Fewer than one bogus asylum seeker in ten arriving in the UK from the EU is transferred back, thanks to “completely useless” Brussels rules.
The so-called Dublin III regulations allow EU member-states to deport asylum seekers if they have already passed through another EU country, on the grounds that they should not be in danger in any of them.
However, migrants can only be transferred back to the first EU member-state they arrived in, which is generally impossible to determine if they have not previously been registered and refuse to admit where they arrived themselves.
This allows France, in particular, to refuse to take back any of the thousands of illegal migrants who cross to Britain from its territory — usually by boarding lorries, stowing away on ferries, and breaking into the entrance to Channel Tunnel near Calais.
Research by the Migration Watch UK think tank indicates that despite making 5,712 transfer requests in 2017, just 314 migrants were actually removed.
Meanwhile, 461 migrants were transferred to the United Kingdom, under Dublin regulation provisions which allow EU countries to move supposed asylum seekers on to another EU member-state if they have family members who have already established a beachhead there.
“These figures suggest that the Dublin agreement has become virtually useless for the UK. We have seriously to consider whether its continuation serves British interests,” said Migration Watch UK vice-chairman Alp Mehmet.
The EU is currently preparing an update to the Dublin III rules — Dublin IV — but Migration Watch UK is urging Theresa May to keep Britain out of the bloc’s asylum regime after Brexit, given it is losing out considerably as things stand.
The news comes just weeks after Alaeldien Ahmed, a Sudanese illegal migrant who entered Britain after breaking in the back of a lorry in Calais, was sentenced for killing father-of-four Anthony Banting at a Birmingham tram stop, stabbing him over 50 times in the head, chest, and back in a random attack.
Ahmed was convicted of manslaughter by means of diminished responsibility, after being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.