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Identity cards for asylum seekers to Britain

by Victor Jayanetti our London correspondent

In an unprecedented move by the government, Britain is to introduce identity cards for all asylum seekers entering the country. The new regulation that came into force only last week has already been criticised by many civil rights groups as an infringement of civil liberties.

In response, the government says the introduction of such cards is to clampdown fraud, but an immigrant group said it was discriminatory as ordinary citizens of Britain don't carry any ID cards. "It is another form of stigmatising asylum seekers. This is pointing fingers at a very vulnerable group of people in this country," Habib Rahman, Chief Executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said.

According to media reports here, there are 90,000 applicants seeking asylum in Britain, out of whom there are well over 5,000 Sri Lankans.

Unlike most of their European neighbours, British citizens do not have to carry identification cards, and civil liberty groups have raised an outcry at each attempt to introduce them.

The government, bidding to shed Britain's image as a soft touch for the hundreds of thousands of people seeking asylum in Europe each year, has pledged to tighten up procedures. In recent years Britain has overtaken Germany as the biggest European destination for asylum seekers from outside Europe. More than 80,000 people applied for asylum in Britain in 2000, a rise of 13 percent from the previous year.

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