3 gurkhas per week refused entry into UK

Remember Tul Bahadur Pun the Gurkha who was eventually allowed into Britain? After reading that I was curious about the treatment of Gurkhas so I sent off a request to the foreign office to ask about how many Gurkhas applied to come to Britain. Their response was that I didn’t specify the country so it would be too expensive to find the information but they would try to be helpful and get the info from Kathmandu where the bulk of the Gurkhas are from.

As people who request information from the government will know the government is never helpful when you get things wrong and they do their best to not give you any information so I was surprised that they gave me the information. Maybe the civil servants want it to be publicised? Or maybe it’s just the way the foreign office does it?

To cut a long story short since 1988 there have been 1984 applications from Gurkhas that have been turned down for them and their dependents. There are many more than that though. The Gurkhas can also apply under Armed Forces Concession. Under Armed Forces Concession there have been 2840 applications and 1196 of them have been refused. That is not the final say though. They also have an appeal. 414 Gurkhas are still in the appeals process and there have been 48 applications for appeal that have been withdrawn by the Gurkha himself, the reason wasn’t made clear

This means that in the last 19 years there has been 3180 Gurkhas that have been refused entry to the UK. This means that around 167 Gurkhas are refused entry into the UK every year or making it simpler it is around 3 per week.