The inhumanity of removing children from already traumatised parents is an obvious one, but the article below taken from Black Information Link (BLINC)raises a different issue.

Plans to take the children of refugees into care will lead to massive new costs for councils, meaning higher council taxes and increased resentment towards asylum seekers.

The 1990 Trust warns that David Blunkett’s new asylum Bill will be ruthlessly exploited by racist extremists like the BNP, causing an upsurge in racism, racial attacks and public disorder.

Karen Chouhan, chief executive of campaign group and think tank The 1990 Trust said the legislation could turn into a ‘BNP charter.’

She said: "It is increasingly clear that plans to take failed asylum seeker’s children into care will not work. In fact it is likely to have the opposite effect.

"The spiralling costs for councils looking after these children will inevitably mean higher council taxes.

"This will be ruthlessly exploited by the BNP who will stir up even more anger at a local level. David Blunkett’s new law could turn into a racists charter giving a massive and extremely unwelcome boost to the BNP."

The far-right BNP already have a track-record in stirring up racism over asylum seekers which has seen them gain 16 councillors elected across Britain.

One of the main issues has been the financial cost of asylum seekers to local taxpayers.

Chouhan said the numbers of asylum seekers’ children taken into care under the proposed new Bill is likely to dwarf the numbers of unaccompanied asylum seeker children already accepted by councils.

She said: "We are talking thousands of children taken into care. This is inhumane – but it is also a policy doomed to failure.

"Many asylum seeker adults who’s claims have been rejected will believe that their children would be better off in care as they have no other options, and no support from the state. The parents will simply go underground and work illegally.

"It is also likely that the Home Office plans will breach the Children Act, the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the more recent Human Rights Act that guarantees a right to family life.

"The Home Secretary David Blunkett’s strategy seems to be to make life so unpleasant for asylum seekers that they will remove themselves. It will create untold misery and extreme hardship, but will fail in its aims to reduce numbers of asylum seekers.

"It will also mean desperate asylum seekers will be pushed into criminality and illegal working."

Critics believe that the Home Office's proposed new asylum law - the fifth in ten years - would mean that asylum adults would take the view that their children would be ‘better off’ in care, and therefore the law would not act as a deterrent.

It would actually encourage asylum adults to go ‘underground’, working illegally, in Britain while their children were provided with education and support by the state.

Taking children into care will almost certainly mean such children would have to be released into British society once they turn 18. It would be nonsensical to keep the children in care in a British environment for years only to deport them once they turn 18, making them ‘aliens’ in the country of their birth.

Again, you have to question a government motives which highlights the Refugee issue with such regularity. Total government spending on all aspects of immigration and asylum is £1.7bn. This represents 0.425% of total government spending.