The coalition are starting to pray the price for making unrealistic promises on immigration and asylum, Ruth Grove-White explains
By Migrant Rights Network’s Ruth Grove-White
Today’s explosive media coverage about an apparent ongoing ‘amnesty’ of asylum seekers with long-standing applications is largely missing the point.
The furore is based on the recent report of the Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) into the work of the UK Border Agency (UKBA). Among other issues, the report reviews UKBA progress in clearing the backlog of up to 450,000 unresolved asylum applications, many which have been gathering dust in UKBA offices since the late 1990s.
It finds that the government is at last on track to resolve these cases by the target date of summer 2011. Progress, however, has been made by UKBA caseworkers increasingly granting people permission to stay. Forty per cent of applications thus far have been granted leave to remain, and just 9% of applicants have been removed from the UK. Others have left voluntarily or are now untraceable.
HASC concluded that “in practice an amnesty has taken place”. But there are three reasons why we should be looking beyond this conclusion:
1. Is resolving asylum legacy cases really an ‘amnesty’?
Coverage of the ‘amnesty’ that has supposedly taken place is distorting the facts. An ‘amnesty’ is defined as a measure which resolves the status of people who are unlawfully residing in a country. But the asylum legacy cases refer to people who entered the UK, legitimately lodged an asylum claim, and then simply didn’t receive an answer from the Home Office. Some files have been lost, others refer to people who, ten years later, cannot be traced by the UKBA. If giving some of these people permission to stay in the UK must be described as an ‘amnesty’, then we should be clear that this has only been necessary because of failures of the immigration system itself.
2. Measures to resolve past injustices should be an accepted part of our immigration system
As reported by the HASC, the backlog of asylum cases includes people who have been waiting for up to twenty years for an answer on their asylum claim. Some of them have married and have had children here during this time, most will now be settled members of local communities, despite the insecurity of their situation. In general, it is only right that our immigration system should lean towards granting people status when they have been let down by past government failures. This principle should be applied to other groups of migrants also let down by the immigration system, such as the migrant senior care workers who were caught out by rule changes and now find themselves in legal limbo.
3. This shows once again that governments should stop over-promising and under-delivering on immigration management
The HASC also reports that a new backlog of unresolved asylum cases is growing. According to the Independent Chief Inspector of the UKBA, John Vine, new Home Office targets aiming to resolve 90% of all asylum cases within six months cannot be met. The public has also been promised major cuts in net migration levels, which it is very unlikely the government will deliver on. Let’s get real here: our government’s capacity to control immigration is always going to have limits, and where mistakes are made, they should be resolved. A fair immigration system should be honest about these limitations.
21 Responses to “Coalition must stop making undeliverable promises on immigration”
Nabil
i have been always surprised when people defend taxpayers evry time when its comes to immigration issues and especialy asylum seekers,when most of theme they was and they still paying taxe with a way or another question?how can the system allow illegal migrant to work by accepting them paying tax with fake doccument?when the insurance number is fake,doesn’t exist??? to be honest with you,the system is benifiting from migrants they pay tax and they can’t get it back and they can’t apply for benifit,because a fake insurance number can give but can’t take and if the migrant get cough using fake doccument to work because he is not allowed to do so and he is not getting any support,the system put him in prison with criminals,no the system knows his insurance number before and the system was involved in his crime,but when it comes to court is the immigrant who pay,most of this kind of immigrant were asylum seekers from the legacy backlog,they left their countries runing away from torture to find themselves,moraly tortured for a years,no answer from UKBA,no poor quality of cases process,mistakes,no support,no right to work,excuse me,we are human being and morale torture is more painful than any kind of torture,you want us to go back to our countries?no problem,what about our rights on waiting for a poor decision all this time?what about our hopes?our live in uk?our friends?our neighbours?our dreams?the price we paid to be here?excuse me?how can this country go to wars to defend dimocracy and humain rights all over the world and still to this moment of writing this words breaching human rights on its own ground?stop liying to the public,brasil few years ago was one of the most debt countries in the world,today they are one of the 8 most powerful economic countries willing to be the 5th in the next 2 years,their ex president was asked about the mass of the illegal immigrant 2 years ago,his answer was(( let’s grant every one even the one who just arrived)) sytems are working by respecting hard workers,this countrys system is helping people to claim benifit,and puting hard workers in a limbo,i m with controling uk bordiers i m with tougher immigration system to protect the country,but please,stop using immigrant as a winner card play to convince public and to deturn their opinion fron the real failer,….