New “safe countries” added to asylum list
Posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 by Home Office WatchCategory: Immigration
Here 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”?
Comment : Trackback :Related posts:
July 12th, 2007 at 9:57 am
The questions both included: “…what recent progress has been made on the National Identity Card Scheme”
“Jacqui Smith: The Government remain committed to the introduction of the national identity scheme. ID cards are essential in combating identity fraud and illegal immigration and in disrupting organised crime and the continued threat of terrorism.”
This aligns with Gordon Brown’s position, so I think it’s right to leave her be for now. Its really only the progress on the ‘national identity scheme’ that is currently visible, namely how we might move to a position where there is a single official identity registered for everyone, and the duplicates and counterfeits and those entries no longer linked to any live person are removed - in other words, good quality data in the DWP and Home Office databases.
July 6th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Yeah, well perhaps we ought to start promoting a more integrated and tolerant Europe. We should be calling for more freedom of movement instead of the victimization of innocent people who don’t happen to be white and middle-class like you, but would without doubt contribute a lot more to our society. People have been whining about immigration long before the Huguenots even set foot on this cloudy little island… Is it therefore not rather presumptuous to think that this is any different?
We are after all living in a global world – whether we like it or not, and your patent xenophobia and borderline BNP opinions on matters of immigration are clearly out off date and caustic. This nation was built on immigration -Normans, French, Dutch, Jews, Irish, Bangladeshis, you name it.
Conveniently, you seem to overlook the systematic breaches of Human Rights carried out by our Gestapo-resembling Home Office in your quest for Home Office blunders.
Thankfully, you represent a growing minority in this country and the EU commission is gearing up to stamp out such outlandish behaviour currently carried out by some rogue member states.