Asylum. From flood to trickle

Asylum applications are down, and not just because of a worldwide decline

FOREIGNERS are a hot topic in Britain. Opinion polls consistently rate asylum and immigration as one of voters' main concerns, and right-wing parties of varying degrees of extremism have been profiting by playing up the threat to the British way of life posed by a flood of unwashed foreigners.

So a report published this week by the UNHCR will make welcome reading for the government. It shows asylum applications to industrialised countries falling sharply, continuing the downward trend of the past three years. But one statistic will be of special significance: while Britain was the most popular rich-country destination in 2003, it has now fallen into second place behind France.

So what's behind the drop in applications? One reason is simply that there are fewer asylum-seekers. The UNHCR reckons that, in the first half of 2004, the number of people seeking sanctuary in rich countries fell by 22% compared with the same period last year. Part of the drop is due to the removal of unpopular governments; Iraqis and Afghans, in particular, have stopped leaving home in such large numbers. Iraqis were the biggest single group of refugees at the start of 2003, making 11,094 applications. By the second quarter of this year that had fallen to only 2,070. Afghans have seen a similar, though slightly less precipitous, decline.

But a fall in the general level of asylum-seeking worldwide doesn't explain why Britain has lost its particular attractiveness as a sanctuary. While asylum applications in Europe have fallen by 20% in the past six months, applications to Britain are down by a 37%.

Aware of public anxiety, the government has been making life increasingly difficult for anyone trying to reach Britain. British immigration officers now conduct patrols in France, aiming to catch stowaways on trains or ferries. High-tech scanning machines have been installed in European ports to detect people hiding in cargo shipments. “We think it's the huge number of barriers that have gone up that prevent people from claiming asylum,” says Hannah Ward of the Refugee Council. “To claim asylum, you actually have to get to the UK.”

The asylum system still needs reform. Even when applications are turned down, most people are never removed from the country. The approvals process itself needs work, too: one in five of all appeals is currently upheld, and the number rises to more than 40% for Somalis, Sudanese and Eritreans, suggesting that officials are doing a bad job of processing the initial applications. But if fewer foreigners are coming, voters won't mind so much that the system is a mess.

Why is there such a big reduction in asylum applications to the UK?

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