58 deaths spark debate over attitude to immigrants

LONDON - As the grim results of autopsies on 58 Chinese illegal entrants found dead in Dover continue to surface, a fierce debate on immigration and asylum in Britain is heating up.

``Had the immigrants survived there would have been nothing but condemnation of the `bogus asylum-seekers' and calls from both left and right for their deportation,'' said the liberal daily Guardian. ``Why does it take deaths on such a gruesome scale to evoke the correct response?''

Yesterday, following stomach-turning descriptions of the last moments of the young men and women, in an overheated and airless Dutch truck, police in the Netherlands arrested a man. They refused to say if the suspect was Arle van der Speck, 24, the Dutch engineer who registered a company in Rotterdam last week that leased the truck.

Police in Dover continued to interrogate the truck driver, who was also under arrest.

As the news splashed over the front pages of the national newspapers, the debate over accepting foreigners into Britain took a newly sympathetic turn.

For months the government has talked tough on asylum seekers, saying it's cracking down on phony claimants, including cutting cash support payments.

William Hague, leader of the Opposition Tories, has also racheted up animosity toward asylum-seekers. But the shocking discovery at Dover has brought calls for a reassessment of Britain's policies on immigration and asylum, even in traditionally conservative quarters.

``Official policy, which is to `keep new immigration to a small and inescapable minimum,' needs review for three reasons,'' says the Times of London. ``It virtually forces migration to be clandestine; it does not reflect practice (more than 150,000 people came to Britain last year, half on work permits); and the theoretical `near zero' takes too little account of the fact that in Britain, fertility trends point to a marked future decline in the ratio of working-age people to pensioners.''

Yesterday's newspapers were also full of articles detailing the miserable conditions the refugees were fleeing in Fujian province of southern China, and their struggle for a better life.

Meanwhile, television news reports have featured interviews with customs officers and police, describing the terrible deaths of the migrants, some barely out of their teens, who may have been forced to pay up to $50,000 (Cdn.) each to smugglers. They were locked in the truck behind some crates of tomatoes, and the refrigeration unit was turned off. The deaths have been attributed to asphyxiation.

Yang Chen, 20, who slipped into Britain in January and has applied for political asylum, said he was sure his cousin, Chen Lin, 19, was among the dead.

The teenager's parents had borrowed $21,000 for the trip, and their son left Fujian province in February, Yang told Britain's Press Association.

He phoned home regularly during the journey through Beijing, Moscow, on foot through the mountains of the Czech Republic and then to the Netherlands.

``The last call was from Holland on Sunday and they said they were travelling to the United Kingdom that night,'' Yang added. ``They have not heard from him since.''