ASYLUM SEEKERS 4

UK TOPS
Britain is the number one destination for asylum seekers among the major industrialised nations. Although recent legislation has had some impact, Britain still grants asylum to more people each year than Germany, Canada and the USA, and in 2003, the UK granted 26,921 asylum applications.

Nicholas Boles said, "We have had a relatively generous system in terms of benefits and other possibilities to work here relative to our neighbours. So it is partly a sign of success, it is partly a sign of Government policy perhaps making it a little too appealing for people, but it is also because actually the Government has not had a grip on the system."

OVERSPENDING
Derby City Council has been criticised about overspending on asylum and immigration issues. The city's Conservatives say the local authority has spent Ł5m on asylum since 1997 which they say is too much. The group say the expenditure would have been better spent instead on the authority's frontline services or in supporting lower council tax. But council leader Maurice Burgess said the opposition group had got the overspend figures wrong.

"I believe they've just plucked these figures out of the air - I've been talking with officers and they cannot see anywhere where this basis has come from," he said. "If we have a look at the contribution that people who have transferred from being asylum seekers to refugees and citizens of this city, I believe that we may well find that if you add all the figures up we've actually had a net benefit." Under the current Labour government, local councils across England have spent more than Ł3bn on asylum.

Conservative parliamentary candidate for Derby North, Richard Aitken-Davies, said, "It's not un-humanitarian because we've made it very clear that we want to do our share of taking people who are oppressed in oppressive regimes and need sanctuary. But we want to do our share with the all the other countries of the world, and at the moment there's a very unfair burden being placed on a nation which has been extremely generous in its treatment of refugees over many, many years."

ASYLUM SEEKERS

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Rochdale, Lancs is splashing out Ł1.5m a year to furnish plush flats for asylum seekers. More than Ł3,000 a year is spent kitting out each of about 500 flats for newly arrived immigrants despite severe poverty in the area. Taxpayers' cash is spent on swanky beds, carpets, fridge-freezers, cookers, microwaves and even ash trays. The makeovers are part of a scheme to improve living conditions for asylum seekers. Faced with more than 500 people a year flooding in from Africa, eastern Europe and Asia, the borough council's Asylum Seeker Support Unit decided to roll out the red carpet. It called in a local furnishing company to help in some of the town's poorest areas.

One worker at the Lanebottom Industrial Equitable Pioneers Society, who secured the contract, said, "We'd furnish about 500 flats a year at least. A minimum of Ł3,000 was spent on each and it was all good quality stuff. I turned up on some jobs and the asylum seekers were waiting for us with a list of what they wanted. I was disgusted. It's one thing giving these people a roof over their head but it's a different matter when you turn it into a palace for them. When the furniture was being carried in, they were grinning from ear to ear. It was a joke. Dozens of flats ended up being trashed in weeks but the furniture just got replaced." (Source: News of the World, Aug/07)

Failed asylum seekers are being given free mobile phones. The detainees at most of Britain's 10 immigration removal centres are also handed Ł5 talk-time vouchers before they are deported. And they get to keep the phones when they leave, even though many spend just a few weeks here before they are sent home. Officials said the detainees were given mobiles because they complained they had to wait too long to use landlines at the centres. A mobile phone mast has even been specially installed at one centre near Dover. (Source: Sunday Mirror, May/06)

The bill for dealing with refugee claims has spiralled from Ł664million in 1997 to a staggering Ł2BILLION in 2004. Figures also show the total cost of dealing with asylum since Labour came to power is Ł3billion, from central government alone and also revealed that the Home Office’s Immigration Directorate spends Ł1.6billion each year. Legal aid has soared from just Ł26million a year to Ł204million in 2003, nearly EIGHT TIMES as much.

Most people claiming asylum in Britain turn out to be bogus refugees who are rejected, but they still run up huge legal aid bills appealing against findings. Yet only one in five failed applicants are actually booted out and sent home. Town hall spending on the problem of asylum has cost every household in England Ł140 since 1997.

Ministers boast they are now in control of the asylum crisis. And they have toasted falling numbers who come to our shores. But critics point out thousands of work permits are being issued to would-be asylum seekers to allow them in through the “back door”. It hides the true figure of some 200,000 believed to come to the UK legally or illegally each year.

The number of asylum seekers pouring into Derby has been blamed for a mounting housing crisis. The number of people registered homeless has rocketed in the past year whilst the number of homes has plummeted. There are currently 517 people registered homeless in the city but just 38 council houses available. In contrast, figures for April last year show there were 187 people needing housing who then had a choice of 181 homes. Councillor Hickson, who is responsible for housing, said the influx of asylum seekers over the last few years has been to blame.

Mr Hickson believes the situation is only going to get worse. He said, "The amount of refugees is putting a huge strain on the housing, GP and education systems. In Derby there are more people than available resources.There is a problem and there is no immediate solution and it is only going to get worse. Once their asylum application is approved they become resident in the city and the council has a duty to house them. The only solution would be to build hundreds of houses, but that's not going to happen as we've not been budgeted for building and we don't have the land in the city."

It was in the late 1990s that asylum seekers started flocking to Derby in the aftermath of the Kosovo war and official city council figures indicate that there are now 1,800 asylum seekers in Derby. Despite Home Office claims to the contrary, the Derby council taxpayer is footing the bill and financial resources that have already been under pressure are being stretched to the limit, causing a funding crisis for the Council, who are to seek emergency funding from Central Government.

Lib Dem Maurice Burgess, leader of the city council, said, "As soon as the asylum seeker is given permission to stay in the local authority area, it's our responsibility to house them, but we only have a limited number of properties. This is a problem that's been swept under the carpet by the previous Labour council." Officially Derby is the 12th largest recipient in the UK of asylum applicants, but in terms of population size is not even in the top 20.

The government denied that Derby takes three times the national average of asylum seekers, despite city council figures which show otherwise. The statistics highlight an asylum population in the city of between 1,500 and 2,000, which compares to an average of around 550. Home Office Minister Fiona MacTaggart said the city was no different to other places.

No wonder public confidence in the ability of the Government and Whitehall to get a grip of the asylum seeker problem has just about evaporated. What point is there in Home Office ministry officials deliberating on individual applications for refugee status if no immediate back-up action is taken when a refusal is issued?

The Derby Voluntary Sector Refugee Forum believes that in Derby there are 1,000 people who have gone to ground after being refused permission to stay. David Callow, chairman of the forum, which runs advice sessions for asylum seekers, is in the best position to judge the scale of the problem, and his fears that many of these people will feel forced to turn to crime seems well-founded.

Yet when we put that figure to the Home Office, the response was that it did not accept the scale of the problem of "overstayers" was of that magnitude. How would they know in London? Consider this policy explanation from a ministry spokesman: "Asylum seekers who are refused refugee status and have no other basis to stay are expected to leave the UK. If they don't, we will detain them and remove them."

Expected to leave the UK? Well, that should do the trick then. Any asylum seeker who gets the bad news that his application to stay has been turned down is certainly going to pack up his bags straight away and head off to Gatwick to buy his air ticket to the Middle East or Africa, isn't he?

If he does not, what are the chances he'll be sitting around for several weeks, waiting patiently for the immigration service to arrive and escort him to the boat or plane? What a farcical expectation. Letters of rejection of refugee status should be served personally by immigration officers, who should immediately accompany the unlucky applicants to the point of pre-arranged departure from these shores.

Those arrangements would have to be made anyway if the Government was serious about carrying out its threat under the current system. Or maybe it's just simpler for officials to announce that all these rejections have been issued ... and then shut their eyes, count to a million and shout "coming, ready or not". (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)

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