Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Deborah Orr: A simple-minded politician, asylum-seekers and the complex realities of global politics


Critics of Margaret Hodge have failed to understand that 'need' is not an easy equation

Published: 23 May 2007

Refugees don't come to Britain any more, do they? We get asylum-seekers now instead. Refugees? Well we still see them, in camps, on television, driven from their homes by war, famine, pestilence or the other one, and they really do have nothing.

Asylum-seekers have something though, don't they? They have an agenda, and a list of rights.
They want something, and they want it from us. Not all of them, although much rhetoric implies that this is the case. The US committee for refugees and immigrants estimates that the current total of displaced persons is more than 34 million, a third of them seeking asylum outside their own borders. The latest figures, from 2005, confirm that we granted asylum to a not overwhelming 11,000 of those refugees. continue...


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