The Coming Crackdown.(refugee system a "terrorist's social service", London, England)

The makeshift embassy of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq occupies a dreary flat behind London's Victoria Station. Last week exiles gathered there to sip sweet tea and savor the prospect of returning to a Saddam-free country. London's long been a setting for such scenes. Across the city, refugees of every political stripe meet amid maps of distant lands and grainy photos of exiled leaders to talk of revolution--and extensions of their visas. "Britain is one of the most tolerant societies in the world," notes Siamand Banaa, the Iraqi Kurds' U.K. representative.

But Britain's famed openness--particularly to those seeking political asylum--is wearing thin. The latest immigration figures show that it received 110,000 asylum applicants last year--compared with 4,000 in 1988. With the prospect of war and fears of terrorism growing, the government has become desperate to cut those numbers. Lately there's been talk of withdrawing from the 1951 Geneva Convention, which commits signatories to grant asylum to those facing persecution in their own countries. Britain currently maintains seven detention centers, which together can hold about 1,600 refugees, where it keeps people whose applications have been rejected and others that the Home Office fears might simply disappear while their papers are being processed. But by next year, if the government gets its way, far more asylum seekers will be held in state "'accommodation centres," as the government has taken to calling them. The ultimate aim, Prime Minister Tony Blair said last month, is to halve the number of asylum seekers by September.

Opposition to the crackdown is mounting. Citizens worried about crime and property values have protested proposed detention centers. Britons also take human-rights concerns very seriously. Last month Home Secretary David Blunkett appealed a High Court judgment that part of his 2002 immigration act was "inhumane." The law tried to deny benefits to some asylum seekers if they failed to declare their claims on arrival, or very soon thereafter. Refugee-rights groups appealed, and won round one. A decision on Blunkett's appeal is expected early this week.

Clearly, though, British sympathy for asylum seekers has waned. The discovery that several of the Algerians arrested this winter for producing the deadly toxin ricin in a ...