[Osem]

So far as I am concerned anyone who comes here with a made up story of being persecuted or whatever and claims asylum (when in fact they're just economic migrants looking for a better life) is an illegal immigrant. The fact that the 'system' often isn't sufficiently robust to easily detect them, prove their illegality and remove them doesn't alter that.

Anyone who's watched any of the many documentaries shown on immigration will know that whilst many asylum seekers genuinely need and deserve our help, a good proportion are simply cynically abusing the system knowing that by so doing they can stay here one way or the other virtually indefinitely. That's one reason so many of them either hide or destroy their ID - without it it's extremely difficult to remove them back to their country of origin.

Not all asylum seekers are genuine and if they're not, they're by definition illegal.