Every year thousands of migrants arrive in the UK by small boat but one has chosen to smuggle himself out of Britain after his dream of a better life turned into a living nightmare.
Zahir has now tried four times to hide in lorries leaving from the port of Dover on the ferry to France after he ended up living in a park, in a bid to make it at least to Germany.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer made waves in the UK this week when he declared that net migration running at almost one million extra residents a year had created a squalid situation. He said the UK was at risk of turning into "an island of strangers". It is a summary that chimes with the experience of the 29-year-old, whose surname has been withheld by The National.
Zahir fled Afghanistan when the Taliban found out his family had worked supplying food to British and American forces and killed his father and brother. Since coming to the UK, he has experienced isolation and depression, has struggled with the language and depends on handouts to eat.
He is unable to work and learn English while his asylum claim is processed. The reality of his life stands in stark contrast to the idealised picture painted by people smugglers, who lure migrants to Britain.
Zahir made the perilous journey across the English Channel in August 2024, during which he feared he was going to die. He paid people smugglers €1,500 but now bitterly regrets his decision.
“It was a big mistake. I came here because of my mum – she was always saying ‘we helped them so they will help you’,” Zahir told The National. His eyes well up as he describes how he was left severely depressed after being moved to a remote part of the UK, with no opportunity to improve his English and interact with local people.
“I used to say ‘hello, how are you?’ to people but they weren’t interested. Nobody has offered me the chance to go to college to learn English. I told the Home Office I was very depressed,” he said. “I didn’t mind living there, it’s that there were just four people [in the accommodation]. Nobody would talk to me so how can I live my life? I couldn’t speak English.”
Zahir's goal is now to leave as soon as he can get himself on to a lorry undetected. “If I go back to Afghanistan they will kill me so I want to go to Germany, where I have some family friends,” he said. He decided to take the drastic action of trying to stow away on a lorry to escape his predicament.
He explained that the first time border force officers found him as part of a random check of lorries. No action was taken against him and he was let go. On his second attempt, he was discovered during a check by the driver.
The third time he jumped onto a lorry but the driver spotted him in his mirror. The fourth time he cut a hole in a tarpaulin with a knife to get into the trailer but the tear was noticed as the lorry was going across the border.
A low point came when Zahir was so depressed he left his accommodation and moved to London, where he had been in contact with other Afghan refugees. But the move means he is cut off from Home Office support and access to accommodation, so he has been forced to sleep in a park.
Ironically, the park where he lives is near one of the Home Office’s immigration processing facilities. He uses old carpets to keep warm and after dark, when the park is empty, he sleeps in a covered area underneath a children’s slide to keep the rain off.
“My main priority is accommodation and I just really want to sleep. The park is not safe for me. Drug addicts are asking me for cigarettes,” he said. Local people have been helping him, including Asif Cheema, who is able to speak to Zahir in Urdu. He acted as interpreter for The National.
“I met him on the road and he asked for a cigarette and I said I don’t smoke,” said Mr Cheema. “Then he said he needed money for food. I asked him why he was asking for food and he told me his story. He was a young guy, just 29 years old, asking for food, so I was surprised."
But Mr Cheema says he can only do so much to help his new friend. “I can’t take care of him because I have a family, but sometimes I can give him five pounds or something or my wife cooks some food for him.”
Dangerous homeland
Zahir says that when the Taliban returned to power in 2021 they found records at a military base used by the British and Americans which showed him, his father and brother had been working there. The militants began looking for them and managed to find his father, who they began interrogating to find Zahir’s whereabouts.
“They asked my father 'where is your son?’. When he didn’t tell them, they just killed him,” said Zahir. The Taliban were, however, able to find his brother, who they also murdered. A picture of his body remains on his phone as a reminder of the fate that would await him in Afghanistan.
At that point his family decided it was time to leave Afghanistan. He embarked on a well-trodden route taken by Afghans across Iran, Turkey, Greece, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Italy and France.
In France, Zahir was granted asylum and worked in a slaughterhouse in the city of Toulouse before he decided life in the UK would be better. He explained that he was swayed by his mother who “said go to the UK because they are good for humanity”.
He made his way to the notorious Jungle migrant camp, in northern France, near the city of Dunkirk, the gateway for most of the thousands who attempt the dangerous journey across the English Channel.
He was easily able to make contact with members of the Kurdish people smuggling gangs operating there, an experience he described as “like going to a fruit market”.
“You can get many different types of fruit. There’s a place there and you go and tell them you want to go to the UK, and they offer to take you.” The boat, crammed with migrants, set sail from the coast of northern France, but the journey soon took a terrifying turn as he began to imagine his “dead father in front of my eyes”.
“The boat was overcrowded, with maybe 70 people onboard. The boat was leaking so water was coming in. We took our shoes off and tried to take the water out. We were in the middle of the sea so I thought we were 100 per cent gone."
Some of those onboard called the UK coastguard to alert them to the situation, and the boat was brought in. When Zahir first arrived in the UK he was taken ashore at Dover and stayed in a hotel for 21 days before the processing of his asylum claim began.
Vulnerable existence
Kamena Dorling, director of policy at the Helen Bamber Foundation, which supports and advocates for refugees, said that people fleeing countries such as Afghanistan have often experienced conflict, oppression, and human rights abuses both at home and on their journey to Britain.
“But on reaching the UK to seek protection, thousands are re-traumatised by how they are treated. Left for months or even years in a state of limbo, waiting for decisions on their asylum claims, they are forbidden from working and have to live in substandard accommodation on staggeringly low levels of financial support,” she said.
Ms Dorling said many refugees are made to share rooms with strangers in hotels or in remote former military camps, which “becomes too much to bear, and they are forced into homelessness and destitution”. Others remain in Home Office accommodation but months of poverty and isolation has a negative impact on their mental health or leaves them at serious risk of exploitation.
“Supporting and upholding the rights of those seeking protection can only be achieved if the government creates an asylum system that generates quick but fair decisions and provides suitable housing and adequate financial support so that refugees, including survivors of trafficking and torture, can begin to recover and rebuild their lives.”
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
Keir Starmer says UK risks becoming 'island of strangers'
Mr Starmer has said that high net migration has caused "incalculable" damage to British society as he outlined measures aimed at “significantly” reducing numbers.
The Prime Minister said "fair rules" shaped a country's values and people's rights, responsibilities and obligations but "without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together”.
In his speech, Mr Starmer emphasised that migration is part of Britain's national story, and that migrants "make a massive contribution today".
"But when people come to our country, they should also commit to integration, to learning our language, and our system should actively distinguish between those that do and those that don't. I think that's fair,” he said.
He hit out at the previous Conservative government, under which net migration soared, and said "the damage it has done to our country is incalculable".
Mr Starmer vowed to “take back control of our borders" and close the book on a "squalid chapter" for politics and the economy. He added: "Now, make no mistake, this plan means migration will fall. That's a promise."
