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Government attacked over refugee scare tactics

MIGRANT rights campaigners called on the government yesterday to stop its inflammatory scaremongering as the world faces its worst refugee crisis since World War II.

After new Office of National Statistics figures on immigration were published, Amnesty International called on the government to allay public fears on the issue and to “show some basic humanity.”

The figures revealed that there were 25,771 applications for asylum in Britain in the year ending June 2015, compared with 23,515 applications over the period last year.

The largest number of asylum applications came from Eritrea (3,568). Applications from Syria (2,204) and Sudan (1,799) were also in the top five, with numbers rising.

Amnesty International UK refugee programme director Steve Symonds said: “With Syria in flames and much of the Middle East and parts of Africa in turmoil, the UK should be doing far more to help people caught up in the worst refugee crisis since the second world war.”

The ONS figures also showed that net migration — the difference between the number of people entering and leaving the country — was at a record high of 330,000 in the year to March.

Migrants Rights Network said that the new figures clearly indicated that the Home Office had no plan for meeting its own net migration target.

Migrants Rights Network director Don Flynn said: “Over the last few weeks we’ve heard ministers declare that the new Immigration Bill will help in reducing net migration.

“However careful analysis of proposals reveals that aside from making this a more hostile country for migrants none of the policies will actually impact the numbers without damaging the country’s crucial economic interests.

“We now know that policy changes introduced over the last five years had no substantial effect on the numbers and the forthcoming policy proposals which will be included in the Bill the government intends to put forward in a few weeks are no different.”

The government insists it is acting to control immigration and claimed the figures should be a “wake-up call for the EU” amid an unprecedented surge of arrivals into the bloc.

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