Letters to the Editor – The Asylum System and its Abuses:

Sir,

The Asylum System and its Abuses:

An asylum seeker is defined as someone who has applied for asylum under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees on the grounds that if he or she is returned to their country of origin they have a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political belief or membership of a particular social group. The person remains an asylum seeker as long as his or her application, or appeal against refusal of their application has been successful.  In its broader context refugee is someone fleeing civil war or natural disaster but not necessarily fearing persecution as defined by the 1951 Convention.

Britain has always accepted refugees fleeing actual physical persecution, or who had served the Crown. For example relatively small numbers of Huguenots in the seventeenth century, Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jews, Poles and other nationalities following the second World War, and Eastern Europeans fleeing communist tyranny (Hungarians in 1956 and Czechs in 1968)

But over the last eighteen years or so the number of those seeking asylum has increased dramatically.

Britain’s implementation of Human Rights legislation in 2000 which has made it increasingly difficult to deport failed and bogus asylum seekers!

James Cole,

Name and address supplied,