- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 February 2000 11.57 GMT
An asylum seeker is a person who claims to have fled from their home country fearing persecution. The United Nations' 1951 Convention says an asylum seeker, or refugee, has "a well founded fear of persecution", on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion."
Nations like the UK, which have signed the UN's 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol, are obliged to receive and formally recognise those fleeing persecution.
The Refugee Council estimates that there are 13 million refugees in the world today. Not all, of course, will apply for asylum in other countries. The United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees (UNHCR) calculated that some 450,000 persons applied for asylum in the 29 industrialised countries in 1998.
How can they get asylum in Britain?
Jack Straw heralded Labour's controversial immigration and asylum act as "fairer, faster and firmer" before it was passed last year. It seeks to curb the growing number of asylum seekers and reform the inefficiency of the old system.
The old system of processing applications for asylum has proved too slow and Britain now has a backlog of 102,870 people seeking asylum. While some of this backlog was inherited from the Conservative government, under Labour in December 7,180 new applications were received, with just 2,320 asylum decisions made.
Coming into force on 1 April, the asylum and immigration act:
• forbids asylum seekers to work to support themselves (and fines employers who pay them);
• introduces vouchers for asylum seekers arriving in Britain, which they use instead of cash to exchange for basic goods to survive;
• cuts the financial support for each refugee from £165 per person each week to £150;
• forces asylum seekers to accept the housing they are given, dispersing them around the country and compelling councils to find accommodation for them;
• gives the home secretary the power to detain groups of asylum seekers en masse, for as long as the home office wants.
• aims to deal with asylum seekers in six months, giving them one chance to appeal.
While these measures have an illiberal ring, under Labour the recognition rate for asylum seekers has doubled to 25% of claims.
Is Britain a soft touch?
Last year, the number of people seeking asylum rose 55%, from 46,015 in 1998 to 71,160. This increase has been widely attributed to the Kosovo conflict, which led to an increase in refugees during last summer.
Many right-wingers argue that asylum seekers are lured over by our generous benefits. Britain's benefit system is marginally more generous than the French system, where asylum seekers must survive on just £21 a week, but the new laws do not offer any more than what most would consider a bare minimum to subsist on.
The belief that more "flood" into Britain than in other countries is a myth. UN figures showed that Britain still took far fewer per 1,000 population last year than many smaller European countries. Switzerland had 5.8 applications per 1,000 population compared with 1 per 1,000 in Britain. 10 European states currently take more refugees (on a per capita basis) than Britain, which found a home for a mere 0.05% of the world's refugees in 1997, according to the Refugee Council.
What will happen now?
In Western Europe, the trend has been for governments to tighten immigration and asylum laws in the last twenty years, in reaction to domestic pressures from the right and the international pressure of a growing number of asylum seekers.
But the rise in the number of people seeking refuge in Western democracies is not only related to political oppression and war. It is also a consequence of the growing inequality between the developed and the developing world. As long as this disparity continues to grow, people will continue to seek what they hope will be a better life in the developed world.
