Europe needs refugees.

On my way home the other day, I was stopped by a young girl, probably about 12 years old. She looked like a Romany asylum seeker from Eastern Europe--and, because I'm aware of the hard time they have had both at home and here in Britain, I decided to give her some money. As I opened my purse, a well-dressed white woman turned on me and said, `Don't give her anything! They get more than we do!'

The woman didn't look as if she was living on benefits--and certainly not on the vouchers worth 70 per cent of social security which are all asylum seekers in Britain now get. But her fury was typical of the feelings of many in Britain today.

There's xenophobia in this and, as many voices have been pointing out recently, racism. There's ignorance of the wars, persecution and human rights abuse that drive people to leave their countries. And there's fear that Britain is being taken for a ride, and that new arrivals are jumping the queue for housing and swamping local people.

Last year, 71,169 people asked for asylum in Britain, more than ever before. This increase was partly explained by the crises which rocked the last year of the century: 11,465 of these people came from Kosovo alone. Because of the slowness of the procedures, only some 33,000 asylum claims were decided in 1999. Interestingly, in view of accusations that the `vast majority' of claims are unfounded, over 20,000 were told they could stay in Britain, partly as a result of special arrangements for cases dating from before 1995.

Of course, the size of the influx poses problems for our country and, of course, some of those knocking at our gates have a better case for admission than others. But we have to ask ourselves, what makes people so desperate that they would travel so far, and suffer so much, to enter a country which does so little to welcome them? Humanity, faith and an awareness of our role in maintaining an unjust world system should all incline us to be more generous.

A recent report from the UN Population Division offers another, less altruistic, incentive for welcoming new arrivals. The EU's population is declining and becoming top heavy: by 2050, if there is no immigration, our total population will have fallen by 41 million, and that of working age by 61 million. To maintain the present ratio between working and retired people, Europeans will have to work until they are 76. Perhaps, after all, the current influx of young, work-hungry people from other parts of the world is just what we need?