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Press Releases for January 2003
January 28, 2003
Home office challenged on number of failed asylum
seekers still in UK…
January 16, 2003
Security now paramount consideration...
January 15, 2003
Entitlement cards now urgent priority
January 13, 2003
Immirgation now five times greater than a decade ago
January 6, 2003
More than 100,000 'missing' from immigration statistics
Full Text of Releases : January 2003
Home office challenged on number of failed asylum seekers still in UK…
The Government has been challenged to live up to its promise of making known all the facts on asylum by revealing their estimate of the number of failed asylum seekers still in the UK.
In response to Home Secretary David Blunkett's comments in the New Statesmen that he 'wanted to ensure that people know the facts and get information on which they can make a judgment,' independent think-tank MigrationwatchUK has called upon him to publish the Home Office's own assessment of these numbers.
'The whole reason for setting up Migrationwatch was to promote an informed public debate and so we welcome his comments. Of crucial importance to this debate is the number of asylum seekers who, despite a legal process costing £700m a year, remain in the country - even though they have no right to do so,' said Sir Andrew Green its chairman.
'Only by having an informed estimate of these numbers can we begin to assess their needs, and the impact and cost they are having on services in the UK, such as the NHS.
'Even allowing for the inevitably approximate nature of some of these estimates, we believe that about 300,000 failed asylum seekers have stayed on in Britain over just the last nine years. We challenge the Home Secretary to accept this estimate or to provide and substantiate an alternative figure,' he said.
Based on the latest Home Office statistics (HOSB 09/02) MigrationwatchUK calculate the following for the years 1993-2001: See note 1 below
| Decisions (year of outcome) |
|
439,540
|
| Less total granted asylum, ELR, or appeal allowed |
142,605
|
296,935
|
|
Less removals and voluntary departures |
52,115
|
244,820
|
|
Add 30% allowance for dependants |
73,460
|
318,280
|
'There has been a good deal of evasiveness on this issue by the Government - in the House of Commons on 20 January Minister of State, Mrs. Hughes, 'did not have the figure in her head' (Hansard Col 15). On Newsnight, on 24 January, Lord Filkin declined to give an estimate - so if Mr Blunkett means to have an honest debate its time these tactics were replaced with the facts on a matter of great public concern,' he said.
Said Sir Andrew: 'The Home Office claim that no estimate can be made because an unknown number return to their own countries without informing the British authorities. This last point is a matter on which the public can reach their own judgement as Mr. Blunkett suggests.'
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Security now paramount consideration...
The increased terrorist threat to the UK leaves little alternative but to detain those asylum seekers who destroy their documents until their identities have been established and security checks made, says independent think-tank MigrationwatchUK.
'While the vast majority of asylum seekers are law-abiding people recent events have graphically demonstrated that they include a small, but very dangerous minority,' said MigrationwatchUK Chairman, Sir Andrew Green.
Some 80-90% of all asylum seekers arrive with no travel or identification documents in order to make it more difficult for them to be removed. After a lengthy process costing some £700m a year 90% stay on, most of them illegally.
Said Sir Andrew: 'We should not overreact but the level of threat we now face means that some fundamental changes to the asylum system are now essential...
'It is important that the human rights of asylum seekers are protected - but British citizens also have human rights - including the right to live in peace and security,' he said.
MigrationwatchUK note that the Home Secretary is reported as saying
that Britain received 90m visitors each year. In fact he was referring
to passenger arrivals of whom 60m are British and 15m from Western
Europe.
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Entitlement cards now urgent priority
The chaos in the asylum and immigration system and the potential for widespread misuse of public services makes the introduction of entitlement cards an urgent priority.
That is the view of independent think-tank MigrationwatchUK in their submission to the Government's consultation exercise on entitlement cards. (Click here for the full text of the submission).
'Astounding as it may seem, there is no consensus to within a million as to who is in Britain. Each year some 12 million visitors from outside Western Europe enter Britain legally,' said Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of MigrationwatchUK.
'As an economy measure in the mid 90's the Government stopped checking who leaves. This means we have no idea who still remains here, nor the degree to which they use services, such as the NHS, to which they are not entitled.
'There are also significant consequences for security,' he said. 'No single measure will defeat the terrorists but we must tilt the balance against them.'
Sir Andrew said that last year's Government White Paper on asylum and immigration had accepted that there were probably hundreds of thousands of illegal workers in the UK. Their numbers increase every year as nearly 9 out of 10 asylum seekers succeed in staying here, most of them illegally.
