By Prasun Sonwalkar, IANS
London : Britain deported 3,120 failed asylum seekers between July and September this year. India was one of the top five nations whose citizens were on the list, official figures show.
Asylum applications from Indian citizens usually fail because the country is not considered dangerous. Figures published by the Home Office reveal that the top five nationalities of failed asylum seekers during the period were India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Serbia and Turkey.
Apart from deporting failed asylum seekers, Britain will soon begin deporting foreign criminals currently lodged in jails for various offences. The government says it will deport 4,000 foreign prisoners this year. The move is part of the government’s response to increasing criticism of its handling of immigration issues.
The number of failed asylum seekers deported between July and September, 3,120, constitutes a drop of 18 percent from the same period last year, and the lowest number since the second quarter of 2002, sparking criticism from various quarters.
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: “This is another sign that the government’s tough talk on immigration and asylum is not matched by effective action. The fall in the number of removals means the government is failing completely to make inroads into the backlog of half a million people who have no right to be in this country.”
Immigration minister Liam Byrne responded to the criticism by saying: “The first people we should send home are those who break British laws. We’re removing record numbers of foreign criminals including illegal workers who risk undercutting UK wages.”
Reports from Coventry in the east Midlands say that an Indian national whose application for asylum in Britain has failed is seeking to avoid deportation on the ground that he would die within days due to lack of proper treatment in India for his kidney condition.
Baljit Singh Cheema, 24, is currently on dialysis. He says that sending him to India would effectively be a death sentence. Cheema, who receives dialysis at the University Hospital in Walsgrave three times a week, has been ordered by the Home Office to be deported.
Cheema’s application for asylum failed because India is not considered a dangerous country and the Home Office has decided that his case is not exceptional enough for him to stay in Britain.
Cheema reportedly arrived in Britain in January 2005 with a tourist visa but admitted that he wanted to look for work to send money back to his family in India. He told the local media: “My biggest fear is if I am forced to go back I will die. I won’t be able to get treatment and the doctors have told me I’ll die without it.
“I arrived in the UK and went to the temple in London. I stayed there for two weeks and then came to Coventry. I was dropped off by the taxi driver when I felt very dizzy, and collapsed.”
He spent six weeks in a coma before being diagnosed as being in the final stages of renal failure. Friends and the Gurdwara Nanak Prakash in Coventry are currently looking after him. His solicitors are making a second attempt in the Court of Appeal after the first failed.
A spokesman for the Border and Immigration Agency said he could not comment on individual cases but added the Home Office examined each application with great care taking into account medical conditions and an assessment of treatment available in a person’s home country.
Meanwhile, a 27-year-old Indian national has been arrested in Dorchester, south-west England, for working illegally in the Rajpoot Indian restaurant following raids by immigration officials this week.