How British hotels became a flashpoint for a furious immigration debate

Epping, England —

The Bell Hotel in Epping, just outside of London, gets no new bookings, yet is full every night. That’s because, since 2020, it has been used by the government to help house the thousands of asylum seekers who arrive each year on England’s southern coast and become trapped in administrative limbo.

Save the hoteliers, no one is happy with the current system: Not the government and local councils, who have to stump up huge sums to pay the lucrative contracts; not the asylum seekers, who can spend years living in a small room waiting to learn if they can stay in Britain; and, more recently in the case of the Epping hotel, not local residents, some of whom say they feel unsafe with the groups of young men living in town.

From time to time, these grievances boil over. I