Act (UK Public General)

1999

Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 c.33

Key features of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999:
• Reforms asylum process to ensure that most cases will be decided within six months.
• Replaces welfare benefits for asylum seekers with vouchers worth £35 a week for an adult.
• Provides accommodation on a no-choice basis around the United Kingdom.
• Introduces fines of £2,000 per illegal passenger on vehicles coming into Britain.
• Regulates immigration advisers.
• Increases the number of airline liaison officers based abroad in order to curb the numbers of immigrants travelling to Britain on forged papers.
• Provides a new legal framework for detention of asylum seekers.
• Restricts marriage for immigration purposes.

• The act addresses all aspects of the immigration and asylum system and follows the government white paper of July 1998 entitled ‘Fairer, Faster and Firmer’ – A Modern Approach to Immigration and Asylum.
• Its main focus was to speed up the bureaucratic processes for those entering the UK and to combat illegal entry.
• The act was passed at a time when the number of people claiming asylum in the UK was rapidly rising and there were concerns that Britain was a "soft touch" for "bogus" asylum seekers. The government hoped the act would stem the rising number of asylum applications by discouraging economic migrants from abusing the system.
• In 2000 The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) was created to administer the new system
• The use of immigration detention was expanded a
longside the increased powers of immigration officers. Capacity for detention was quadrupled to 4,000 people at any time.
• There was considerable criticism of the new system from refugee rights groups, and also from within the Labour party itself.
• Asylum support was tied to the use of dispersal so that no help would be provided to asylum seekers unless they agreed to be dispersed. In practice, the system meant relocating asylum seekers to parts of the country with a surplus of unused housing stock. Invariably this meant asylum seekers were sent to areas suffering the effects of economic decline, and therefore urban poverty, isolation and high levels of crime and violence. This violence was often directed at asylum seekers themselves, made more vulnerable by the lack of local support and legal representation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/jan/13/immigration-asylum-act

Liz Peadon

CREDS, Cambridgeshire County Council

Researcher