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The Bishop of Dudley, the Right Reverend David Walker, has attacked UK politicians for greatly exaggerating problems caused by immigration. He told UK Sunday newspaper The Observer, 'The tone of the current debate suggests that it is better for 10 people with a legitimate reason for coming to this country to be refused entry than for one person to get in who has no good cause. It is wholly disproportionate as a response'.
David Cameron, the UK's Prime Minister, has made a speech on immigration in which he said that he intended to 'roll out the red carpet' for 'the right migrants' but at the same time also make immigrants pay to use the National Health Service and to bar them from claiming social housing or social security benefits until they have worked in the UK for two years.
A committee of MPs has published a report which contains savage criticism of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) and its former chief executive Lin Homer. The report says that the UKBA has repeatedly misled the committee for the last six years and that senior management must have been either deliberately misleading parliament or thoroughly incompetent.
Eric Pickles, the UK's Communities Minister, has revealed that a UK government report estimates that 12,700 Romanians and Bulgarians will settle in the UK in 2014. Speaking on 18th March 2013, Mr Pickles added that he considered that the figure was 'meaningless' and said 'No matter how many fancy calculations you can make, I don't know. The truth is, nobody really knows'.
Until Mr Pickles has made his announcement, UK government ministers had admitted that the government had an estimate but had refused to say what it was.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has issued a report which says that 479,300 people from the developing world sought asylum in the developed world in 2012. The number is the highest total since 2003. Most are fleeing violence and war. 24,800 Syrians made asylum claims in the developed world in 2012. This was three times the number in 2011 but a mere fraction of the estimated 1m Syrians who are thought to have fled Syria and to be living in Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.
The UK's Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg MP, has made a speech on immigration in which he proposed the introduction of a system of bond payments in order to prevent people coming to the UK from certain countries from overstaying their visas.
In a wide-ranging speech, about the immigration policy of his party, the Liberal Democrats, Mr Clegg said that he wanted to give British citizens three 'assurances'.