As few as one in twenty failed asylum seekers are being deported by authorities after having their applications turned down, an asylum judge in Britain has revealed. Consequently, there may be as many as one million illegal immigrants living in London alone.
Three million migrants are thought to be arriving in Europe each year, according to the judge, who has had to remain anonymous as speaking out without the express permission of the Home Office contravenes their rules.
“Can Europe really sustain three million people coming to its shores every year?” he asks, in an article for the Mail on Sunday.
Whilst acknowledging that some cases are deserving, the judge admits that the vast majority of cases which come before him are not.
“[T]o describe [those who need our support] as a minority of those who appear before me is a tragic understatement because the truth is that the great majority of the claimants at my tribunals are not attempting to escape persecution at all. They are economic migrants, pure and simple,” he says.
He adds: “The discrepancy between the official figures and what is actually going down the pipes shows there are a million more people in London than are legally registered, and another half a million more outside the capital”.
Speaking of the cultural shift, he says: “[S]ome of the stories told to me and my fellow judges beggar belief. Take the example of the middle-aged woman from West Africa who claimed that she was escaping from a grandmother threatening her with female genital mutilation (FGM).
“Now FGM is a horrific practice that is carried out on millions of young girls but never – according to my investigations – on very mature women. Especially not by their elderly grandmothers.
“As for Afghan asylum seekers, most of them that come here are underage children sent on by their parents. The Government automatically gives them temporary leave to stay. Then, as soon as they reach 18 and are ordered home, they claim asylum.
“Then there are those who claim the right to a family life, which is the last resort of the rascal in my opinion.
“A colleague of mine had before him the case of a Muslim from Asia who had lived here for years with a wife and children, and then went back to his country of birth to marry three other wives, as he is allowed to do under Islamic law, and had more children.
“Those later children then claimed British nationality, even though we don’t recognise polygamy in our marriage laws, and the mothers also claimed the right to come over here with the children on the basis of a right to family life. That obligation was imposed on the UK Government by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Right.
“Astounding as it might seem to you or to me, they were successful on appeal.
In fact, the vast majority of claimants appear to be successful on appeal – or adept at avoiding deportation.
“I was in no way surprised by last week’s government figures showing that thousands of false and retrospective asylum claims are clogging up the system, because I have seen this with my own eyes,” the judge continues.
“[O]nly a tiny proportion, between five and ten per cent of the people I recommend for removal, are ever taken from these shores.”
The result is an immigration system which is completely out of control.
“Our population is growing at the fastest rate for nearly a century, at around half a million people a year,” the judge says. “It has been suggested this means building the equivalent of a city the size of Liverpool every year.
“There is a practical limit to tolerance. The British public will not put up with housing all who come here.
“You can be as liberal as you like about the issue, but it has a big impact on our poorer communities where resources are scarce and there is competition for jobs and housing.
“Those champions of freedom of immigration tend to live privileged lives away from the problems of overcrowded schools and surgeries. Their children are not going to schools where they are the only ones who speak English and the others have to have lessons that hold everyone in the class back by several years.”
The answer, the judge says, essentially boils down to political will.
“As it happens, I am politically liberal. But neither Left or Right are honest about the problem.
“The Conservatives do not want to spend the necessary money sorting it out, while New Labour under Tony Blair helped create the mess by realising that migration, legal and illegal, is a source of cheap labour to boost the economy.
“In addition, most on the Left are too fearful of being considered racist if they criticise immigration levels.”
On a practical level, the judge recommends two keys policy strands to combat runaway immigration: helping the countries of origin to grow economically, reducing the pull to Britain, and taking a much tougher line on illegal immigration at home, including handing more resources to the border authorities.
“North African countries, for instance, need access to European markets; they need developed economies and a decent life for their citizens. Until that happens, those false claimants we do manage to remove will continue to return.
“But there are measures we can take in the short term, too. I would like to see us going back to the old system of questioning people about their claims as soon as they arrive.
“That was stopped after the EU ruled that it was too traumatic to question people immediately.
“I question the automatic right of people to live here permanently by marrying a British national or by having a child with a British national. Too many of these arrangements are short-lived.
“We should clamp down still further on the black market in labour that allows illegals to stay below the radar.
“And, of course, we need to give the Borders Agency adequate resources and real political backing so that when my fellow judges and I decide that a claim is false – and, remember, this undermines those in genuine need – our rulings are met with action.
“We are lucky that Britain is an island with its own natural barrier, but at the moment immigration judges like me are presiding over an impossible situation.”