'Why I claimed asylum in the UK' : Pride, asylum and the right to live safely

This blog has been written by William, a gay man from Cameroon whom RMJ supported to apply for asylum. Please consider donating so that we can help more people like William live freely and safely.

June is a month of colour, celebration and stubborn hope. Pride reminds us how far LGBTQ+ communities have come, but also how unevenly safety is distributed.

For some people, coming out is not simply a personal milestone; it can be the difference between belonging and danger. As a gay man from Cameroon who has had to seek asylum in the UK, Pride feels joyful, but also complicated. It is difficult to celebrate visibility while knowing that, in many places, visibility can still carry a heavy price.

For much of my life, hiding was not a metaphor. It was a survival strategy. Growing up in Cameroon, where homosexuality is criminalised and stigma is woven into everyday life, I learnt very early that some truths had to be folded away. I prayed to change. I avoided attention. I buried myself in study and achievement, partly because education was a source of pride, and partly because it offered a useful hiding place. If people praised my grades, perhaps they would ask fewer questions about my heart.

When I came to the UK, I did not immediately become free. The closet is remarkably good at travelling; it does not need a visa and never loses its luggage. It took years of therapy, peer support, friendship and community before I could live more openly. Pride was not just a parade to me. It was a public lesson in breathing. Slowly, I moved from fear to confidence, from silence to contribution, and from merely surviving to supporting others in LGBTQ+ and HIV communities.

I had built a life here: studying, working, teaching, volunteering and forming relationships. I believed my future would continue through work and a secure immigration route. Then, as sometimes happens in Britain with astonishing administrative calm, the ground moved. A promised pathway disappeared, and I was left facing the possibility of return.

That was when the question stopped being abstract. Could I go back to a country where my sexuality is criminalised, where my public work and private life could expose me, and where safety would depend on becoming invisible again? The answer was no.

I claimed asylum because returning would have meant surrendering the person I had fought so hard to become.

Claiming asylum is often discussed as a policy issue, but living it is intimate and unsettling. You are asked to translate fear into evidence, memory into chronology, and identity into something legible to a system. You must explain why you cannot simply be discreet, as though hiding were a lifestyle choice rather than a form of slow suffocation. The process can protect people, and I am deeply grateful for the legal support I received, but it also asks vulnerable people to revisit the most painful parts of their lives with almost forensic precision.

This is why recent debates about Cameroonian students and asylum claims trouble me. The Government’s focus on “conversion rates” risks turning people into suspicious percentages. As a researcher, I can appreciate the mathematical drama of a ratio, but small numbers can behave like startled cats: one movement and suddenly everything looks alarming. A high proportion does not necessarily mean students set out to “abuse” the system. It can mean that people’s circumstances change, that conditions at home worsen, or that someone who once thought return was possible later realises it is not safe.

Treating every asylum claim as a failure of the student visa system misses the point.

If a person is recognised as needing protection, the system has not failed because they asked for safety; it has worked because it recognised danger.

Closing safe, regulated and taxable routes does not remove the need for protection. It simply narrows the options available to people who may already be running out of them.

More broadly, the UK asylum and immigration system too often creates what I think of as permanent temporariness. Whether you are a student, a worker, or someone seeking refuge, it is difficult to build a life when the rules keep shifting beneath your feet. Integration requires more than being allowed to stay for now. It requires a future you can plan towards, a sense that your contribution is valued, and the dignity of not being permanently treated as provisional.

This Pride month, I hope we can look beyond the headlines and the ratios. Behind every number is a person carrying a history, a fear, a hope and, quite often, a carefully packed suitcase of contradictions.

A fair asylum system should be firm enough to function, humane enough to listen, and wise enough to understand that safety is not a loophole. 

Pride, at it's best, is not only about celebration. It is about the simple, radical belief that people should not have to disappear in order to survive.