Migration Watch UK: News

A Survey of European Asylum Policy and Legislation By Geoffrey Fitchew

Introduction

1. This paper describes and assesses the development of EU policy and legislation on asylum issues, since the Treaty of Amsterdam, adopted in 1997, first gave the EU institutions powers of legislation on this subject. The first part of the paper summarises the developments in the powers of the EU institutions to legislate on asylum and immigration matters. The second, third and fourth parts describe in detail the legislation on asylum adopted by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament between 2001 and 2005 following the programme adopted by the European Council of Heads of State and Government at their meeting at Tampere in Finland in October 1999. The fifth part describes the background to the European Commission’s plans for further legislation following the programme adopted by the European Council at its Hague meeting in 1990 and outlines three proposals put forward by the Commission to amend some of the earlier legislation in December 2008. The sixth part of the paper assesses some policy and legal problems which the UK government may have to deal with in responding to these new proposals. Finally, I give a brief overall assessment of how the EU’s legislation on asylum has worked so far and its impact on the UK.

See Briefing Paper No 4.11 for the full survey.

Observer publish a correction

In its edition of 6 April The Observer published an article that, in passing, strongly implied that Migrationwatch had been scaremongering over the health risks of immigration.

In accordance with the guidelines of the Press Complaints Commission, we sought a fair opportunity to reply to this misleading and inaccurate material. As a result, the following letter was published in their edition of 13 April:

No TB catastrophe

An Observer article last week by David Rose alleged that Migrationwatch had foretold a 'catastrophe' from TB among immigrants to Britain. We have said nothing of the kind. We have simply called for testing of medical staff recruited to Britain from countries that have a very high incidence of communicable diseases.

Commenting, the Chairman of Migrationwatch said, "To give the newspaper its due, a corrective letter was agreed as soon as the matter was drawn to the attention of the Editor."

HIV: Statement by Migrationwatch

The latest report from the Health Protection Agency shows that the major source of heterosexual HIV infection in the UK is immigration from sub Saharan Africa 70% of all heterosexual cases diagnosed in the UK are among those born in Africa. Of those diagnosed in 2006, nearly half (46%) were described as Black African.

Commenting, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migrationwatch, said "When it comes to HIV the government are curiously reluctant to address the problem. The best thing they could do to protect health in the UK would be to introduce screening for anyone from a country of high incidence of HIV who wishes to enter Britain for longer than six months. 47 other countries require such tests of immigrants. It is high time that Britain followed suit as we already have for TB."