34. Memorandum submitted by
Migration Watch UK
SUMMARY
1. Contrary to popular belief, there has
been no major increase in the worldwide total of asylum seekers
nor in the number coming to Europe over the last 10 years. However,
the proportion of applicants to Europe who come to Britain has
increased enormously from 5% in 1992 to 27% in 2002.
2. Clearly, Britain is perceived as the
destination of preference. "Pull" factors include a
free and prosperous society, the presence of immigrant communities,
and an international language. But to these must be added political
reluctance to address the issues, lack of policy grip and serious
administrative weakness.
3. The result is a system that is highly
unsatisfactory both to genuine asylum seekers who face a system
clogged with false claimants and to the electorate of whom 85%
believe that the Government have lost control of asylum and immigration;
80% wish to see much tougher immigration control.
4. The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum
Act 2002 is inadequate—if not irrelevant. Only root and
branch reform of the legal framework can restore public confidence
and avoid a serious threat to community relations.
REASONS FOR
THE RISE
IN ASYLUM
APPLICATIONS IN
THE UK OVER
THE LAST
10 YEARS
5. The underlying reasons for asylum seeking,
and for migration more generally, continue to be oppressive regimes,
wars, internal strife and poverty. It may be thought that adverse
changes in these factors have contributed to the rise in asylum
applications in the U.K. But, this is not the case. The number
of asylum applications worldwide in the years 1999, 2000 and 2001
were 581,000, 570,000 and 614,000 respectively—very close
to the 10 year average of 594,000.[84]
The actual worldwide and EU figures for the period 1992 to 2001
are shown in the following graph:[85]
6. However, the percentage of asylum applications
to Europe being submitted in the U.K. has been rising rapidly
as the following graph shows.[86]
7. Britain is clearly increasingly attractive
by comparison with many other EU countries. We believe that key
administrative factors are:
— The very low removal rates of those
refused asylum.
— The cumbersome asylum system with
its multiple appeals procedures and long delays.
— The semi-automatic granting of exceptional
leave to remain (ELR) to applicants from certain countries.
— The ease of access to illegal work
in the UK and the absence of internal controls, notably the absence
of identification checks.
— The relatively liberal way in which
the UN Convention on Refugees (UNCR) and the European Convention
on Human Rights (ECHR) have been incorporated into British law
and interpreted by the judiciary.
These factors, which reinforce each other, are
explained below.
8. In the period 1998-2002 inclusive 375,850
initial decisions were made on asylum applications. During this
period 143,572 applicants (38%) were granted asylum or ELR, either
initially or on appeal. But only 43,330 applicants (11.5%) were
removed from the country.[87]
Most of those refused probably stayed in the country illegally.
Thus, if you apply for asylum in the UK you have a roughly 88.5%
chance of remaining in the country. Clearly this makes the UK
a very attractive destination for economic migrants entering the
country as asylum seekers.
9. Some progress has been made over the
last two years in speeding up the decision making process but
it is still slow. The average time to an initial decision came
down from 35 months in 1999 to 13 months in 2001. The present
objective is to make an initial decision within two months but
only 75% of cases in Q3 2002 were made in this timescale. (Compare
this with the Netherlands where 60% of decisions are made in two
days). Over 75% of people initially refused asylum or ELR went
on to appeal but only 43% of the appeals received in 2001-02 were
determined within 17 weeks. (About three quarters of appeals are
rejected). This had fallen to 39% in the period April to September
2002.
10. The timescales for making decisions
are critical. Long timescales allow asylum seekers to get established
in the UK—eg to find employment in the black economy, to
make contacts in the ethnic communities and maybe even to find
another route to staying in the UK, such as marriage. They also
make it far more difficult to manage the system and to keep tabs
on the large numbers involved.
11. The Home Secretary recognised in 2002
that the granting of ELR was "no longer exceptional"
and from April, 2003 ELR will be replaced with a new category
of "humanitarian protection". The routine granting
of ELR in the latter half of the 1990s to asylum applicants from
some major source countries meant that the vast majority were
granted either asylum or ELR at their first application. This
led to a very sharp increase in the number of asylum applications.
The following graphs demonstrate this point.
12. Access to work in the UK is relatively
easy. Unemployment rates are low by European standards and the
UK has a thriving black economy—we have seen estimates that
the black economy in London is as high as 20% of the official
economy. The UK has no ID cards so there is, in practice, no obstacle
to accessing State services, such as healthcare and education.
This adds further to the attractiveness of the UK.
13. A further attraction is the way the
UNCR and ECHR have been incorporated into UK law and have then
been interpreted by the judiciary. A prime example is that many
European countries do not recognise persecution by non-State bodies
as we do. In Britain, for example, grants of asylum may be made
to Afghans on the basis that they are still at risk from the Taliban
(or, indeed, vice versa), or to Jamaican homosexuals on the basis
of homophobic attitudes in Jamaican society, or to Roma on the
basis of racial hostility towards them by sectors of the population
in parts of Eastern Europe.
How adequately and fairly are asylum applications
managed today? How did the backlog of asylum determinations arise?
Is it being dealt with satisfactorily?
14. From the viewpoint of the genuine asylum
seeker the asylum system is still not being managed adequately
or fairly. They need a system that processes their claims quickly,
helps them to start a new life and welcomes them into their new
community. The present situation is clogged with a large number
of false claimants who are engendering public hostility.
