63K asylum seekers will be allowed to stay in UK

63,000 asylum seekers have been informed by the Home Office that they will be permitted to remain in Britain because they have been here for so long while the Government tries to catch up with a backlog of cases that removing them would be too difficult.

Officials have to date examined nearly 200,000 out of 450,000 individual cases and approved the claimant's right to asylum in 32% of those cases. If they keep up that rate, 144,000 people will be allowed to stay here. Some of them are cases that would not have otherwise been approved, going back to the 1990s, while the majority will be genuine examples in which the asylum seeker faces torture, political imprisonment or murder should they return to their place of origin.

Good. That's another 144,000 people who, once approved, will be able to start looking for work and - as soon as the recession is over and they find it - start paying taxes which can then be spent on health and public services.