Andrew Bartlett: You might have a look at the Migration Watch UK website, as they have collected the Home Office figures. From 1997-2002 21% of asylum seekers were granted asylum, including on appeal. 16% were granted exceptional leave to remain. Some of these were humanitarian cases that didn't quite meet the UN criteria, but in most cases the difficulty was in returning them, whether this was due to the home country, the asylum seeker or unavoidable circumstances. 13% were deported, and nearly all of the remaining 50% stayed on illegally. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people. Migration Watch (not the Home Office) blames this on such factors as the fact that the Home Office is swamped with appeals, that employers of illegal aliens are not prosecuted, and the lack of a national ID card. "The problem cannot be effectively tackled without fundamental change in the legal system to premit final decisions within weeks."

Most of those same factors would apply here. Releasing people who can't (not won't) go home and have already been detained for long periods of time, probably wouldn't cause any problems. However, if the arrivals started up again, people would have to be released after 90 days (under the Georgiou bills), would launch appeal after appeal, and would establish themselves and their families in the community so that as a practical matter they could not be deported. Success breeds success, so we would get more and more to try their luck. See Alan Anderson's recent column in the Sydney Morning Herald on this.

You say that mandatory detention had nothing to do with the boats stopping, but most people simply don't believe this. They are still getting asylum seekers in the countries that don't detain. Numbers are smaller than in the past, probably due to the world situation, but still substantial.

The abuse of immigrants and detainees in the United Kingdom was a precursor to the abandonment of universal ethical standards in relation to policing, prisons etc.

The mythical Britain of the 1950s has become lost beneath a sea of corruption and cruelty. First they tortured *their* women and children and then they did it to our own kind.

The general sense of official kindness vanished with the first dishonourable acts violating the sense of moral existence. The Britain of the 1950s was a lie, but it was also an aspiration

The UK *needs* high levels of forced labour to prosper. The issue is not too many migrants, it is too few. The Home Office operated a SBS scheme (Work Permits Sheffield) in cahoots with Ukrainian racketeers. Who cares about anything else when the Govt. is in bed with traffickers and slave traders? What is the point of keeping records? The Home Office allowed forged documents to be carried into British legations in suitcases. The British debate on imigration is a little preposterous when ultimately a gangster in Bucharest or Kyiv is in charge.

With the softening of mandatory detention children and families can now feel safe being able to live in the community. Then again, maybe not. Without appropriate financial support or the right to a work visa these people will be forced back into detention. They will be unable to support themselves or their children. Won't be entitled to medical if someone is sick or injured. Seems like another fine con job by the Howard government to me.