- guardian.co.uk, Sunday May 11 2003 09.42 BST
It is not clear where this conclusion came from - the Committee was tasked with looking at removals not arrivals and the report gives no evidence to underpin this assertion. What is clear is that the government's current policies on the asylum issue are themselves creating a political context in which the rise of extremists with anti-immigration agendas thrives.
Asylum is a complex and difficult issue and one which governments across Europe have grappled with over the last decade. The public has understandable concerns about the costs and effectiveness of the asylum process, the extent to which those claiming asylum are genuinely in need of protection and the impact on local services (especially health, education and housing) of supporting those who arrive.
But the government could do much to set the record straight and reassure people about the extent of the problem - reminding them that the UK is 34th in the world in terms of the relative number of refugees it supports, pointing out that half of those who arrive are found to have a legitimate reason to stay here and that refugees and migrants contribute to society as well as imposing a cost.
Instead, the government's response has been to come down hard on asylum seekers. It has set itself the task of reducing the number of applications in half by September - despite the Select Committee's conclusion that targets which are not properly grounded give rise to false expectations and will prove demoralising in the end. The government's policies designed to achieve this target centre on stepping up efforts to stop people arriving in the first place through additional controls in countries of origin to physically stop people getting out. This means that those who are genuinely in need of protection can't get out either but this is of secondary concern.
The government has felt it is vital to take a tough political line to show the public and would-be asylum seekers that the UK is not a 'soft touch'. And so it has now embarked upon the forcible return of asylum seekers to Afghanistan. Ten days ago the government put 30 Afghan asylum seekers on a plane and sent them back to Kabul. The numbers may have been small but the message behind the move was clear. Initially the plan had been to get people to return voluntarily by providing them with information about how things had improved and how they were needed to rebuild their country, supplemented, for those who needed more than this to be convinced, with cash incentives of up to £2,500. The scheme was expected to attract 1,000 people, and possibly up to 17,000. Some refugees returned - 39 to be precise - but the vast majority did not and now face forcible return. A similar process is on the cards for Iraqi asylum seekers and refugees with plans to offer them voluntary repatriation packages including a payment of up to £3,000 per family if they return home once the position in the country has stabilised.
But there is a fundamental problem with this approach - namely that it fails to understand the reasons why asylum seekers come to the countries of Europe in the first place. Over the past ten years more than half of all asylum seekers entering the EU have come from just ten countries - the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Romania, Sri Lanka, Bosnia, Somalia, Iran and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire).
The only factor linking these countries is not poverty, or population growth, or low life expectancy, but conflict of one kind or another (civil war, discrimination of minorities, human rights abuse). This is not to say that refugees from these countries never want to go home. Ask any refugee or asylum seeker in the UK whether they want to return to their country of origin and the majority will tell you that they do for a range of different reasons, personal, political and economic. But many remain to be convinced that things are quite as good as they are said to be. The evidence to support their concerns comes to them first hand from the people they left behind and from organisations working on the ground in conflict zones.
If the government is serious about dealing with asylum, then its entire approach needs to change. The emphasis should not be on 'quick hits' to show the public that it is in control but on continuing its efforts to improve the asylum process, on providing the public with information about the reality of the situation and on pursuing longer-term policies designed to prevent conflict and bring about social, economic and political development in the countries from which asylum seekers originate. If the government fails to do so then it - rather than the asylum seekers who come here - will be responsible for allowing a political context to develop in which the rise of far-right parties and public hostility towards non-white immigrants is seen as acceptable. And then the social unrest predicted by the Select Committee may well be on the cards.
· Heaven Crawley is Director of the Migration and Equalities Programme Institute for Public Policy Research, and author of States of Conflict, to be published next week.
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Is it time for a rethink of asylum policy? Email debate@observer.co.uk. You can write to the author of this piece at h.crawley@ippr.org .
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