The graduation the UK must attain

Sunday 1st June, 2008



If there is anything that excites the duo of Borders and Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne, and the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, it is the drastic reduction in the number of migrants to the UK in the last 15 years.

There is an irony that plays out here.

Immigration authorities are also tightening the rope against illegal entrants especially in the wake the July 7, 2005 terrorists' attacks on London, which have necessitated stricter security measures to safe the over 60 million people in England.

Liam Byrne, Immigration Minister has vowed that there is no going back on measures to flush out those who have no legal basis to stay in the country, a threat that has resulted in at least one illegal immigrant being deported every eight minutes.

Smith points out that asylum applications went down from 70,200 in 2003/4 to 17,200 in 2006/7 while 17 out of 100 who applied for asylum were recognised as refugees and granted asylum in 2006.

According to Lin Homer, Head of the Border and Immigrations Agency, BIA, the 16,520 principal asylum applications lodged between January and September 2007, represents a seven percent fall in applications compared to the same period in 2006 and is also the lowest number of applications since 1992.


Discordant tunes

Some vocal UK-based tabloids have been producing statistics to show that migrants have taken over 85 percent of all new jobs created by the Labour administration, thus prompting Tory Leader, David Cameron, to vilify Gordon Brown for not keeping to his promise to preserve ‘British jobs for British people'.

It was Employment Minister, Stephen Timms, the Employment Minister, who doused the furore with a confirmation that 677,400 vacancies meant for British workers were yet to be taken up, an admission that British jobs might not have been usurped by migrants. In other words, those who want to work could easily avail themselves of the vacancies.

Brown clears the air

The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee on April 1, asked the government to place a cap on immigrants into the country, as such persons did not make any significant contribution to the economy. But in a swift response, British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, argued that migrants contribute as much as £6 billion annually to the UK's economy.


Looking back, it now appears as if the importance of immigrants in the UK has been overlooked due to the discordant tunes on the subject matter.


Trevor Phillips cautions

But, as Trevor Phillips, Head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has advised, the UK must not 'cower in fear and fret about admitting ‘clever foreigners' while 'the public must not confuse immigration and terrorism'.


The UK must also take steps to end the detention of children seeking asylum, a practice, which the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, UNHCR, is unequivocally opposed.

It must also address the concerns of the Independent Immigration Commission, which decried the inhuman treatment of people under the asylum system in a major report in April.


Whether the UK gives more room to migrants or not, it must urgently remove itself from the list of nations, which continue to detain asylum-seeking children, and become a provider of safe haven for children and genuine refugees. This change has been long overdue.