S. Asian refugee kids abandoned at UK ports

By OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

London

Oct. 4: Thousands of children, who are 17 years old or less, are being abandoned at ports and airports, to enable them to get residency rights in Britain.

Under the British law, an unaccompanied child asylum seeker is entitled to be looked after by the local authority and cannot be deported if family is not traced.

In 2007, 3,525 unaccompanied children aged 17 years or below applied for asylum in the UK, showing an increase of two per cent on 2006. A majority of the children involved were between 16 and 17 years old, 24 per cent were between 14 to 15 years and 11 per cent were under 14 years old. However, some abandoned children were as young as three years old too.South Asian children formed a bulk of asylum seekers as 1,135 children from Afghanistan, 125 from Bangladesh, 75 from Pakistan and 65 from Sri Lanka applied for asylum in 2007, according to home office figures.

Iranian, Chinese, Iraqi, Eritrean, Somali and Nigerian children make up the Top 10 in the list of child asylum seekers.

The number of children from India was not specified but earlier in 2008 a nine-year-old Sikh boy was found abandoned in west London. Gurrinder Singh, who only speaks Punjabi and does not know English, was found abandoned in Southall, but most children declare themselves as refugees at their first port of call in Britain. The police was unable to trace his family or relatives in India.