The Experience Of Asylum Seekers Illegal Immigrants

The Experience Of Asylum Seekers/ Illegal Immigrants Coming To Britain Today Essay, Research Paper Asylum seekers and illegal immigrants have been in the media recently because the government is facing problems over the number of immigrants coming into the country every year, due to financial problems and the backlog of applications waiting to be approved. Over the past couple of months newspapers have reported tragic incidents where illegal immigrants in their desperate need to come to the West have gone to extremes, putting their lives at danger to escape from their home country.There is a difference between asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. Asylum seekers are genuine refugees that if they remain in their native country will be persecuted for their religious beliefs,

nationality, race or membership in a social of political opinion. They wish to come to Britain because they see it as a way to freedom. Illegal immigrants however are people that enter the country for none of these reasons, most probably because they want to take advantage of the benefits given to asylum seekers like candy by the government. However, most illegal immigrants when arriving in Britain will claim asylum, however this is not genuine. The main countries of origin of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are those that are significantly less well off than the West, usually with a communist government and/or places where there is conflict. These are countries like Afganistan, Yugoslavia, Romania, China, Iraq and Iran.The ways in which illegal immigrants and asylum

seekers arrive in this country vary enormously. In the news a couple of months ago, 58 chinese men were discovered dead in the back of a lorry where they had suffocated to death while being smuggled across the Channel. These were all illegal immigrants. Families of these paid a human trafficking gang "the Snakeheads" £14,000 to smuggle one individual from China to England. Only two men survived, and were found semi-comatose under a pile of corpses. Most illegal immigrants are smuggled into the country by gangs who hide them in lorries under produce which is being imported in. Whilst still in their native country, the families can pay approximately half of the money as a deposit, and once they arrive at their destination they must pay the rest, else will be held

captive. In the past, there have been reports of Romanian women who cannot afford the second payment and are forced into prostitution, begging or crime to pay off their debt. However this is extreme. Other illegal immigrants travel into the country without the help of gangs, just like the people that two days ago were discovered under the Eurostar train that travelled from France to London. If they are caught coming into the country, the illegal immigrant can make a verbal claim that they are seeking asylum. Any person found smuggling an illegal immigrant can be fined.Asylum seekers apply to the Home Office for residency in the country. If this is granted they are allowed in legally, and are given various benefits that I will discuss later. For an application to be granted, they

have to meet one in five of the criteria mentioned in the 1951 UN convention’s definition of a refugee. However, the government is introducing a new immigration and asylum act which makes in virtually impossible for a genuine asylum seeker to reach Britain legally. Only one in five applications for residence are accepted. This means that more people will enter Britain illegally, rather than be rejected by the Home Office. If the application is rejected, the asylum seeker can appeal against the decision. Ideally, the seeker should obtain legal assistance when applying, but usually they speak very little English and have no contacts over in Britain, so legal advice is difficult to obtain. They should collect evidence that shows they suffered persecution in their native country,