British Labor Party Appears Vulnerable on Immigration

Asylum seekers set off a surge of resentment in the late 1990s, with much of it centered in Dover. Conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere brought exiles to Britain's shores seeking a new home, quickly overwhelming the government's capacity to deal with them.

Many piled into Dover to await processing, which sometimes took months or years. Often the government gave them housing and financial assistance. In Dover, roving groups of young male asylum seekers frightened the locals, and in the summer of 1999, street unrest erupted.

Gwyn Prosser, the Labor member of Parliament from Dover, said the problem caught the government by surprise, but over the following two years, Labor instituted changes to the system that include stopping potential asylum seekers in France for initial processing, along with measures to speed up the decision-making process.

Statistics from the Home Office show that applications for asylum reached 84,000 in 2002 but by last year had fallen to 34,000, a decline attributed both to a falloff in nearby conflicts and to tighter rules for application. Prosser and his rival, Watkins, agree that local tensions over asylum seekers have diminished since 2001, although they differ on how serious the problem remains. Many citizens see no change.

While the number of applications has decreased, immigration continues to increase. With the healthiest major economy in Europe, Britain has become a magnet for workers in other countries.

Of late, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and others have arrived to fill low-wage or menial jobs in London and other parts of Britain. The numbers, although small by U.S. standards, are about 50 percent above the levels of the late 1990s. Labor has been trying to institute a more rational system for deciding who can stay.

Immigration and asylum are also issues in the campaign in Enfield, a north London suburb. Minorities make up only about 9 percent of the district's population, but the area is changing steadily. Joan Ryan, the Labor member of Parliament in Enfield, hears about that on the campaign trail. "Enfield people are very nice; they're good people," she said. "But change is difficult."

She contends that the Tories are making rational debate impossible by playing on racial and cultural fears. Her opponent, Nick de Bois, disagrees. "People in Enfield felt for years they could not talk sensibly about this issue without being accused of being racists," he said. "I could point you to many first- and second-generation immigrations of Asian or African background who feel as strongly about this issue as I do."

Blair came to Dover recently to deliver a tough speech on immigration and asylum seekers, one that the polls show helped to reduce the Conservatives' advantage on the issue. But Labor remains on the defensive, nervous about Thursday's balloting. People no longer talk about asylum seekers in the pubs the way they did a few years ago, but Watkins and Prosser said it remains a powerful issue. "People's memories are long," Watkins said. Added Prosser, "It's been burned into their psyche."