Using linguistic-ethnographic assay of the way English is handled as an invariable ‘ad hoc’ idiom in the Belgian asylum interview, this paper shows how institutional measures and routines linked to multilingualism fail to address the communicative needs and practices of the involved participants. It is asserted that by privileging the variety of the host institution as a means to monitor all incoming Englishes, the institution continues traditional—though academically disputed—centre-periphery categorizations of global Englishes. The paper then debates how the divergent potentialities of the speakers’ linguistic repertoires reflect a remarkable inversion of client-gatekeeper resources in the way the participants with the least linguistic resources in the interview process eventually have the power to act as arbiters of what is or is not institutionally relevant for the case.