'We are rightly proud of our record of support to those in genuine fear of persecution but this generosity is now routinely abused and people can see with their own eyes that nothing effective is being done to tackle it,' he said.
Sir Andrew said that, as a result, the introduction of entitlement cards should be given the highest priority - not phased in over nine years as suggested by the Government. To do nothing is no longer an option.
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Immirgation now five times greater than a decade ago
Immigration into the UK is now running at five times the level of 1992.
An analysis of the figures by think-tank MigrationwatchUK shows that even taking into account the Government's recent major downward 'adjustment' of immigration statistics to 'reconcile' them to the latest Census figures (see Note 1) net non-EU foreign immigration has risen from 40,000 in 1992 to almost 200,000 in 2001.
Illegal immigration, generally believed to be substantial, is on top of this.
The following bar chart illustrates the rise over the past decade.
Footnotes:
1 The number of asylum seeker dependants is taken from
Table 6.1 of HOSB 09/02
2 These were previously omitted but have been added by
MigrationwatchUK to the interim revised total international
migration estimates published by the Office for National
Statistics on 28 November 2002.
'The numbers themselves are very large indeed. If this flow continues,
and it shows every sign of rising still further, the result will
be an additional two million foreign population every decade. What
is more, the rate of increase should also be ringing alarm bells
throughout Whitehall,' said Sir Andrew Green, MigrationwatchUK Chairman.
'The massive increase in work permits from 30,000 to 175,000 a year, the loosening of control on arranged marriages, and the opening of our borders to East European workers in eighteen months time promise further very substantial increases,' he said.
Sir Andrew said 'The government's claim to be managing migration
is simply not credible. The reality is that they are progressively
losing control of our borders. Their focus seems to be on managing
the media, not on managing migration.'
Note 1.
The immigration statistics have been thrown into confusion by the
government's response to the census. Despite evidence to the contrary,
the government have chosen to assume that the census was correct
and have reduced immigration figures over the last ten years to
account for nearly one million people missing from the expected
total. A last minute addendum to the annual statistics (issued on
the same day as the announcement of the "deal" over Sangatte)
points to the National Statistics web site which contains the revised
figure for foreign non EU net immigration in 2001 as 178,100. Adding
the 20,500 dependants who were omitted from the overall immigration
statistics brings the total to 196,600. (see www.migrationwatch.org
for a detailed explanation of this issue under News Desk item: January
2003. More than 100,000 'missing' from immigration statistics...
.) It should also be noted that the Home Office have subsequently
acknowledged that they did indeed omit the dependants of asylum
seekers from the overall immigration numbers as set out in this
release.
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More than 100,000 'missing' from immigration statistics
Close scrutiny by MigrationwatchUK of government immigration figures has revealed that over the past 10 years some 109,500 dependants of asylum seekers have been omitted from official figures for overall immigration - even though the numbers were known. Last year alone there were more than 20,000 dependants.
The 'missing' dependants came to light when MigrationwatchUK examined
the way in which the Home Office adjusts the migration data from
the Office for National Statistics. (RDS Occasional Paper No 75
pages 18-19).
That paper gave the actual adjustments made for asylum seekers
in
the years 1995 and 1996. When MigrationwatchUK compared these
numbers with the asylum statistics they found that they were based
only
on applications (thus omitting dependants who arrive before the
initial decision is taken). These numbers are known to the Home
Office and have been published separately for some years in the
Home Office Statistical Bulletin - but they were not included in
the main annual publication of immigration statistics.
When challenged, the Home Office provided an explanatory note which
stated that "no allowance is currently made for dependants
of asylum seekers. Until recently, reliable information on the number
of dependants
has not been available. The quality and reliability of this information
is improving and it is possible that an allowance for dependants
will be included in the near future."
However, this explanation does not square with the Home Office's statement two years ago that the proportions of dependants had been consistent for the previous nine years (HOSB 17/00 paragraph 7). If so, there has been no valid reason to omit them. For some years international organisations such as the UNHCR have published UK asylum figures with an additional allowance for dependants, to bring them up to a comparable level with those published by most other countries.
'This is an astonishing admission,' said MigrationwatchUK Chairman, Sir Andrew Green. 'It demonstrates the unreliability of Home Office statistics when a number equivalent to the size of the British Army simply "disappears" from some of the principal statistics.
'It looks very much as though dependants have been omitted to keep the numbers down.
'The Home Secretary commented recently that he did not believe that "there was any point in hiding information because it merely deludes us when we need to find solutions to a very, very big problem."
'It would be a good idea if the Home Office were to take their
lead from
Mr Blunkett. A culture of concealment can only erode public confidence'.
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