United Kingdom Immigration Laws, Asylum Laws and Anti Terrorism Laws

In recent years public attention has been focused on asylum seekers but their numbers have fallen sharply. They are now less than 40,000 a year of whom only a quarter are given permission to stay in Britain, yet only one in five is actually removed. Meanwhile, other forms of immigration have risen very sharply. Net foreign immigration reached 340,000 in 2004. It is hard to see how we can achieve the successful integration of immigrants on this scale. The Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) has warned that we are "sleepwalking towards segregation" but he does not appear to have made the connection with the massive levels of immigration that have occurred in recent years. To get a full picture of this complex problem it is necessary to consider asylum seekers, family settlement, labour migration and illegal immigration together.