ROOF Blog

Net migration – the number of people who come to live in Britain minus the number who move abroad – fell by more than a third to 163,000 last year, its lowest level since Poland joined the European Union.

The Office for National Statistics said the fall from 233,000 in 2007 was mainly driven by a rise in emigration to a 17-year high: 427,000 people left Britain to live abroad, up from 341,000 the previous year.

The increase was mainly due to the number of Poles returning home.

Asylum figures show a further fall in the number of fresh claims for refugee status between July and September this year to 5,055 – a decline of 24 per cent compared with the same period in 2008.

Refugee welfare groups said the fall in asylum numbers was not necessarily a matter of celebration but raised fears that the tightening up of Britain’s borders was denying sanctuary to those who needed protection.

The Refugee Council has warned that child refugees will be wrongly denied education and given no more help than adult asylum seekers in the UK, under changes introduced by the government. The charity says its Home Office funding, to work with asylum seekers whose ages are in dispute, had been cut leaving hundreds of vulnerable children at risk of being incorrectly assessed as adults. The Refugee Council estimate that as many as half of the decisions on age-disputed asylum applicants may be wrong.

Research has suggested that the tough policies designed to push asylum seekers out of the country by removing their support is simply forcing them to live on the streets, surviving on handouts. Last October, the Asylum Support Partnership counted almost 1,200 failed asylum seekers with no support or secure housing across the country day, from a group of 2,000 people found to be destitute with no housing or access to benefits or support. Half of these people came from Iraq, Iran, Eritrea and Zimbabwe.

The government will fail in its target to end rough sleeping by 2012 if it continues to ignore services for homeless people with mental health problems, Crisis and St Mungo’s warned today. A survey for St Mungo’s disclosed that as many as 85 per cent of rough sleepers were in poor mental health. Women, refugees and asylum seekers, the BME community and those who mistreat drugs and alcohol are particularly affected.