Go home and rebuild, Blunkett tells young asylum-seekers

Asylum-seekers from Afghanistan and Kosovo should "get back home" and help to rebuild their countries now that Britain has freed them from tyranny, David Blunkett said yesterday.

The Home Secretary said that he had "no sympathy" for young people from the two war-torn countries who remained in Britain. His comments, to a committee of MPs, came as he admitted he had made a mistake by attempting to stick to a target of removing 30,000 failed asylum-seekers every year and believed about 12,000 was more realistic.

He also disclosed that he intended to build immigration accommodation centres in rural and urban areas that now have few or no asylum-seekers or refugees.

Asked about rules that stop asylum-seekers working during their first six months in the United Kingdom, Mr Blunkett told MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee: "If these people are dynamic and well-qualified, and I don't dispute that they are, they should get back home and recreate their countries that we freed from tyranny, whether it be Kosovo or now Afghanistan. We are freeing countries of different religions and cultural backgrounds and making it possible for them to get back home and rebuild their countries.

"I have no sympathy whatsoever with young people in their twenties who do not get back home and rebuild their country and their families."

His comments were criticised by Habib Rahman, the chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. "It is very unfortunate that the Secretary of State takes such a devastatingly simplistic view of asylum. People come here seeking asylum for very complex individual reasons," he said.

Mr Blunkett told the MPs he had been wrong to maintain the target to remove 30,000 asylum-seekers a year. The Tory MP David Cameron asked him: "To be clear ... the 2,500 a month is gone and the 30,000 a year is gone, which is in the manifesto?" Mr Blunkett replied: "Yes. I'm doing so on honesty grounds and on practical grounds."

He also said that since Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre, near Bedford, was partly destroyed by fires started during a riot in January, there was no chance of coming close to the target. Home Office figures show 11,600 asylum- seekers and dependants were removed in the year to April.