So where are all the Afghans?

We've all seen the harrowing footage of the chaos at Kabul airport in the last few days before Western forces withdrew last August. We've also seen pictures of C-17s with holds crammed with hundreds of evacuees on their way to new lives in the West. The UK alone is supposed to have evacuated 15,000 in the few weeks of 'Operation Pitting', so where have they gone?

It's been over a year now but you'll search in vain in the immigration statistics for any evidence of the appearance of many thousands of Afghan evacuees. You'll find anecdotal evidence of thousands being stuck in hotels while thousands more have evidently been housed by local authorities. But why aren't they showing up in the immigration and asylum statistics?

It turns out that the government has made a conscious decision not to do that, and instead has published what it calls 'transparency data' in a hard-to-find section of the HO website. This reveals that, as of August 2022, a total of around 21,450 Afghans had been admitted under various schemes. Of these 9.667 were being accommodated in 66 hotels while 7.385 were in settled accommodation. The whereabouts of the other 4-thousand-odd was not disclosed.

Important to note that the Afghan channel is still open, with around 5,000 being admitted since the Taliban took control. This may or may not include the 130 members of the Afghan national women's junior football team and their extended families whose 'rescue' was feted in the legacy media a few months ago.