Swoop rakes up UK asylum debate

A crude newspaper cartoon on Thursday depicted a band of weapon-wielding, poison-laden refugees charging into Britain past an immigration of...

A crude newspaper cartoon on Thursday depicted a band of weapon-wielding, poison-laden refugees charging into Britain past an immigration official who politely tells them: ‘‘Enjoy your stay, gentlemen.’’

The mass-circulation Sun’s caricature summed up growing public disquiet among Britons over a link between asylum-seekers and terror cells illustrated in two shocking raids this month.

First, two men arrested by anti-terrorism police on January 5 over a discovery of the deadly poison ricin turned out to be teenage asylum seekers housed by local authorities in London. Then one of the men arrested in this week’s related anti-terror raid in Manchester — during which a police officer was stabbed to death with a kitchen knife — was also revealed to be an asylum-seeker on the run.

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Those two raids, the most high-profile in dozens of post-September 11 swoops in Britain to break up suspected terror cells, have woken the nation to an ‘‘enemy within.’’ Most of the 200 or so terror suspects Britain has arrested since September 11 have been north African, mainly Algerian.

The Opposition Conservative Party led the outrage. ‘‘No person should be allowed to enter the country if they pose a risk to our security and those that do should be detained or deported immediately,’’ said its leader Iain Duncan Smith.

Britain, with its relatively generous benefits system, is one of the world’s most popular destinations for immigrants. Up to one million illegal immigrants are thought to live in Britain, while some 72,000 people applied for asylum in 2001.

The anti-asylum torrent in Thursday’s newspapers was met head on by ethnic and rights groups. They fear asylum-seekers could face a backlash similar to a wave of anti-Muslim feeling after 9/11.

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Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: ‘‘There is no distinction being made between legitimate asylum-seekers and a violent minority within them,’’ to which head of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, agreed. ‘‘Inflammatory headlines have demonised, stigmatised and dehumanised an entire category of people who are genuinely in fear of their lives,’’ Khan said.

In London’s Finsbury Park area, where many Algerians live and work, there were also pleas for understanding. ‘‘People come here because they fear to go back to Algeria. Their families have been killed. People need to be tolerant,’’ Algerian shopkeeper Salah Zaidi said. ‘‘It is bad to generalise about a whole population … there’s good and bad everywhere.’’

Amid the debate, UK’s ruling Labour Party was vigorously defending its asylum legislation. Only last week, London introduced tough new measures designed to combat abuse of the system by withholding benefits unless claimants can explain how they entered the country and why they did not make a claim at the point of entry. (Reuters)