The Belfast knife suspect was handed asylum in Britain under a "fast-track" Home Office scheme, it has emerged.
Hadi Alodid - a Sudanese man charged with stabbing Stephen Ogilvie in the Kinnaird Avenue area of Belfast - travelled from Dublin to Northern Ireland in 2023 and was given refugee status later that year.
However, under a "streamlined" scheme set up by then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, he was allowed to stay in the UK after completing a 10-page Home Office questionnaire.
The programme was set up in a bid to ease a ballooning backlog of more than 92,000 asylum cases under the Tory Government and replaced the meticulous face-to-face interview process.
The scheme is still in place to this day.
Home Office staff privately described the programme as a "grant factory" due to the high approval rate it handed to refugees, according to the Daily Mail.
The sped-up process was offered to asylum seekers from countries like Sudan, where the majority of claims were granted by the Home Office due to the ongoing conflict in their homelands.
Migration Watch UK sounded alarm over the scheme as it was rolled out in February 2023, branding it a "dangerous folly" and "asylum amnesty in all but name".
Hadi Alodid was allowed to stay in the UK after completing a 10-page Home Office questionnaire
|PA
The "Streamlined Asylum Process" also allows asylum seekers from Syria, Eritrea, Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan to gain fast-tracked permission to stay in Britain.
Home Office staff "did not want" the scheme to be introduced, but had it "forced" upon them by Mr Sunak anyway, one Tory source told the Daily Mail.
They said: "It was the worst of both worlds because he failed to stop small boats across the Channel and, at the same time, made it easier to win asylum.
"It was totally illogical and they should have been working to disincentive asylum seekers."
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Mr Sunak is said to have 'forced' the scheme on Home Office staff against their wishes
| PAAccording to Home Office figures, the number of Sudanese asylum seekers coming to Britain has skyrocketed since the programme was rolled out - from 2,853 in 2022 to 5,112 last year.
Meanwhile, the department handed asylum to 95 per cent of claims from Mr Alodid's countrymen in the year to March.
News of the 30-year-old's fast-tracked asylum approval comes as people smuggling-gangs "guarantee" illegal migrants passage into the UK via flights to Ireland.
Albanian gangs have been promoting the route on TikTok as a safe alternative to breaking into Britain via small boat due to the lack of passport checks between Ireland and Northern Ireland under the Common Travel Area.
The number of Sudanese asylum seekers coming to Britain has skyrocketed since the programme was rolled out
| GETTYOne post from a migrant filming inside Dublin Airport read: “Every day, only success. Reserve your place. Guaranteed passage to England."
After violence erupted on the streets of Belfast last night, the UK's terror watchdog chief said that immigration must now be treated as a national security threat.
Jonathan Hall, who serves as the independent reviewer of terror laws, said events in Northern Ireland had been "extraordinarily destabilising" and had "huge ramifications".
He added: “If [people from] certain countries are more likely either to commit very serious offences or particular offences, or to get involved with state threat activity, do we need to start thinking about migration now, not simply in terms of the economy and housing, but also in terms of national security?
“Ultimately, national security is to help the nation, and having a stable nation where people feel they can go about their business.
"At the moment, there are people who happen to be black and brown, but as British as you and me, who probably feel they can’t go about that business, and that is destabilising the nation.
“So, I think it’s absolutely necessary to talk about immigration in the context of national security."
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