ROOF Blog

Labour’s record on tackling asylum faces a fresh onslaught today over figures that show a new backlog of 30,000 cases and a warning by the government’s immigration watchdog that its targets are currently ‘unachievable’. John Vine also makes clear that a special five-year exercise which began in 2006 to clear the legacy of 450,000 unresolved asylum cases is now unlikely to meet its July 2011 target completion date. The setbacks mean that despite progress the Labour government will go into the general election campaign unable to claim that the asylum system has been fixed after John Reid famously declared the Home Office’s immigration directorate ‘unfit for purpose’ in May 2006.

A Conservative government would curb immigration to stop the population of the United Kingdom reaching the forecast 70 million, David Cameron said yesterday. He said net migration to the UK each year should be limited to ‘tens of thousands’ rather than ‘hundreds of thousands’, adding: ‘I’m in favour of immigration, we’ve benefited from immigration, but I think the pressures, particularly on our public services, have been very great.’ The number of people migrating to the UK minus those emigrating was 237,000 in 2007 and 163,000 in 2008.

Net migration – the number of people who come to live in Britain minus the number who move abroad – fell by more than a third to 163,000 last year, its lowest level since Poland joined the European Union.

The Office for National Statistics said the fall from 233,000 in 2007 was mainly driven by a rise in emigration to a 17-year high: 427,000 people left Britain to live abroad, up from 341,000 the previous year.

The increase was mainly due to the number of Poles returning home.

Asylum figures show a further fall in the number of fresh claims for refugee status between July and September this year to 5,055 – a decline of 24 per cent compared with the same period in 2008.

Refugee welfare groups said the fall in asylum numbers was not necessarily a matter of celebration but raised fears that the tightening up of Britain’s borders was denying sanctuary to those who needed protection.

More than a third of refused asylum seekers have been destitute for more than a year and two-thirds of these came from countries with ongoing unrest and would find it difficult to return, a report by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust has found. The research recorded 273 destitute people during a four week period in April and May, including 30 children, and found that two-thirds of those surveyed came from four countries – Zimbabwe, Iran, Eritrea and Iraq.

The number of rough sleepers in London has risen by 15 per cent in the last year, fuelled by an increase in Eastern Europeans who have lost their jobs and now make up one in seven of those living on the street. According to the figures from Broadway more than 4,600 rough sleepers were counted in the capital last year, up from just over 4,000, with around 60 per cent of street homeless being British born.

A two-year investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Local Government Association, whose conclusions will be released next week, has found that immigrants were not jumping to the front of queues for public services, although the belief was widespread. The majority of new migrants (60 per cent) tended to end up in private rented accommodation because they were not eligible for council accommodation, another 18 per cent bought their own home and only 11 per cent were in council properties, compared with 17 per cent among the general population.

England is receiving a disproportionately high number of immigrants to the UK a cross party group of MPs has found. Between 1991 and 2007, 2.15 million immigrants arrived in England, compared to 105,000 in Scotland, 56,000 for Wales and 27,000 to Northern Ireland. England’s population could increase by nearly 10 million people in the next 20 years, of which seven million will be immigrants.

People smugglers have used a children’s home beside Heathrow airport to traffic Chinese children into the country to work in prostitution and the drugs trade, a secret immigration document has revealed. At least 77 children have gone missing since March 2006 from the home and only four have been found. The local council says the disappearances seemed ‘planned and coordinated’ by criminal gangs.

England’s children’s commissioner Sir Al Aynsley-Green criticised the government’s policy of arresting children of failed asylum seekers and holding them in a detention centre before detention. He said that almost 2,000 children were held at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre each year and they had told him that the experience was upsetting and frightening , and had likened the conditions to being in prison. Sir Al has called for community based alternatives, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw said the government did not accept the commissioner’s conclusions.

People moving to the UK for work or study from outside the EU will have to pay an extra £50 on top of the visa fee. The two-year scheme, which will raise £70 million to fund more police support and translators, was announced by communities secretary Hazel Blears yesterday. She acknowledged that migrants already contributed to services through taxes, but said the visa fund would provide extra money to ‘ease the transition’ for areas that had seen a big influx of immigrants.