Discursive Essay on Asylum Seekers in Britain

Another claim about the rising amount of asylum seekers in the UK is that 90 per cent stay anyway. Asylum seekers are not cheats because they have been unsuccessful with their asylum application - after all, they have exercised a fundamental human right. The asylum process is not easy: the criteria set out in the 1951 Convention on Refugees, against which asylum claims are examined, are very strict. At the same time, Home Office decisions are often based on inaccuracies, failures to probe certain issues, and an overemphasis on trying to discredit the applicant during the asylum interview. A large number of asylum seekers have their applications refused on purely procedural grounds. Many are unable to complete the Statement of Evidence Form, in which they have to outline, in English, their reasons for seeking asylum, within the required ten-day deadline. 21,220 applications were refused on non-compliance grounds in 2001, representing a fifth of total refusals; such refusals have nothing to do with the substance or credibility of a claim.…