Immigration is the third hottest issue that attracts the people's attention in Britain after football and pop-idol. And in the coming general election, immigration is going to be the currency that persuades many registered voters, particularly the undecided category, to vote to the party that will further reduce the rights of asylum seekers and migrants. The words of former union boss Mr. Bill Morris sum it up: “We seem to be heading for a bidding war between the two major political parties as to which can be the nastiest to refugees and migrants.”

Political parties always turn the public eye on the immigrants and asylum seekers, portraying them as the enemy within and pledging to restrain their entry. Since 1993, successive British governments have taken a series of steps to limit the number of asylum seekers. Here is a snapshot of immigration and asylum acts of the past twelve years introduced by both parties in a bid to cut the number of asylum applicants. Under the Conservative Party, Immigration and Asylum Act 1993 allows failed asylum seekers the right to appeal under strict time limit. However, this Act stipulates asylums seekers to be fingerprinted or may be held in detention while the Home Office is processing their applications. The Act brings in 'fast-track' procedures for assessing asylum applications but limits access to housing and benefits to applicants. Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 takes away benefit entitlements from those who apply asylum inside the country and puts tougher restrictions on them to access local services such as housing.

Not to be outdone, the Labour government introduced the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 which allows the applicant to appeal only one time, where an adjudicator considers any asylum appeal. This act have three overriding objectives: to cut the number of asylum applications, to ease the financial burden of local governments and to reduce the housing and social pressures in southeast England by introducing what is known as dispersal scheme, under which all-new asylum applicants are allocated to different parts of the country and they are not allowed to choose where to go. Under Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill 2002, the government even considered proposals that make asylum seekers' children to attend separate schools instead of attending mainstream schools.

Liz Fekete, deputy director of the Independent Race and Refugee, wrote “while the UNHCR still speaks the language of refugee protection, the state signatories to the Geneva Convention start from an entirely different premise: the need to protect states from the growing international refugee burden.” As designed, these tough measures reduced the number of asylum applications as well as the number of recognised refugees and immigrants. For example, the number of Somalis who applied asylum in 2002 was 6680 of which 2805 applicants failed to get permission to stay. In the following year 2003, the number of Somali applicants was down to 6040 of which 3825 applications were turned down. Ms. Fekete went on to argue “how can EU countries assess individual asylum claims objectively and protect refugees displaced by war and conflict, if they are to predetermine, by the setting of quotas, how many refugees are to be absorbed into Europe, and how many rejected?”

Unfortunately, the poignant situation of Somalia in 2003 was not better than the preceding years. A report produced by the USAID in March 2004 – Somalia – Complex Emergency – said “The security situation in Somalia has steadily deteriorated in 2003, hampering humanitarian operations throughout the country.”

Although Blair government has reduced the number of asylum seekers, however, it has at the same time encountered a new problem. The government simply didn’t have plans of what to do with the failed Somali asylum seekers. In the middle of 2003, the UK government proposed regional processing centres which meant relocating failed asylum seekers from UK to a third country in the regions close to their country of origin in order to keep refugees closer to home so that when the situation improves in their country of origin, they would be returned to their countries immediately. Tanzania was considered as a safe place to send failed Somali asylum seekers, but Tanzania turned down the offer. John Chiligati, Tanzania's deputy minister for Home Affairs said “we reject this proposal because we don't see the reason or the logic for refugees to be sent to Tanzania before they are returned to their own country.”

Once that mission failed, South Africa came into sight in 2004 as the second country to take failed asylum seekers from Britain. The Guardian reported “Home Office officials are believed to have been making a "Cook's tour of the world" in their attempt to get new agreements to take Britain's rejected migrants.”

When the government failed to secure a dumping place for failed Somali asylum seekers, it chose to send them back to their war-raged country and bypass the Geneva Convention. According to a report published by the Institute of Race Relations, 2004 was a year of deportation as 150 people were returned to Somalia against their will. Ironically, the website of British Embassy in Ethiopia says “We advise against all travel to Somalia, because of the dangerous level of criminal activity and internal insecurity. A British BBC producer was fatally shot in Mogadishu on 9 February 2005.” Lord Avebury, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on Africa in the Lords, said “There was a time when a number of countries were considered no-go areas. But now Somalia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Iraq are not even considered dangerous”.

The lives of failed Somalia asylum seekers are not at risk while they are in the process of deportation but certainly face dire consequences when they are returned back to Somalia. Last year, the Dutch authorities forcibly returned Abdinassir Abdulatif to Somalia where he was kidnapped and killed. Let us quickly examine few facts about Somalia and I will leave you to judge if Somalia is a safe place to send back failed asylum seekers.

Project Ploughshares' Armed Conflicts Report 2004 states “independent media reports estimate that close to 400,000 Somali lives have been lost due to armed conflict over the last 15 years” The Global IDP Project of the Norwegian Refugee Council says “in 2004, rough estimates were that up to 400,000 people were internally displaced in Somalia.” Victims of rape have increased quite significantly after the collapse of Somali government. The actual number of raped women will never be known because the victims are less likely to report these horrific crimes. If this unfortunate event becomes known the victim risks being disowned by her family. A sexually abused woman is regarded as a social outcast albeit it is not her making that she was raped. Landmine regularly claims lives. A report published by Landmine Monitor concludes “in 2003, at least 75 new landmine casualties were reported, of which 40 people were killed and another 35 injured, including at least five children.”

There is no debate about why Somalis are left no choice but to migrate and their country is portrayed as a safe country that would-be asylum seekers can go back to when it fits the British government agendas. But when representatives of the British government had been asked to write a report about Somalia, they compiled their report in a detached safety – Kenya – because Somalia was too dangerous for them to visit. The conveyor-belt system of removals intended to attract voters must not put a person deserving compassion especially if the person is weak and does not have media space to respond. A regular columnist for the Independent once wrote “They [asylum seekers] may be languishing in detention centres, living in sub-standard hostels or facing deportation. They remain nameless, usually faceless, and invisible. In one of the previous memos leaked to the press, Blair wrote: "We are perceived to be soft... we need to highlight removals." For him, removals are a way of avoiding the accusation of softness.”


Mohamed Mukhtar
London
Email:     mohamed323@hotmail.com