News 2020

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The number of asylum seekers legally entering Britain failed to drop again last month, causing speculation that the guidelines for legal entry may need tightening up once again.

This is the fourth consecutive month in which the numbers of successful applications for asylum have failed to drop, and members of Parliament from all sides indicated their concern during question time. The Minister for Immigration and Expulsion, Eugene Trueblood, admitted that the figures were "disappointing", and said that the Government would "give very serious consideration to the appropriateness of any measures which may be considered to be appropriate."

At the beginning of its term, the Government was able to take a certain pride in the effectiveness of its asylum seeker policy. Mr Trueblood himself presided over fourteen months of increased refusals of political asylum and an unprecedentedly consistent level of deportation. Many of the deportations were to the then newly installed military regime in Chile, with which Britain recently signed an extradition treaty in memory of General Augusto Pinochet, whose declining years were spent in happy retirement in the UK.

The leader of the British Exit Europe Party, Robert Kilroy-Silk, criticised the Government for "pandering to Continental sensibilities at a time when the country is under literal siege". Hordes of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants surrounded his constituents every time they set foot out of doors, Mr Kilroy-Silk said. "If the Government continues with this deplorable policy of lackadaisicality, every British beach will be clogged with Chinese cockle-pickers, to the serious detriment of the tourist industry," he concluded, to widespread agreement.

Mr Trueblood responded that the remarkably fine condition of Britain's beaches was indeed one of the country's main tourist attractions, particularly in the sub-tropical south.