No frontiers to compassion

With the word 'asylum' in the title you may assume this to be another article devoted to telling you what most national tabloids seem to be shouting every other morning. The message appears to be clear and consistent on asylum-seekers: Britain is a 'soft touch' and is being 'swamped', our public services can't cope and every other application is 'bogus'. Hear these things often enough and you start to believe them.

It has been said that desperate times call for desperate measures and Home Secretary David Blunkett's 'get tough' policies on asylum-seekers need to get even tougher if the crisis is to be resolved. But is this really true?

If you are expecting this kind of message then what I have to say will only disappoint you. My argument differs in that I believe asylum has been used as a political football for too long now and the ball - that is, the society we live in - is in danger of being punctured. The political rhetoric on getting numbers down does nothing to sort out the current mess. The Government's Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act of 2002 has caused more problems than it has solved and, when our law courts describe it as causing the 'humiliation and diminuation of human dignity' and subjecting people to 'degrading treatment', then we must take note.

My concern with 'decreasing numbers' is that many people who have cases to make are potentially being denied the refuge they legally deserve under the 1951 Geneva Convention.

So who is deserving of help? Who is the 'genuine' asylum-seeker and who is 'bogus'? This is a question that can reveal many prejudices on both sides. My principal concern is that to be considered as 'genuine' now requires such water-tight and quickly gathered evidence of persecution that the criteria are almost impossible to meet. In 2003 the 'genuine asylum seeker' is in danger of becoming the modern folktale equivalent of the never-seen tooth-fairy.

In stark contrast, and perhaps as a result of David Blunkett's tough measures, certain sections of the press would lead us to believe that 'bogus' asylum seekers are as plentiful as midges in a Scottish summer. Now, as an economic migrant who left his native Scotland in the mid-1990s to seek employment in England, I perhaps have a vested interest in seeing all sides of the story.

However, I also have a professional and academic interest in asylum and immigration issues. This has deepened since October 1997 when news started to appear of Roma (sometimes pejoratively known as Gypsies) from the Czech and Slovakian republics arriving in ports such as Dover.

The media frenzy during that month was frightening in terms of the sheer weight of negative and one-sided reporting that was witnessed. One headline infamously called the Roma 'human sewage' whilst another declared that Britain was subject to a 'Gypsy invasion'. It was as if the relatively few Roma families concerned were here to blow up the Houses of Parliament, not to escape the state-condoned racism and discrimination encountered at home and to claim political asylum in the UK.

My professional interest has allowed me to help organise a national conference that involves over 100 experts gathering at Newcastle University tomorrow to debate and challenge some of the facts and myths around asylum. The focus is the Roma from central and eastern Europe and what will happen to them when, in May next year, countries from this transforming region will join the European Union.

However, many of the messages and likely criticisms of British Government policy in the area of asylum being raised will equally apply to other nationalities and ethnic groups who are trapped in the asylum maze, whether they be Somalian, Indian, Chinese or Afghan - that is, people who are escaping genocide, civil disorder, human rights abuses or war.

The timing of the conference has been rather fortuitous - just last week the Government released its latest figures on numbers of asylum applications during the second quarter of this year (April to June). The statistics showed that during these three months, some 3,500 new applications were being made per month.

When compared with a peak of 8,900 during October 2002, you can understand why David Blunkett triumphantly declared that Government action such as closing down the Sangatte Red Cross Refugee Centre near Calais and extending Britain's borders, via latest biometric technology, to Belgium and France, was having a profound impact. The Government also warmed to the fact that more failed asylum-seekers are being deported more quickly and more 'efficiently' - some 10,740 during 2002. However, it played down the news that numbers of successful applications via the appeal process has gone up between the first and second quarters of 2003 - from 17 per cent to 21 per cent. This rise could indicate that rushed, poor quality, initial decisions are increasingly being made.

But, what of other facts and statistics on asylum, the ones we do not hear about so often? The UK is not, in fact, 'the number one refugee magnet' that is often claimed. In fact within the European Union, Britain is currently ranked tenth in terms of asylum applications in relation to total population - Ireland, Sweden and Austria are among the top five.

Further, the UK does not take 31 per cent of the world's refugee population as a recent MORI public opinion poll indicated - the real figure is actually less than two per cent according to the Refugee Council. We also over-estimate on crime and the size of the British ethnic minority population, so we are at least consistent in being wrong. Another invisible statistic comes from research conducted by the Institute for Race Relations that showed during the last 18 months nearly 750 people (a conservative figure they note) have died trying to cross Europe's borders by air, sea or land to seek asylum. We also ignore the fact that asylum-seekers and immigrants contribute almost £2.5bn annually to the UK economy.

So where does this take us? How can we square the circle on asylum? I agree with The Sun, which, in an editorial less than a week ago, said: "Newcomers can boost the country as they make a success of their lives in Britain". My suggestion is we end the misery of human trafficking, expensive border controls and trying to decide who is 'genuine' and 'bogus' by removing border controls across the developed and developing world.

This may seem a bizarre, idealistic or just repulsive suggestion but, in the age of so-called globalisation, this freedom of movement makes just as much sense for people as it does for capital and money. Such a radical policy shift would also jolt the industrialised West into realising that if it truly wants to stop people dying on its borders then two connected issues need to be resolved: firstly, the political problem of ensuring global human rights must be addressed and secondly, the economic inequalities existing between the haves and have-nots is seen as an injustice that cannot remain unchecked forever. An end to all border control on legal and illegal migration may just work - why not try this experiment for a decade and see where we are then?

* Dr Colin Clark is a lecturer in Sociology and Romani studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne