Up to 80,000 bogus asylum seekers granted 'amnesty'

They have been in the UK for so long the Government has decided not to even bother considering their claims.

It is the last shocking indictment of Home Office incompetence.

Officials had lost track of up to 30,000 of the claimants, or did not even know they were here in the first place.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said: "This amounts to an amnesty by default.

"It is Home Office inefficiency that has led to these claims being granted."

The shambles dates back to 2003, when then Home Secretary David Blunkett announced a desperate plan to clear the spiralling asylum backlog.

He said families which had applied for refugee status before October 2000 and had been in the UK for four years could stay and be given full rights to work.

Mr Blunkett asked his officials to trawl for who might be eligible and made a prediction that 15,000 families, or 50,000 people, would benefit.

But the Daily Mail can reveal that the exercise, which is now on the verge of being completed, has already led to 24,030 families being given indefinite leave to remain.

It is the equivalent of almost 80,000 people, with another 500 family cases still to be considered.

Most of the clams are likely to have been bogus - Government statistics show fewer than one in ten applicants whose claims are actually processed is granted asylum.

But, simply by staying in the country for long enough without having their claims considered, they will now be allowed to stay.

Equally alarming is the Government's woeful underestimate of who may be eligible. It follows revelations of up to 450,000 asylum claims sitting in boxes, waiting to be dealt with.

Almost 10,000 of the families granted an amnesty, or 30,000 people, were either not known to officials or had had their paperwork lost.

Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green said: "This is yet another example of a huge failure in the government's ability to make reliable estimates.

"No wonder they can't run a properly managed system of asylum and immigration when their predictions of what will happen are so often completely wrong."

The amnesty, known as the Family Indefinite Leave to Remain exercise, will be an acute embarrassment to the Home Office.

It is a shocking combination of two of its biggest failings - producing accurate immigration and asylum estimates, and dealing promptly with refugee claims.

Earlier this week, it was revealed its prediction of the number of Eastern Europeans who would head to Britain following EU enlargement was hopelessly wrong.

It predicted 13,000 a year, but was forced to admit at least 600,000 have flooded in since May 2004.

The failure to process asylum claims has also caused repeated embarrassment.

Earlier this year, we revealed at least 6,000 failed asylum seekers who should have been deported from the UK were being allowed to stay so they could have a second go at winning refugee status.

The farce stemmed from the failure of officials to get the estimated 400,000,000 failed refugees out of the country within a reasonable time of being turned down.

They are staying here for so long, they can legitimately claim their circumstances back home have changed dramatically since first being rejected.

The Home Office, under human rights obligations not to deport people to countries where they could face ill-treatment or torture, is then forced to reconsider. A second tactic for clearing the backlog had run into trouble. Ministers are offering a £3,000 bribe for failed refugees to go home, payable after they leave the country.

But, incredibly, they are being allowed to then return to Britain. At least nine have already done so - four Albanians, three from Kosovo, a Pole and a Nigerian. One of the ex-aslyum seekers has already received a second free trip home.

The Home Office originally defended the amnesty by saying that the families which are mainly from Kosovo and Turkey would otherwise be living on benefits unable to work.

Mr Blunkett said at the time: "Granting this group indefinite leave to remain and enabling them to work is the most cost- effective way of dealing with the situation and will save taxpayers' money on support and legal aid."

The Government has ruled out giving an amnesty to the hundreds of thousands of failed asylum seekers living in Britain. Ministers admit it may act as a magnet for other bogus refugees to travel here to make a claim.