Asylum: UK's New 'Get tough' Policy Paying off

Although the Home Office maintained its usual line of refusing to comment on individual cases when contacted by The EastAfrican about the issue, its own statistics show the effect of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s crackdown on what his government sees as the large number of bogus asylum applicants.

For cracking down in particular on the number of asylum applications made once people are inside Britain, instead of when they arrive by air or by port, the number of asylum applications for 2003 shrank to 49,370 last year, a 41 per cent decrease from the 2002 figures of 84,130.

Of the 49,370 cases, only 215 were Kenyans, the lowest figure for more than a decade and less than 50 per cent of the 485 applicants from 2002, the last year of president Moi’s rule.

It can be presumed, although it is not publicly stated, that the Home Office now regards applicants for asylum from Kenya, after NARC’s electoral victory of December 2002, as lacking in legitimacy, unless there are extraordinary reasons for allowing entry.

Statistics concerning the number of Kenyans granted refugee status or exceptional leave to remain for 2003-2004 are not yet available, but they can be expected to be less than the 55 Kenyans allowed to stay in 2002, which was itself a drop from the 90 in 2001.

Even in the last years of president Moi’s rule, the majority of Kenyans seeking asylum in the UK had their applications rejected.

Three hundred Kenyans seeking asylum in 2002 had their applications turned down, as were 820 in 2001 and 785 in 2000. Of those who appealed, 78 per cent had their cases rejected, but only a total of 95 Kenyans were sent back to Nairobi in both 2001 and 2002.

It seems London wants to ensure that those who have exhausted the legal process of appeal against staying in the UK, are sent home. Ms Kamau was presumably one of those people, although the Home Office will not say so.

During the early part of the new millennium, the British government is now catching up with the huge backlog of asylum applications from the 1990s.

These include the record number of Kenyan applicants between 1994 and 1998, when over 5,000 Kenyans made asylum claims on the UK.

Now those numbers have shrunk and it is Somalia — with 5,100 applications — and Zimbabwe, with 3,280, who are among the countries with the largest number of asylum requests.

The Home Office has in the past said that it is only in the last instance that it resorts to chaining people to their seats when returning failed asylum applicants, but this method has come under severe criticism in the UK.