UK: Asylum system cost "reaches 10 bilion pounds"

Three out of four asylum seekers remain in the UK, with most staying illegally, campaigners said Wednesday. Migration Watch UK said one in four of the 660,000 decisions made on asylum claims between 1997 and 2010 led to the applicant being removed. The cost of the asylum system, including legal aid and court costs, has reached almost 10 billion pounds- or 2 million pounds a day - since 1999, the campaign group said. In a study published ahead of the release of official statistics tomorrow, Migration Watch UK found that of the 660,000 cases decided in the 13-year period, 509,000 applicants remain in the UK, 243,000 legally and 266,000 illegally. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the campaign group, said "The asylum system has proved to be a 10 billion pounds shambles. "Those who, like ourselves, are serious about protecting genuine refugees should be no less serious about removing bogus claimants and, better still, deterring them in the first place." He went on, "The system needs to be much faster. Delays in the system leave the door open for appeals based on the right to family life without any consideration for the rights of society in general. "It also needed to be much tougher on the bogus. It is absurd, for example, that we should allow people who have been in Britain illegally for years to claim asylum so as to delay or prevent their removal; this now applies to almost 60% of claimants. "It is a pity that the lawyers have been so remarkably silent all these years. "The failure of the UK Border Agency to implement the decisions of the immigration appeal courts reduces their activities to a charade and brings the rule of law into disrepute." Some 266,000 have neither left nor been removed and are therefore presumed to remain in the UK illegally, Migration Watch UK said.