Asylum Seekers Cost £2m a Day
Graeme Wilson, The Sun, August 24, 2011
Britain’s chaotic asylum system has cost taxpayers £2.3million a day in the last decade.
Around 77 per cent who claimed asylum between 1997 and 2010 are still here.
Hundreds of thousands have been allowed to stay even though their claims have been rejected, a damning new report shows.
Costs including housing, cash support and legal fees added up to £10billion–or £2.3million a day, Migration Watch found. Decisions have been reached on a total of 660,000 asylum cases between 1997-2010. Of these, 26 per cent were granted asylum and 14 per cent got some other form of protection or leave to remain. It means 60 per cent of cases–around 417,000–should have been sent home. But only a third of them–around 119,000–went.
Homing in on one five-year period between 2004 and 2009, a similar picture emerged.
Sixty-two per cent of asylum applications were rejected, but just over a third of these were booted out. And officials are still clearing a backlog of 400,000 cases found in a warehouse in 2006.
Migration Watch chairman Sir Andrew Green said: “The asylum system has proved to be a £10billion shambles.”
Immigration Minister Damian Green said: “The asylum system we inherited was hopelessly chaotic. Last year we reduced the total bill for asylum support by over £100million and it is falling further.
“We have nearly doubled the proportion of asylum seekers removed within one year of their application and 60 per cent of applicants now receive a decision in a month.”
