Leading Article: How to keep out refugees

THE HOME Office is particularly prone to a form of sickness that often afflicts bureaucrats. Its principal symptoms are moral atrophy, death of feeling and detachment from reality. The symptoms manifest themselves most commonly in a blind determination to apply rules without regard to the individuals involved, the political context or the national interest.

The latest but by no means unique evidence of this sickness is the treatment of Mira Litobac. She is a Bosnian refugee who fled from Sarajevo with two sons to join her sister in Britain. She spent about three hours in France while driving through and waiting for a ferry. Because she had already reached a 'safe country', namely France, the Home Office planned yesterday to deport her, ordering her to report to Dover with her children and belongings.

Shamed by the publicity, the Home Office seemed yesterday to be in retreat. It claimed, in the face of solid evidence to the contrary, that the immigration officials had been seeking nothing more sinister than an interview with Mrs Litobac (and her luggage?) in Dover. But the instruction to report for interview still stubbornly stands.

The excuse for this nonsense is that under the Dublin Convention of 1990 members of the European Community agreed that refugees should apply for asylum in the first safe country they reach. Britain says they can then apply to come here if they have strong links. But since last November it has also demanded visas for people from former Yugoslavia, except Croatia and Slovenia. Visas are not available in Bosnia. Nor do refugees of war always have the right papers. The Home Office says calmly that applications can be made in Austria or France, for instance. But once a refugee has gained access to one of these safe countries his or her claim to refugee status in Britain becomes weaker.

Britain, in other words, is shamelessly using its geographical location and its visa requirements to reduce the number of refugees to a minimum. In this squalid task it has been successful. Applications for asylum have dropped sharply since November. The 'problem' has been largely solved except for a few awkward individuals like Mrs Litobac. The Government's only claim to virtue rests on its promise to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to take in 1,000 heads of household and their families outside normal immigration rules. But even this miserable number had to be wrung out of the Government, which initially suggested 150 - out of more than two million displaced persons.

Apart from that, we should presumably be grateful that very few are actually deported, though there is at least one Bosnian now in custody at Heathrow. Mrs Litobac's real offence was to turn up at Dover without going through the proper channels, behaviour that invariably brings on a bout of fever among officials, who fear that every breach in the dyke invites a flood.

The European Community is under a special moral obligation to Bosnian refugees because of its hand-wringing failure to save them from war. Most member states have fulfilled their obligation much better than Britain, which seems capable of civilised behaviour only when under public scrutiny. As soon as the spotlight moves away, officials revert to type. The average citizen would have a simple answer. It is not the Bosnians but the officials who ought to be deported. Not to France, but to a refugee camp.