UK 'Top Asylum Destination In 2002'

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 1-22--2004

[blam]

UK 'top asylum destination in 2002'

(Filed: 22/01/2004)

Britain received almost one in five of asylum applicants in the Western world in 2002, according to a new report.

With 110,700 applications, the UK topped a list of highly developed countries, taking in almost a third of the EU's asylum-seekers and 30,000 more than the second-placed US, said the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The figures were collected before the implementation of the Nationality and Immigration Act, which tightened up the asylum process.

The following year saw a large fall in arrivals, allowing Tony Blair to hit his target of halving monthly applications from their October 2002 peak of 9,000.

The OECD report, Trends in International Migration, put Britain in a group of countries where asylum applications were still rising steeply in 2002 also including Austria and Sweden.

While applications in the UK rose by 20.3 per cent, other countries which have traditionally taken in a lot of refugees, like Germany, Australia, the Netherlands and Belgium, saw numbers drop sharply.

These countries had succeeded in sending "strong messages to asylum seekers in 2001 or 2002 by reinforcing their control and detention measures or by speeding up decision-making processes", said OECD analysts.

By contrast, the UK was one of the countries which "despite measures to control flows of asylum seekers, did not completely succeed in reversing their growth" in 2002.

The US recorded 81,100 asylum applications, followed by Germany with 71,100, France with 51,100, Austria with 37,100, Canada with 33,400 and Sweden with 33,000.

In terms of the size of its population, Britain was eighth in the list, receiving 1.9 asylum applications for every 1,000 inhabitants, compared to Austria's 4.6, Norway's 3.9, Sweden's 3.7, Switzerland's 3.7 and Ireland's 3.1.

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While the "civilized" world tries to curb population growth, the Islamic countries try to speed it up by over populating, and they send their Islamics to the civilzed world to take them over without firing a shot. It is happening to almost every nation, for they are being overcome and do not even know it.