The piper picks the tune. A pickle.

From the still-sometimes-sound Telegraph:

Asylum seekers who should have been deported from the country cost £73 million to house and feed last year, new figures have disclosed.

Almost 10,000 failed asylum seekers received an average of £150 a week in accommodation and food allowances while they appealed against deportation.

Ministers have admitted the significant increase in costs borne by the taxpayer – almost 20 times the £4 million spent four years ago – is due to a large backlog of failed claimants, who cannot be removed despite judges ruling they have no right to stay here.

Who should be preventing this?

Phil Woolas, Immigration Minister, has blamed lawyers for "playing" the system and delaying deportation by arguing that their clients cannot be returned to their homelands because of conflict or because they are unwell.

Not being the BBC, the Telegraph got a second - and contrary - opinion.

But the Refugee Council, which provides advice to asylum seekers, said that the heart of the problem lay with the Home Office for running a process that is "under-resourced" and plagued with "administrative problems".

Wow, the Refugee Council – sounds like they know their stuff, right? Must be on the up-and-up, cushty, kosher, on the level, and definitely playing the game.

Just so you know who profits by helping illegal immigrants stay here and help our native born chavs bleed us white, ahem.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Johhny:

The Refugee Council ipses.

The Refugee Council in Wikipedia.

And the Refugee Council in Fake Charities.

Note that funding in FC….

Its 2007/08 accounts show a total income of £18,820,000, of which:

* Border & Immigration Agency: £12,881,000

* Leeds City Council: £221,000

* Barnsley City Council: £175,000

* Norfolk County Council: £138,000

* Dept. of Health: £50,000

* ---

* Total £13,465,000 (71.5% of all income)

It received a further £163,000 from the Lottery.

Let’s strip that down a bit, shall we? Back to basics, sort of thing.

Its 2007/08 accounts show a total income of £18,820,000, of which: Border & Immigration Agency: £12,881,000

...a total income of £18,820,000, of which: Border & Immigration Agency: £12,881,000

...Border & Immigration Agency: £12,881,000

…Immigration Agency: £12,881,000

…Immigration : £12,881,000

So there is a Government agency which was set up to deal with the cost and inconvenience caused by failed asylum seekers to those of us who are already rightfully dwelling in Britain.

They are supposed to fulfil this task by finding and removing people who should not be living here and consuming scarce public resources after their appeals fail.

This self same organisation funds a pan-European- and UN-mandated agency whose task it is to help keep those people living here and consuming said scarce public resources.

Let’s just forget for a moment whether I’m right to care about immigration or if I’m just all darkly hot and racistly-bothered and aching to feed Sudanese babies back into the maw of the evil Quaker Janjaweed militia. Let's just concentrate on the UK Border Agency having a job to do,and being supposed to do that job. I mean, you wouldn't trust an organisation tasked to increase educational standards and to teach children well which year in year out produced less well-qualified children despite ever-lower standards of attainment, would you? That'd just be crazy, right?

This is about honesty in government.

I may have noticed a problem of separation of powers here, or is it conflict of interest? Is isn’t there just a tiny possibility of some kind of inter-agency corruption, mission-creep and going native or going immigrant, or something in this?

Or is this New Labour’s famous joined-up government?

68% of the annual budget of an outfit tasked to help keep some people in is from the outfit whose job is to keep them out or to remove them if they are here wrongly.

Just a thought or two so liberals and socialists can see the problem in their own terms, okay.

If a pro-contraception and abortion charity financed a pro-life evangelical church to the extent of 68% of its annual budget how enthusiastic about contraception and abortion would you trust the charity to be, and what would the trend in the charity’s provision of the pill and abortions be do you think?

If an anti-alcohol charity financed a distillery to the extent of 68% of its annual budget how enthusiastic about moderation or abstention would you trust the charity to be, and what would the trend in the charity’s drying-out success rate for its clients be do you think?

If an anti-racism charity financed a theatre company called Whites Only to the extent of 68% of its annual budget, how enthusiastic about toleration and diversity would you trust the charity to be, and what would the trend in multiracial happiness be do you think?

I tried to test this suspicion by turning it around and asking myself if the keep them in brigade took money from the chuck them out gang, then wouldn’t you expect the keep them in brigade to be corrupted by its funding, and fail or at least start to fail in its key mission? Who pays the piper picks the tune?

So the Border & Immigration Agency must be doing the Refugee Council into the ground and shoving the huddled masses back onto the boats and planes round the clock, huh? You think?

Baaaaarrpp!

Instant fail.

It’s time for you to leave the Big Government House.

This is liberal Britain so do not fear, o sojourner from the Port Side.

Here’s the UKBA’s success rate for 2007.

Table 1 Applications for British citizenship received and decided in the United Kingdom,1997- 2007

Year Applications Grants Refusals Refusal %

1997 66,000 37,010 4,745 11%

1998 68,030 53,935 3,750 7%

1999 67,400 54,900 3,995 7%

2000 62,475 82,210 6,785 8%

2001 109,005 90,295 9,530 10%

2002 115,500 120,125 8,455 7%

2003 147,345 130,535 10,555 7%

2004 132,630 148,275 13,820 9%

2005 219,115 161,700 19,905 11%

2006 149,695 154,020 15,310 9%

2007 160,980 164,635 15,630 9%

Wow. That’s, like, a nine in ten chance of staying here if you ask for it.

Back to the frothing rabid unreasoning racism, my public probity point having been made.

To be fair, not all of these are asylum seekers – a majority of those lose their applications and their appeals – see pages 11 and 12 of this.

But asylum isn’t everything – these are grants of settlement – this time on page 19 of it.

That’s more like it

Here are the Home Office Immigration and Asylum Statistics. Read ‘em and weep.

I especially invite you to look the first page of this.

One thing still puzzles me, Inspector, and that’s where the hell did all those UKIP and BNP votes come from?