Asylum Seekers
MigrationWatch supports the principle of political asylum but argues that many asylum seekers do not have a genuine case for qualifying for refugee status and are instead using the asylum system to gain entry to the UK for economic reasons. The group has also been strongly critical of what it sees as the government's failure to remove many of those whose claims are rejected. In a briefing paper published in January 2009, the group's Honorary Legal Adviser Harry Mitchell stated:
We have always made it clear publicly that we support asylum for genuine claimants who are able to show that they have a well-founded fear of persecution, but we stress the word genuine. However, the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers are found not to have a genuine claim and are using the asylum process simply as a means of gaining entry to Britain which is otherwise not available to them by any lawful channel. For the most part these claimants are properly described as economic migrants. The publicised sympathy which they evoke from many well-meaning bodies is based on the implicit or sometimes explicit and in any event wrong assumption that anyone who seeks asylum must be deserving of it. Publicity given to the pronouncements of such bodies seriously misleads many members of the public.
In July 2010, MigrationWatch published a briefing paper highlighting the potential consequences of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom's unanimous ruling in favour of two homosexual asylum seekers from Iran and Cameroon, allowing them to stay in the UK. The briefing argues that: "The consequence of this decision will be to increase by many thousands the numbers of persons who may be eligible for asylum in the United Kingdom. It may well also generate a large number of claims that will be difficult to determine. It is, for example, likely that organised people smugglers will tell those clients who come from countries where homosexual acts are illegal to claim that they are homosexual. If they do so, their claims will have to be considered in a process that can often take many months during which applicants are supported by public funds".
As of April 2012, the MigrationWatch UK website states that the numbers applying for asylum in the UK "are nowadays small relative to immigration as a whole" and claims: "The main requirement here is to consider applications promptly and remove those whose claim has failed and who no longer have any legal right to remain in the UK".
Read more about this topic: Migrationwatch, Policy Stances
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