But in some EU states, asylum has become a totemic issue. It overlaps with other emotional matters such as ethnicity and identity, revealing an illiberal streak in liberal democracies. But we should keep things in perspective. It may have been easier for migrants to enter the UK 100 years ago, but once there they were far more likely to face violence and had nothing like the legal and social protection of today s welfare states. None the less, resentment of the other can be exploited by demagogues, especially when there is no obvious gap in the job market for refugees to fill.
Most people think about the asylum issue in domestic terms, but it is pan-European.
Across the continent, the policy issues and the debate are remarkably similar. Even Ireland, whose modern history is one of mass emigration, saw asylum applications leap from 39 in 1992 to more than 4,600 in 1998. Some countries have experienced much larger increases than others. Austria, Holland, Sweden and Switzerland have, at times during the last decade, received high numbers of refugees per head of their populations, while some of the larger states, especially France, Italy and Spain, have received relatively fewer. Britain is in the middle of the field.