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I am a supporter of the UK being a compassionate country that offers asylum to those genuinely in need. However, it seems to me the only solution to the current abuse of the UK's asylum procedures is to hold that anyone who enters the country illegally in the back of a lorry or via a small boat forfeits their right to claim asylum in the UK, on the irrefutable understanding that those migrants must have passed through one or several other safe countries en route to their preferred destination of the UK. Asylum should only be offered to those who have behaved properly by presenting themselves having escaped whatever they were fleeing, reached another safe country and applied from there. The gangs operating the small boats would therefore have nothing to offer besides illegal entry into the UK..