Break For The Border
‘PSSST! Wanna earn a few grand and get a free holiday into the bargain. Its easy. Pop along to your local immigration detention centre and wait a short while.
As the Times says, very soon adverts will be going up offering asylum-seekers £3,000 to return home in the next six months.
Take the wife and kids along and you could be in line for a whopping £12,000. And you dont have to return to your home in the UK. Why not set up home in Brazil? Or what about some winter sun in Thailand?
The thing is that the Government has failed to meet its pledge that by the end of 2005 the number of asylum-seeker being sent packing would exceed the number of arrivals.
So the new plan is to pay the failed asylum-seekers to leave. And, as weve noted, the going rate is £3,000 for each asylum-seeker. And the Government will pay your travel costs.
Sadly, the scheme is only open to those of you who claimed asylum before December last year. But what with this being a pilot scheme, if it is successful we are confident it will be extended to embrace newer would-be Britons.
And dont go thinking its expensive and a drain on the public purse. As the Times says, it costs £11,000 to remove a person by force. In leaving of your own free will, you will be saving the Government money.
But competition for the cash might be fierce. As the paper says, Sir John Gieve, the outgoing Parliamentary Secretary at the Home Office, worries that paying people to leave will only encourage more people to arrive.
If the worst thing that is going to happen to you if you come and claim asylum when you are not due asylum in Britain is that someone gives you a few thousand pounds to send you home, that may not look like a very big downside says he.
Sir John would makes a valid point. And we can only advise that you book early to avoid disappointment.
And if you are a bona fide UK resident looking for free cash and a trip overseas dont worry about being rumbled – the Government has little idea about who is legally here and who isnt…’
Posted: 13th, January 2006 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
