UK Home Secretary criticises UK immigration process.

November 03 2009 by Liam Clifford

Alan Johnson reveals that the backlog of asylum seekers still not dealt with is because of his predecessors.

Alan Johnson said yesterday that having not done enough to tackle the UK’s immigration crisis he now had criticism for some of his predecessors of having ignored the problem.

The words will be as uncomfortable for previous Labour Home Secretaries; including David Blunkett and Jack Straw. Mr Johnson continued: “The legacy problems of unreturned foreign national prisoners and asylum-seekers may have accumulated under previous administrations but they continued to be ignored for far too long on our watch.”

The present Home Secretary’s own remarks that not enough has been done to tackle massive backlogs in asylum cases followed as he conceded the fact that Labour had not reacted well to UK immigration problems.

UK immigration Officials are going through a backlog of 450,000 asylum claims, discovered in 2006 when the former Home Secretary, John Reid, described the UK immigration and asylum department of the Home Office as not sufficient for the job in hand.

There are another 40,000 immigration cases - mainly people who have overstayed their UK visas - the Home Office does not have the information on whether they have left the UK or are still here.

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