Rescuing
Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected
Dictatorship
|
Spin, not
face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the Government's
chosen method of communication. Ordinary
people are dangerous. Ordinary people might ask a question
which throws a politician 'off message'; the Cabinet member
might reveal himself or herself to be a human being like
us, and not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she
might tell the truth.
Ann Leslie - Daily Mail, September
16, 2004
|
Sending
home all the asylum cheats will take 21 years
BY
Matthew Hickley - Home Affairs Correspondent - daily Mail, May
18, 2005
Failed
asylum seekers are being deported at such a slow rate that it
will take 21 years to clear the backlog, official figures revealed
yesterday. Even if influx of new claimants were to stop overnight,
it would be 2026 before the estimated 300,000 refused asylum but
never sent home are removed.
Yet
the Home Office cannot keep up with the numbers still coming in
and the rate of removals has fallen sharply year-on-year.
Currently, for every three
asylum seekers whose claims are dismissed as bogus, only one is
sent home. It means the backlog is growing by around 80 per day,
even though the number of asylum claims has fallen in recent months.
With
the asylum and immigration system costing the taxpayer £2
billion a year, the figures raise serious questions over the Government's
ability to enforce its own rules. Tories said the growing backlog
was a 'shocking indictment' of the Government's failure.
The
figures also reveal that an asylum amnesty announced two years
ago, which Ministers claimed would allow around 50,000 people
to stay, could end up allowing three times that number to remain,
regardless of whether their cases are genuine or not. Immigration
officers warned earlier this week that they are having to scale
back on operations to track down and deport failed asylum seekers
because crippling budget cuts mean overtime or weekend working
has mostly been banned.
Home
Office figures published yesterday showed that 3,445 failed claimants
were deported from the UK in the first three months of the year
- a fall of 16% compared with the same period last year. In the
same three months, the number of unsuccessful claimants exhausting
the appeals process was more than 10,700.
Previous
Government targets to remove 30,000 failed asylum seekers a year
proved massively over-ambitious and were dropped three years ago.
The latest, more modest, target is for the number of deportations
to overtake the number of failed claims by the end of this year.
But even that will require a huge increase in removals.
While
the government refused to publish any estimate of how many failed
asylum seekers are still living in Britain, one recent study claimed
that as many as 300,000 have been allowed to stay since Labour
came to power in 1997.
Professor
John Salt, a migration expert commissioned by the Home Office
to study the illegal immigrant population, included failed asylum
seekers who came before 1997 and others who never claimed asylum,
to arrive at an even higher figure of 500,000. The latest figures
show the level of new asylum claims continuing to fall in Britain,
as it is across Europe.
From
January to March this year, 8,2,00 people sought political asylum
in the UK, down by a fifth from 10,585 in the same period of 2004.
Critics claim much of the reduction reflects the fact that more
immigrants are being allowed into Britain legally through other
routes. The number allowed in as students has soared, as has the
number of work-permits issued - from 30,000 a year in the mid-1990s
to 181,000 last year.
Former
Home Secretary David Blunkett announced an amnesty in 2003 for
asylum seekers whose cases had dragged on for years, claiming
that around 15,000 families, or 50,000 people, would be allowed
to stay. But yesterday's figures show that 14,000 families have
already benefited, with another 32,000 waiting to learn whether
they qualify.
Including
dependents, that could mean 140,000 people staying in Britain,
even though many of their claims for asylum were rejected. Tory
immigrations spokesman, Humphrey Malins said the backlog of failed
asylum seekers was 'a shocking indictment of this government's
failure on asylum'. He added: "On the day Labour announces
its fourth immigration and asylum Bill, the statistics continue
to show what a shambles the system actually is in this country."
Immigration
Minister Tony McNulty, said: "We know there is more to do
to tighten the system still further and increase the number of
failed asylum seekers we remove. This is essential if people are
to have confidence that the system is both robust and fair."
The
Home Office claims it will hit its targets of increasing deportations
by fast-tracking more cases through the system and locking up
more failed applicants in detention centres prior to deportation.
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