum process involves an initial screening followed by a formal interview with a caseworker and a translator, at which applicants set out their case and face questions about their claimed homeland.
To counter false claims, the Home Office insists it deploys linguists trained to detect inconsistencies in the way people speak — analysing vocabulary, idiom and regional accent to assess whether an applicant’s language matches the nationality they claim.
Biometric data allegedly provides a second line of defence. Anyone applying for stateless person status must submit fingerprints and other biometric information within 45 working days.
Where that data has already been recorded in a safe country the applicant passed through on the way to Britain, officials can cross-reference the records to establish whether a nationality switch took place before arrival.
