The current version of the law is the harshest. According to it, asylum seekers who have been refused refugee status are deprived of all benefits and social allowances. This fully applies to families with children as well. If parents try to evade deportation, their children may be taken into state custody and sent to shelters. The new law makes it a criminal offence to remain in the UK without valid, legal identity documents for refugee status applicants and provides for a penalty of up to two years in prison for this crime. In addition, the system for filing appeals in the event of an initial refusal of refugee status is practically abolished. And finally, immigrants subject to deportation will now be "tagged" with special electronic devices that allow their movements to be monitored via satellite.
In Parliament, the new bill was presented by Home Secretary David Blunkett. He stated that before the adoption of the new law, he had already managed to achieve some success in reducing the flow of refugees into the country: the number of refugee applications had halved (currently reaching 4,000 applications per month), processing of applications for refugee status is very fast, and deportations are also carried out quite promptly (up to 1,500 persons whose applications have been refused are deported monthly).
However, the minister considers this progress insufficient. Even though the process of examining asylum applications has accelerated and the queues of those awaiting a decision on their case are now shorter than they have ever been in recent decades, the government has to spend up to a billion pounds a year on benefits for these immigrants. For providing legal assistance to them alone, private law firms receive 175 million pounds a year from the government.
An obstacle to deportation is the fact that 70% of rejected refugees have no identity documents: they destroy them themselves, knowing that in the event of deportation, no country will be willing to accept an anonymous person. True, there is an opinion that the punishment proposed for the absence of documents will frighten few: many would gladly prefer two years in a British prison to returning to their homeland's poverty.
Under the current procedure, those who have been refused refugee status can contest this decision before an arbitrator, and in some cases to the Immigration Appeal Tribunal. The new law merges these two instances into one. The overwhelming majority of applications will be considered by a single immigration judge, whose work will be supervised by a single senior judge.
According to Kate Allen, director of the British section of Amnesty International, the new "law will be a catastrophe for thousands of refugees seeking protection in Britain. With such a poor initial decision-making system, the appeal process remains the only barrier separating a refugee from the secret police, which is only waiting to seize him and expel him from the country."
Barry Stoyle, executive director of the Refugee Legal Centre, explains that "the proposed single-tier appeal system will not be accountable to any lawful court; it will itself review its own verdicts. And no one will be able to challenge a decision on a matter of life and death."
The UK Department of Health has taken the same line - it intends to ban foreigners from using the services of the National Health Service (NHS). The current rule, according to which foreigners who have been in the UK for more than 12 months can receive treatment in the NHS, will be repealed. This will primarily affect those who have been refused refugee status, as well as their spouses and children. British ministers claim that the so-called health tourism costs the country 200 million pounds a year. Health Secretary John Reid sharply said that refugee status applicants "effectively steal treatment from the residents of this country."
However, Dr. Edwin Borman, chairman of the international committee of the British Medical Association, said that doctors should not turn into state agents of a discriminatory system. "I am responsible for ensuring that any patient receives the necessary treatment and care. It is wonderful that all citizens of the UK can fully use NHS services. But we also have obligations to people coming to our country."