15. Furthermore a system which is costing
£1.8 billion[88]
per year and which is failing to repatriate thousands of failed
asylum seekers is clearly one which brings the law into disrepute
and is totally unsatisfactory to the vast majority of the UK population.
This has been borne out by MORI's poll on behalf of Migration
Watch[89]
which found that 85% of the population thought that the Government
had failed to get asylum or immigration under control. The same
poll found that 80% wanted much tighter immigration controls,
including 52% of ethnic minority communities.
16. The scale and incidence of the asylum backlog
problem can be seen from the following graph.[90]
17. This backlog arose for a number of reasons:
— the previous government introduced
a computer system (and reduced staff) but the system failed just
as applicant numbers started to increase;
— the present government applied the
Human Rights Act to this field, thus generating still further
opportunities for delay;
— virtually automatic granting of ELR
to certain countries (para. 11 above) contributed to massive increase
in applications from those countries;
— there was a political and administrative
failure to address the problems of removal. Most obviously, a
huge effort was made to increase the number of initial decisions
from 24,000 in 1999 to 102,000 in 2000 and 126,000 in 2001 but
the number of removals rose only to about 9,000 from 7,500 in
1999; and
— the appeals machinery was rapidly
overwhelmed. The number of appeals received by the Appeals Support
Section was as follows:
|
| 1998 | 1999
| 2000 | 2001
| 2002 |
|
| 14,000 | 6,600
| 46,200 | 74,400
| 49,500 |
|
18. In evidence to the Home Affairs Committee on 4 March,
the Director General of IND said that the backlog had been reduced,
but only by 1,000, in 2002.
How appropriately is detention used in respect of asylum applicants?
19. Detention of asylum seekers is currently rarely used
in the UK. At the end of 2002 there were only 795 asylum seekers
held in detention. We have proposed that asylum seekers who are
found without documents (often because they have destroyed them)
should be held in detention initially until their identities have
been established and a security check made. We believe that this
would deter asylum seekers from destroying documents and this
would make this approach manageable. Furthermore, those who have
been refused asylum after completing the appeals process should
also be detained pending removal from the UK.
What will be the effects on the management of asylum applications
of changes made in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act
2002 and the Prime Minister's pledge to halve the number of asylum
seekers by September 2003?
20. This Act was framed before the public were aware
of the scale of the problem and before there was any political
will to take effective measures. The Act was addressed mainly
towards speeding up the decision process but, unless this is accompanied
by an effective removals mechanism, such efforts are pointless.
There are doubts about the effectiveness of three of the main
areas covered:
(a) Refusal of benefits to in-country claimants
It is the government`s contention that asylum seekers are
not well informed about the benefits available in different countries
and, consequently, that benefits are not a significant pull factor.
If this is correct, refusal of benefits will reduce the number
of claims entering the statistics but not the number of people
entering the country. It is noteworthy that a similar measure
introduced in 1996 reduced the number of in-country asylum claims
by 50% over six months (until it was reversed by the courts).
In-country claims now account for 65% of the total number of claims.
(b) Accommodation Centres
About 3,000 places are planned. At present rates of arrival
of 2,000 a week they will be full in 10 days. Applicants wait
at least two months for an initial decision and a further four
months for an appeal (75% of those refused appeal). Applicants
are free to disappear if they receive, or anticipate, a negative
decision. In the absence of an effective removal mechanism, it
is hard to justify the cost of construction of these centres and
the disruption to local communities.
(c) Restriction of Rights of Appeal
These measures are also likely to be challenged in the courts.
If they survive they will be helpful in shortening the process
but, again, effectiveness depends on enhanced removal. We are
spending, literally, hundreds of millions of pounds every year
on a legal process that has little practical effect.
21. It appears that the Home Office have interpreted
the Prime Minister's pledge as a pledge to halve the number of
asylum seekers from the record level of 8,900 which occurred in
October, 2002. This would result in an annual figure for principal
applicants of 53,400—a reduction of less than 39% on the
level for 2002 as a whole.
22. We have doubts as to whether even this figure is
attainable. The October 2002 figure was particularly high because
benefits were about to be restricted to asylum seekers who claimed
asylum as soon as practical after entering the UK. Despite this
change, asylum claims in both November and December 2002 increased
over November and December 2001 by 29% for the two months combined.
23. Finally, we believe that an effective asylum system
must be based on:
We do not believe that this can be achieved in the present
framework of national and international law. Our view, therefore,
is that the whole legal framework is in urgent need of fundamental
review. The objective should be to introduce a system where the
decision as to how many people should be given refuge in the UK,
and the conditions under which they remain in the country, should
be firmly under the control of our national Parliament.
24 March 2003
84
Source Governments,UNHCR. Compiled by UNHCR (Population Data
Unit). Back
85
Source Governments,UNHCR. Compiled by UNHCR (Population Data
Unit). Back
86
Source Governments,UNHCR. Compiled by UNHCR (Population Data
Unit). 2002 figures taken from Asylum Statistics: 4th Quarter
2002 table 16 adjusted to make allowance for Italy-assuming Italy
applications in 2002 equal 2001 levels. Back
87
From Home Office Asylum Statistics. All figures are for primary
applicants. It is recognised that the figures relate to people
at different stages in the asylum process so the percentages are
not precise. Nevertheless they provide a reasonably accurate indication
of the problems relating to removals. Back
88
Home Office Press Release 058/2003. Back
89
MORI poll conducted by Migration Watch between January 16 and
January 21, 2003. Back
90
Source: Home Office Statistical Bulletins Asylum Statistics
(various years). Back
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