What is the situation facing immigrants and asylum seekers in Britain?
Official statistics refute the claims that Britain is being “swamped” by immigration and show the desperately impoverished conditions in which immigrants live and work. Annual net immigration is closely correlated with Britain’s economic growth and for many years, more people left than came to Britain. According to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), there were 5.5 million Britons living abroad in 2005. Every year, at least 90,000 nationals leave Britain to work overseas. The trend of negative net immigration reversed during the boom years of the 1980s, but net immigration only really took off after the 1990s recession, as it did in almost all industrialised countries. Since 1998, it has exceeded 100,000 a year, although many migrant workers tend to return home after a short stay. Many economic migrants are employed in low paid, minimum wage jobs. More than a few are subject to ruthless exploitation by human traffickers who forced them to pay extortionate sums to get to Br
