�Quick Guide:�Asylum and Immigration
Printable version
How many asylum seekers?

Asylum decisions

Who comes here?

Who gets to stay?

What we don�t know

Economic impact

How many asylum seekers?

The number of asylum seekers has fallen for two years - but rose in the six years before that, in line with most of our European neighbours.

The 34,000 arriving in 2004 represented 8.5% of the applicants to the industrialised world.

But the numbers have fallen, not least since regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Asylum seekers only make up 15% of immigrants each year - and an even smaller proportion of the 5m foreign-born residents of the UK.

BACK