The 1999 Immigration and Asylum Seekers Act

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The 1999 Immigration and Asylum Seekers Act

To begin with this essay will give reasons why the 1999 Immigration

and Asylum Seekers Act was introduced, also the measures put in place

to deal with this issue. Secondly, the measures Labour implemented to

tackle this asylum issue, the affect of the voucher scheme on social

welfare and its criticism’s. Additionally this essay will explore the

affects of the Enforced Dispersal element of the 1999 Act and it’s

implications for the asylum seekers and the local authorities, next

the essay with cover the problems of the Asylum Seekers Act, the

influences that make up policy looking at implementation and

evaluation of policy, also exploring the historical factors that make

up policy and then summing up with final points.

The introduction of the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Seekers Act was

about the rapid rise of asylum seekers during the 1980s throughout

this period people seeking asylum continued to grow and increased

further in the 1990s. In many cases asylum seekers fled their country

because of potentially danger of torture from war. Asylum seekers

often have to encounter concerns of financial hardship and

homelessness. The current changes in legislation have limited asylum

seekers rights to public housing, welfare benefits and employment. The

Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 established new immigration measures

and powers along with comprehensive changes to the way asylum seekers

were looked after while they waited for a verdict on their

application (homelessnesspages.org.uk, 2000).

These measures were part of the 1998 findings of the Labour

government’s migration evaluation w...

... middle of paper ...

...vident with the 1999 Immigration

and Asylum Seekers Act.

To sum up briefly the core argument of this essay suggested that the

Labour government make an assumption that most asylum seekers were

bogus based partly by the negative media reports which described

asylum seekers as scroungers. With the social welfare policies in the

1999 immigration Act, the Labour government did not consider the

ethical considerations of the policies making the asylum seekers feel

vulnerable to discrimination and racism this was illustrated by the

ill feeling towards the asylum seekers in Glasgow when people felt

bitter by the hand outs in given to the asylum seekers in the way of

housing. Instead the Labour government looked at the financial

considerations with implementing the changes in the 1999 Immigration

and Asylum Seekers Act.

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