New “safe countries” added to asylum list
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007Here at Home Office Watch, we wanted to give Jacqui Smith a fair chance. OK, so she might be in favour of identity cards, but hey, nobody’s perfect, and in the spirit of fairness we’ve held off since her appointment.
But this statutory instrument has brought us back into the fray.
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mauritius, Montenegro, Peru and Serbia are to be added to the government’s White List, along with Gambia, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali and Sierra Leone for male applicants. That means asylum applications are assumed to be unfounded unless they can be proven otherwise. Any rejected applicants have no in-country right of appeal - so they have to go back to their country of origin (pretty dangerous if your application was valid) to lodge their appeal.
Now, it’s not for me to second guess conditions in any of these countries. But since 2004, nearly 500 people from these countries whose asylum claims were rejected have made successful appeals. Surely that is evidence enough that claims from these countries are not all “clearly unfounded”?
