Ker-Ching ! Ker-Ching !

Failed asylum seeker ? We'll give you £4K to go home.

In all, I was promised a package worth approximately £4,000 in cash and allowances, including an airline ticket, the £1,000 to set up a business, three months’ salary for two staff, accommodation, a car and office equipment – and no questions asked. The IOM is currently advertising its repatriation programme in the ethnic-minority media in Britain, and financial incentives have been increased. According to the Home Office, 3,290 people have left under the scheme in the first nine months of this year. Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, said: “Last year we removed more failed asylum seekers than ever before.”

The Sunday Times investigated after it was alerted that failed asylum seekers were playing the system. I met several asylum seekers who had applied for the IOM’s financial assistance programme and were already planning their return to Britain once they got their business established in their country of origin.

Unless you've been trafficked in, of course, when much more is available.

These payouts could damage prostitution rackets, as they're replaced by compensation rackets.

The women who received £140,000 were smuggled from eastern Europe by British-based criminals using established international sex trafficking networks. One girl was illegally brought into the UK five years ago, aged 13. Another was trafficked in 2003 when she was 16. Both were kept prisoner by the same trafficking syndicate until they managed to escape at the start of last year. According to lawyers, who have agreed to protect the identity of claimants, they were subject to 'forced prostitution, multiple rapes and beatings' while being held captive in the UK. In addition, their captors refused to give the victims money and warned they would be killed if they fled. The highest award was £62,000, the lowest £16,500.

So if illegal immigrants are victims of crime while here, the taxpayer will compensate them.

The authority, which awards compensation to victims of violent crime, has agreed payments for 'false imprisonment and forced prostitution during the time of their imprisonment' though neither exists as an official category for damages. Sarah Johnson, of Lovells, said: 'This will serve as a precedent for other cases and we are delighted.'

I'm presuming that Lovells are taxpayer funded via legal aid. And I know the Poppy Project is.

The Poppy Project, which helps trafficked women after they have been rescued from their captors, hailed the payments as a 'tremendous breakthrough' and said that, in theory at least, thousands of women would qualify.

So taxpayer cash is used to set up an organisation to campaign for more taxpayer cash to be handed out. I'm sure I've heard that before.

And these formerly poor women will return home with their compo ?

The women who have received compensation are understood not to have been deported. Victims will shortly win the right to stay in Britain temporarily after the government signalled its intent to ratify the Council of Europe's convention on action against trafficking.

Ah yes. Temporary as in permanent. Former prostitutes with links to organised crime are just the New Britons we need.


UPDATE - repatriation grants - £30 million and rising. And stand by for more applicants.

This is the reality of Europe's new eastern frontier, 1,800 miles long, from Estonia in the north to Slovenia in the south. From Friday, it will be the only line of defence against tens of thousands of would-be immigrants drawn inexorably towards the EU every year. Under rules which take effect on Friday, anyone inside this frontier will be able to travel between countries without having to show a passport. Hungary, Poland and other countries that became EU members in 2004 are joining the "Schengen" area, within which there are no internal border controls. There will no longer be checks on anyone entering Germany and Austria from the east. And although Britain is not within the zone, illegal immigrants will be free to roam all the way to the French side of the Channel.

The intention is to make it easier for European citizens to move around, but word has spread quickly to those dreaming of a new life in the West. Somalis, Afghans, Iraqis, Mongolians, Georgians and Kosovan Serbs and Albanians are beating a path to the border, eager to try their luck.