Asylum and Immigration

ASYLUM

• Only one in five failed asylum seekers is ever removed.

• There are now over 250,000 failed asylum seekers, equivalent to a town the size of Brighton, living in Britain who have no right to be here.

• The cost of asylum-seeker support to local councils has risen thirtyfold in eight years to £3 billion. This is equivalent to £142 per household.

• The average annual number of asylum applications (including dependants) under Mr Blair has almost been double the number when Michael Howard was Home Secretary, up from 40,740 to 73,128.

• In the last three years there have been only 9 prosecutions and 3 convictions for employing illegal immigrants.

IMMIGRATION

• Immigration has tripled under Labour. Total net immigration to Britain has averaged 157,000 people a year between 1997 and 2003; between 1993 and 1997 the average was 50,000. This is equivalent to a town the size of Peterborough arriving in the UK every year.

• Grants of settlement have tripled.

• The number of work permits issued has almost quadrupled since Labour came to office.

• According to the Government’s own predictions, Britain’s population will grow by 6.1 million over the next thirty years – equivalent to six times the population of Birmingham. Immigration will account for 84 per cent of that increase, or five times the population of Birmingham.

• John Prescott plans to build an extra 3.8 million homes in England over the next twenty years – 700,000 of them (that is 18 per cent) are due to net immigration.

• David Blunkett has said that he sees ‘no obvious upper limit to legal immigration’ and that he has not ‘got a clue’ how many people are in the UK unofficially.

• Charles Clarke said: ‘We want more migration, more people coming to study and to work. We want more people coming to look for refuge’ (Evening Standard, 14 February 2005).

• The legal aid budget for asylum and immigration has risen from £26 million in 1996-7 to £204 million in 2003-4, an increase of 682 per cent.

CONSERVATIVE ACTION

• Conservatives will bring back embarkation controls for non-EU countries, which Labour abolished in 1998, so that we know who has left the country.

• Conservatives will ensure that levels of immigration to the UK are set in Britain’s best interests. Parliament will set an annual limit on immigration each year.

• Conservatives will restore strict controls on the number of people issued with a work permit.

• Conservatives will pull out of the 1951 Refugee Convention, as is our right, by giving twelve months’ notice to the UN Secretary General, and replace it with British legislation that will allow cases to be decided more swiftly.

• Conservatives will break the link between arrival and claim. Our long term goal is that asylum claims will no longer be considered in the UK. Instead Britain will take refugees in the care of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

• Conservatives will detain potential security risks – all those existing asylum claimants who are found to have no documents.

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