In his recent memoirs Tony Blair describes his realization on taking office in 1997 that Britain's asylum system was "broken, incapable, adrift in a sea of storms" and one that "required far tougher action."
The former UK prime minister says in "A Journey" that asylum claims soared from 30,000 in the mid-1990s to more than 100,000 by 2002, but officials could do little to stem the tide. The presumption "that someone who claimed asylum was persecuted and should be taken in ... was plainly false; most asylum claims were not genuine," he writes. "Disproving them, however, was almost impossible."
Amid outcry over the alleged abuse of the system by economic migrants seeking access to the UK labour market and welfare state, Blair's government responded with reforms intended to change the message that "if you get here and you claim asylum, then we'll support you," as then-Home Secretary David Blunkett told the BBC in 2002.
The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 amended support arrangements for asylum seekers and created provisions for their detention and removal. Most controversially the act also removed benefits from would-be refugees whose applications had been rejected.
Read More:http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/11/18/asylum.seekers/index.html?hpt=C2
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