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UK: Immigration - Short shrift

01 May 1996

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The Home Office continues to "improve efficiency" in asylum determination procedures in ways which significantly impair asylum-seekers' ability to present their cases fully. From 25 March the short pilot procedure for dealing with asylum claimants from certain countries (see Statewatch, vol 5 no 3) has been extended in a rolling programme to almost all asylum-seekers arriving at Heathrow's international terminals. Under the short procedure, asylum-seekers are interviewed immediately on arrival or very shortly thereafter, and there is a deadline of a month to produce evidence in support of the claim (reduced to five working days when the asylum-seeker is detained). The timescale is just not long enough to obtain evidence from the country the asylum-seeker has just fled from, where enquiries usually have to be extremely discreet and indirect to avoid alerting authorities and exposing families to reprisals. Those excluded from the procedure are Iraqis, Iranians, Libyans, Liberians, Somalians, Rwandans, Algerians, Palestinians, those from the Gulf states, Bosnians, Croatians and people from the former Yugoslavia. This appears to be on the basis that they are nationalities with a chance of actually getting asylum, or at least exceptional leave, and so have to be treated more carefully than the rest. Home Office press release, May 1996

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