From: Phil Payne 

> They often have zero documentation on arrival. Yet they managed
> to travel half way around the world. The suggestion is that the whole
> thing is a scam organised by gangs who promise desperate people paradise
> for $10,000 (or whatever it is) per head. Once on the boat, they destroy
> all their identity documents so they can claim to be refugees by the UN
> definitions.

And just how does someone in such a position scrape together $10,000 even
for themselves, much less the same sum for each member of their family?

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2437254

"Britain received almost one in five of asylum applicants in the
Western world in 2002, according to a report released today.

With 110,700 applications, the UK topped a list of highly developed
countries, taking in almost a third of the EU’s asylum-seekers and 30,000
more than the second-placed US, said the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD)."

Try going to live in Monaco - you have to take an amount of cash in with
you.  Similarly I could move to Australia pretty easily - I would need to
take around GBP250k and promise to employ a certain number of Australians
within a certain period.  By scraping together $10k each, these people have
passed a similar test.

We had the same with the Ugandan Asians thrown out by Idi Amin - I know
several and they've donw nothing but contribute positively to our economy.

--
  Phil Payne
  http://www.isham-research.com
  +44 7785 302 803
  +49 173 6242039

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