By Dave Renton

Since 1999, a series of laws have banned refugees from working while their cases are being heard, replaced cash benefits with vouchers, and then with cash, and then denied them almost all access to welfare. Changes to the law have included a new Immigration and Asylum Act, passed in 1999, Statutory Instruments and executive orders, introduced in 2000 and 2001, an Immigration Order in 2001, and a further Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act in 2002. After the introduction of anti-alien legislation in August 1914 at the start of the First World War, Britain waited nearly 50 years before passing new immigration controls. These days it seems to take just months before new and ever more draconian laws are brought in.

One of Labour's new asylum laws includes the principle that people should not obtain freedom to stay if they came here on false documents. But it is virtually impossible for people fleeing persecution to get here without some kind of fake passport. Meanwhile, other people are denied asylum if they travelled to Britain legally: if they used their own documents, it can't have been that difficult, can it?

In 2001, the charity Asylum Aid published a report on the measures adopted by the Home Office to keep people out. It looked at the cases of 37 Kenyan women whose cases had been rejected. All of them had been active in that country's democratic opposition. Almost all of them had been raped or tortured. All had a good case for asylum, yet the government regards Kenya as an ally and consistently misrepresents the human rights situation there. Home Office statistics are not broken down by gender but between 1994 and 1999 almost 93 per cent of all Kenyan asylum seekers' cases that were decided were rejected. So were the rest all "bogus"?

Asylum Aid analysed the "Reasons for Refusal" letters sent by the Home Office when it turned the Kenyan women down. One was told that she had left her country too late. Another that the worst thing that could have happened to her was long-term imprisonment - what she feared was "prosecution not persecution". The Home Office refused to believe claims of torture or rape. Rejecting all medical evidence, officials argued that the people might even have wounded themselves. There is a culture in the Home Office of cynicism and mistrust. One typical Home Office letter ended, "Your persecutors cannot be regarded as agents of persecution".

When refugees reported torture at the hands of the Kenyan police, the Home Office replied that they should have complained - to the police. "The Secretary of State understands that the Kenyan authorities acknowledge that there were problems with the behaviour of some police officers." Where asylum seekers reported that close members of their family had been killed the Home Office response was that things couldn't be that bad, really. The Secretary of State believed that there were no political prisoners in Kenya, perhaps because the state saw no need to jail those whom it could punish, maim or kill. One woman had been raped, her house burned down and her husband killed. The Home Office told her that since she had "not personally been involved in any tribal or ethnic conflict ... there is no reason why you should fear harassment or persecution should you return to Kenya".

The press tells us that 90 per cent of asylum seekers are "bogus". But the only way to obtain this figure is by excluding four-fifths of those who are given the right to stay. It is easy to show. In 2001, some 119,015 asylum applications were decided by the Home Office. Ten per cent (12,610)were granted asylum immediately and 17 per cent (21,175) were given exceptional leave to remain (ELR). Some 73 per cent (92,420) were refused either right. Many lost out simply on clerical or procedural grounds.

In the appeals procedure that followed, 74,365 people took the Home Office to review, and 43,415 of these cases were heard. The result was that another 19 per cent of applicants (8,155) were granted asylum. In addition, a large number found that the Home Office then accepted their case and granted them exceptional leave to remain. Not 10 per cent, then, but more like 50 per cent won the right to stay.

The period that witnessed the highest number of asylum applications to Britain was the third quarter of 2002, when 23,385 individuals applied. The ten countries that provided the most applicants were Iraq (4,375), Zimbabwe (2,750), Somalia (1,835), Afghanistan (1,350), China (906), Iran (830), Turkey (815), the Democratic Republic of Congo (705), Pakistan (565) and Jamaica (565).

The biggest groups of asylum seekers in Britain right now are Iraqi Kurds and Zimbabweans. Think about it: is Iraq a safe place or not? If it is safe, then why did we send troops to bomb it? If it is safe, then why are the same papers that hate the asylum seekers banging on so loudly about the damage Saddam Hussein did to his own people? And if it's not safe, why were we so hostile towards the people who have escaped from there and have come here to hide?

Or Zimbabwe: no one in their right mind thinks that England should be playing cricket against that police state. Mugabe's a dictator, we've got to do what's right for his people. So why can't we accept a few thousand Zimbabweans and let them stay here until a mass movement grows, he is toppled and they return?

The press want to have it both ways. Iraqi Kurds are our allies, democrats, people to be trusted - so long as they remain in Iraq, being killed. The moment they come here, we demonise them as scroungers and terrorists. Likewise Zimbabweans. We applaud their heroism, their bravery, their commitment to democracy, until they arrive on our doorsteps and ask for help.

If you don't believe me, why don't you look up the sources for yourself?

Further reading on the web
Home Office decisions - http://www.asylumaid.org.uk/
Kenyan Human Rights Commission - http://www.khrc.orgal plank of fascism. But it also an issue that can no longer be ignored. BNP members might now wear suits but their involvement in Redwatch reveals their true colours.

This article appeared in Searchlight Magazine July 2003

Copyright © 2003, Searchlight.

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