Should they be let in?

Dubai: Immigration is a long-standing issue for the UK. Due to the number of asylum seekers entering the country, border controls became stricter and a number of immigration detention centres were established over the year.

Britions are concerned with the rate of immigration, with some expressing concerns about work availability for Britons while others see strict immigration rules as bordering on racist, considering that the UK is a multicultural society.

Immigration policies differ and debates on the topic sometimes become heated.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) using data from the International Passenger Survey, an estimated 590,000 people arrived to live in the UK in 2008, compared to 574,000 in 2007. A total of 86 per cent of immigrants in 2008 were non-British citizens.

Applications for asylum totalled 24,250 in 2009 — a decrease of 1,680 from 2008, according to Home Office statistics. A total of 73 per cent of asylum appeals in 2009 were refused.

While 64,750 people were removed or left voluntarily from the UK in 2009, 203,865 became British citizens — a rise of 58 per cent on the previous year.

When asylum-seekers arrive in the UK, they are transferred to an immigration detention centre, also known as immigration removal centres, run under the control of the UK Border Agency.

Conditions in these 11 centres have been criticised as being too similar to prisons — except that they house detainees who effectively have not committed a crime. Chief Prisons Inspector Dame Anne Owers told the BBC last December that Tinsley House — an immigration removal centre near Gatwick Airport — was prison-like. Children, she said, had been subjected to "unnecessary force".

A total of 28,005 people entered detention in 2009, held under Immigration Act powers. Of those detained 1,065 were children, according to the Home Office.

Across the Channel

The immigration issue in the UK is also an issue for Calais and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais coast, with its travel/trade links with the ferry port at Dover.

Migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Somalia, amongst other countries, hoping to stow away in trucks heading to the UK, have been known to set up squats on the French coastline.

The camps were bulldozed by French authorities, most recently the "jungle" camp in September 2009.

This March, a new immigration centre was opened in the French port town, but was criticised in the media as it was funded from UK "taxpayers", according to the Daily Mail.

Violence has also been recorded in association with immigration protests. The far-right British National Party has a tough anti-immigration, pro-white stance, which anti-fascist demonstrators have condemned. Last month, BNP and anti-fascist protesters clashed outside the UK Border Agency's Lunar House immigration centre in Croydon.

BNP councillor for Barking and Dagenham Bob Bailey addressed a small number of supporters outside the centre. Anti-fascist protesters demonstrated against the BNP presence and the clashes ended in a scuffle.

The far-right party has a zero-tolerance stance on immigration and states on its website that its policy is to "Deport all the two million-plus who are here illegally; Stop all new immigration except for exceptional cases; and Reject all asylum seekers who passed safe countries on their way to Britain".