Blunkett said that people he described as "the most blatantly bogus applicants" should be thrown out immediately. They would then be forced to launch any appeal against their expulsion from abroad. The government has set a target of expelling some 30,000 people next year and plans to build prison camps in which to jail immigrants seeking asylum in order to quickly deport them once their claims are turned down.

The government also proposed the deployment of British navy warships to intercept boats with refugees on board, and use of Royal Air Force planes for "bulk" deportations.

During a May 20 meeting at Downing Street, British prime minister Anthony Blair won agreement from José Maria Aznar, Spain’s prime minister and current president of the European Union (EU), to place the issue of asylum and immigration at the top of the agenda at this month’s European summit in Seville.

The government’s moves against immigrant workers, with bipartisan support from the Tories, comes in the context of harsh restrictions proposed last year in the name of "the war against terrorism."

These included detention without trial--called internment here--of foreign nationals who are suspected of "terrorism" by the authorities but who cannot be deported under the asylum legislation because they would face torture or death if returned to their country of origin.

Those detained are not informed of the evidence against them, and their cases are reviewed only after six months. Hearings on the charges are held without the press or public present and any appeals are restricted to points of law. The law allows the substance of asylum claims made by "terrorist suspects" to be ignored.

The legislation also gives police extended powers to photograph and fingerprint people, and to oblige protesters to remove disguises. The cops can now force communications service providers to turn over data such as e-mail and mobile phone logs, and airlines to hand over any information about passengers and freight.

The bill also calls for granting the secretary of state the power to proscribe organizations and name offenses related to association with such organizations, and to extend detention prior to charges being laid in cases the government deems related to terrorism.  
 
Claims system is ‘swamped’
In announcing the new measures, Blunkett conducted a series of interviews, seeking to whip up anti-immigration sentiment. He said that asylum-seekers were "swamping" some British schools in a conscious echo of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s famous "being swamped by an alien culture" remarks. He told BBC’s "World Tonight" program, "We have at the moment almost an epidemic of judicial review."

Blunkett praised the anti-Islamic campaign of recently assassinated Dutch rightist Pim Fortuyn. The Home Secretary said that, like Fortuyn, he believed in "diversity through integration." Blunkett also railed against Muslim arranged marriages, comparing them to the "backward looking practices of the aristocracy in medieval England."

Asked by the interviewer Robin Lustig what he thought of the compatibility of Islam with modern society, Blunkett said that this "was a point Pim Fortuyn in his more rational moments was making in the lead-up to his assassination.... In my own constituency I talk to people who are not racist, who are not bigots. They fear and they fear things going wrong, things that are disintegrating that they see on their telly [television]. And I do actually have to say that the images we sometimes see...of what’s happening, for instance, from Sangatte and through the tunnel, does not help in order to get that balance right." Sangatte is a refugee center in Calais, France, that London is demanding be closed down near the entrance to the French-English Channel Tunnel.

Blunkett was praised by right-wing Tory Norman Tebbit for his anti-immigrant measures. Tebbit said that Blunkett and he shared a common understanding that "multiculturalism" was both undesirable and unworkable. As a member of Thatcher’s government in the 1980s, Tebbit famously insisted that immigrants should face a "cricket test" in which they should be welcomed only if they supported the English cricket team against teams from the Indian subcontinent or the West Indies.

Blunkett is less sporting, proposing to force asylum-seekers to learn English, take citizenship lessons, and swear an oath of allegiance before they can receive full British citizenship.

The government is also campaigning around claims that the budget for processing asylum cases and related expenses is rising. This received a boost when a judge ruled in favor of the Birmingham City Council’s move to have dozens of Dutch nationals of Somali origin thrown out of the country. The families will now have to return to the Netherlands in breach of EU free movement laws. The judge justified the ruling on the basis of the Birmingham council’s "limited resources."  
 
More visas for low-paid jobs
The government’s assault on the rights of immigrant workers is not designed to halt immigration. In fact, Blunkett, in a parallel move, has announced plans to increase the number of immigrant workers admitted to the country to be employed in low-paid seasonal jobs.

Currently 40,000 17–27 year olds from Commonwealth countries--the vast majority from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa--are admitted on two-year work permits. Another 20,000 seasonal workers from Eastern Europe are admitted on six-month visas to work as agricultural laborers to pick and process fruit, flowers, and vegetables. The government is planning to significantly increase the number of immigrant workers admitted under both schemes. The programs are called the Working Holidaymakers and Seasonal Agricultural Workers schemes.

In a telltale op-ed article in the May 13 Financial Times, Quentin Peel explained that British capitalism needs cheap labor from abroad, as do other European countries. "The euro area faces rapidly aging population," Peel wrote. "By 2015, one in five of the population will be aged 65 or older...the effective ban on official immigration in Europe for the past three decades has simply made hundreds of thousands would-be migrants illegal." The annual inflow of immigrants to Europe is estimated at between 300,000 and 500,000.  
 
 
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