How many Zimbabwean asylum seekers live in the UK?
Some 15,000 applicants sought asylum in the UK in the five years to 2005. Only a few hundred of these were given refugee status, the vast majority having been told they had no grounds to seek asylum in Britain. Some 300 are known to have returned, more than 100 forcibly removed, since the government said it was safe to start removals in late 2004. So why did this become an issue? The crisis reached the High Court in the summer of 2005 when Mr Justice Collins, one of the UK’s leading immigration judges, essentially ordered a reassessment of conditions in Zimbabwe before he was prepared to allow removals to continue. There was an arguable case, he said, that conditions were such that to send someone home would be a breach of their human rights. This did not mean he did not oppose removals – only that they had to be done fairly and within the law, considering potential breaches of human rights. The Home Office sent a fact-finding team to Zimbabwe. It came back saying there were some repor
