Desperately Seeking Asylum

Last week immigration minister Liam Byrne tried to seek some political asylum for Brown’s ailing administration by bigging-up the record low in the number of people fleeing war-torn destitution and persecution and coming here to sponge the fruits of our fair shores.  Evidence he declared that “Britain’s borders are stronger than ever” and evidence that Labour was tackling successfully an issue close to the electorate’s heart.  The media, however, were more interested in our new foreign minister, David Cameron and his visit to Georgia and why the leader of the opposition Mr. Miliband had very little to say on the matter unlike our continental cousins the Germans and the French (though a few days later he finally went to Tbilisi and made a rallying speech this week in Ukraine).

 

Unfortunately for Byrne the number crunchers at the Office of National Statistics would not agree.  Their figures show that the 5,720 asylum applications made in the second quarter of this year are 15% higher than the same period in 2007 and in the first three months of 2008 were thirteen percent higher than last year.  Not such good news after all.  Even more sobering news for Labour was the HM Inspectorate of Prison’s report that children were being held for too long at the Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire.  According to last week’s report the average time children were held has risen over the last two years from eight to fifteen days.  The “prolonged detention was having a detrimental effect on the welfare and behaviour of children” wrote Anne Owers who is the chief inspector of prisons.  Last week it seems the Home Office was too indisposed in trying to detain its own data sticks rather than caring about the foreign child guests staying at her majesty’s pleasure and getting their figures right.

 

Mr Byrne instead reiterated that “Foreign lawbreakers are being removed from Britain at record levels” rather than focusing on the reality that foreign children are being held in prison at record lengths of stay.  About migrants he said “I have made it repeatedly clear that people who come here must earn the right to stay, work hard and play by the rules.” 

 

But asylum seekers right to stay is purely dependent on whether they were actually fleeing persecution in their country of origin in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and European Court of Human Rights.  They do not have to “earn their right to stay”.  Whether they commit crime or not does not change their fundamental status.

 

For more than a decade there has been confusion over whom and what an asylum seeker is and even with a legal definition it can be hard to define individual cases.  Often the home office staff in Croydon find it hard to confirm exactly where the applicants came from who they were fleeing.  But New Labour’s way of defining migrants over the past decade has a rather odd and yet politically convenient logic.

 

When Blair and friends came to power the number of asylum seekers was rising and deportations of failed asylums seekers had dwindled.  There was the exodus from the Balkans not to mention the Somalia’s, Sri Lanka’s, and Afghanistan’s of the world.  Many felt uneasy about these new arrivals and their views were hardened by articles in parts of the press that saw them as spongers who would live off their taxes and put a strain on public resources they use.

 

At the same time Blair wanted to attract highly skilled international workers.  He felt the best way to keep tax paying, investment spending and job generating multinationals on our island was to allow them to bring whoever they felt they needed to run and work in their companies from shores near and far.  Blair praised these migrants and did everything to let them in arguing that they were economic migrants coming here to work and add to our economy’s skill base: they were good.  But their alter-ego – those seeking asylum – were bad because most were not genuine asylum seekers but economic migrants in disguise coming here to take our jobs and get our benefits.  They should be perturbed from coming and stopped.  The migration sceptics of The Mail and company bought this narrative and the influx of the highly skilled was barely criticised and in fact seen positively, whilst asylum seekers, even the genuine ones, were ostracised by press, government and the views of the majority.  Legislation has tightened which means those seeking asylum cannot work and are completely reliant on benefits until they get a right to remain.  The benefits they receive are significantly lower than those which Brits receive.  For example a British mother with a child under a year old would receive £300 in child benefit a month, an asylum seeker £200 mostly in vouchers.

 

If asylum seekers are economic migrants and willing to work why not let them rather than leave them to live off handouts in a period when our economy was expanding?  Were the people who had the skills and the audacity to flee some of the darkest corners of this earth and the ability to muster the blood, sweat and tears of travelling across continents, get past border guards and deal with smugglers to get here not possessed with the same entrepreneurial panache and get up and go which would turn them into one of New Labour’s coveted hard-working families? 

 

A study by Janet Dobson for the Home Office in 2001 showed that when asylum seekers were allowed to enter the Labour market many were not able to apply the skills they had and these foreign doctors, scientists, teachers and business persons ended up doing semi or unskilled jobs.  Many could have applied there knowledge more usefully if they had the support of the state.  She also found that the cost of asylum seekers to the public purse was actually positive.  Those who were eventually able to work paid in taxes for the public resources they used, covered the cost administering new asylum seekers and even produced a surplus between 1988-2000 of around £120m for the rest of the community.

 

Asylum seekers do not necessarily choose Britain just because of our exceptional economy.  Research in 2006 by the Brookings Institute’s Khalid Koser and UCL’s Alan Gilbert into the reasons why asylum seekers chose Britain found that often it was the choice of traffickers and agents who helped people on their journeys – the asylum seekers did not care they simply wanted to leave where they were from.  Other pull factors were links to Britain like existing friends, family and a community or knowledge of the language base.

 

If asylum seekers were economic migrants and their numbers had fallen that would be more telling about the poor performance of our economy.  There numbers would fall like those real economic migrants the eastern Europeans and most notably the Poles whose influx just a year ago was feared by many, presumably because people felt their stay would permanent.  Well they are now leaving and fewer are coming to take their place.  Poland which is experiencing rapid growth is more appealing than dear old blighty.  With our Chancellor writing in today’s Guardian (Saturday 30^th August) that the British public are pretty “pissed off” with Labour and the state of the economy there is only one solution: beat the Poles at their own game and seek asylum in their booming economy.