How do we create a fair asylum and immigration system that benefits Britain?

I don’t like the way this question is phrased: any fair system will benefit Britain. The twin problems of the current system seem to be that illegal immigrants are coming into the country in large numbers and disappearing, while valid asylum seekers face lengthy humiliation with little hope of a sensible decision at the end of the process. The system is expensive in all sorts of bad ways: asylum seekers being detained, or at the very least not allowed to work; illegal immigrants adding pressure to public services, while presumably in most cases not paying taxes; and the immigration services and police spending a lot of money chasing the horse after it’s bolted.

The most important part of any fair system should therefore be to let far fewer people into the country in the first place. It’s not only fairer to the people who already live there, but would save a lot of misery for those who come and spend months waiting only to be sent away again, often for perfectly valid reasons. More resources put into the British consulates which are granting visas would help, although the fact that many asylum seekers are necessarily without proper identity and travel documents makes this hard.

In the end, though, the twin facts that Britain is densely populated and has relatively high taxation means that it’s hard to allow free immigration: there must be somewhere for immigrants to go, and they must very quickly be able to pay taxes.

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Last updated 2005/02/27