August 18: Asylum system is being abused by economic migrants

I AGREE with Mr Sheridan’s views on asylum (The Yorkshire Post, August 13). However he does rather miss my original point in this regard.

The idea of asylum is that you can claim it in the first safe country you are able to flee to. But most of these people at Calais have travelled through a number of perfectly safe countries to get to Calais, on their way to the land of milk and honey, that is the UK.

This is because most, if not all, are not genuine asylum seekers but economic migrants and the hand-outs and benefits are far better in the UK than in other European countries.

These people are not as destitute as they are made out to bed, as they are able to pay huge amounts of money to people traffickers in order to get to Britain, most are well dressed and if a picture that I saw last week of 15 mobile phones all being charged up is anything to go by, then most of them have one.

These have to be paid for where ever you get them from, the phone companies do not give them free use of their systems, refugees or not.

The unfortunate fact is that Britain’s asylum system is being abused; Britain is an island and it is impossible to get here without passing through at least one safe country.

Unfortunately it is a sad fact that too many of these refugees or asylum seekers do go on to commit crimes, some quite violent, unless of course the national press are making these stories up.

From: Dr Glyn Powell, Kellington, Goole.

OVER the years a combination of poor government policies and European Union edicts has led to the decimation of Britain’s manufacturing industries. This, in turn, has created high unemployment levels and a low skill, low paid workforce.

The minimum wage, foolishly introduced by Tony Blair along with uncontrolled immigration from EU nations, has assisted greatly in Britain’s race to the bottom.

Of even more concern, however, is the present Tory government’s panic over illegal migrants.

The Government is considering measures that will lessen the financial appeal of Britain. However, due to EU discrimination laws, such measures will not only affect migrant entitlement to welfare benefits but will also deny young Britons housing benefit and tax credits until they are 22-years-old. This sledgehammer approach is a disgrace but typical of Tory thinking.