Immigration

Immigration looks set to be a major issue in the forthcoming UK General Election. And this is worrying. Not because immigration isn’t a serious issue – it obviously is – but because so much nonsense is being spouted by our politicians. My problem isn’t with immigration itself; it’s with politicians who knowingly misuse figures to curry favour with an uninformed electorate, regardless of the human cost of their spin, and (even worse) with those politicians who whip up hatred for no better reason than to improve their chances of being in power. It just happens that immigration is one of the political flavours of the month.

One important thing to remember is that immigration and asylum are two very separate things. Asylum seeks to protect those who are fleeing persecution at home. Certainly, there are those who seek to abuse the system, but around 40% of all applications for asylum are granted. Those that are denied are, in any case, not necessarily “bogus” asylum seekers – their application might be denied because they are from a country deemed officially “safe” and so their application is automatically rejected, whatever their actual case; or they might fail on a technicality (perhaps, owing to bad advice, they did things in the wrong order); or they might have been a borderline case, applying in genuine fear but eventually found not to qualify.

In any case, despite the current media and political furore about the “flood” of people entering the UK, we have less than 3% of the world’s refugees, despite having the world’s 4th largest economy. Even within Europe, we rank only ninth as a destination (in terms of asylum application per capita). By contrast, a MORI poll in 2003 apparently reported that the perception was that the UK received 23% of the world’s refugees, and was the third most important issue for voters.

Rather puts the “immigration crisis” into context, doesn’t it?

pax et bonum

(_Thanks to Liz for some of those details. The Refugee Council has an excellent summary of myths about asylum, including figures.)_

Article posted at 12:12pm on 07 March 2005
Category: Faith, Politics, Struggling