Most of the 1,000 immigrants allowed into Britain four years ago under a controversial deal to close the Sangatte refugee camp near Calais are jobless, it emerged.
Eight out of ten have claimed unemployment benefit since coming to the UK in December 2002, while a third have never been in work at all.
Former Home Secretary David Blunkett agreed to accept hundreds of immigrants from France as the price of ending the embarrassing saga of the Sangatte Red Cross camp where they were living - which for years was a base for tens of thousands of foreigners illegally smuggling themselves into the UK through the Channel ports to claim asylum.
After lengthy bargaining with his French counterpart David Blunkett agreed to take in up to a thousand young Iraqis and some 200 Afghan men - representing the bulk of the 1,500 immigrants living in the Sangatte camp at the time - regardless of whether they were genuine refugees.
Most Iraqis passing through Sangatte at the time reached the UK and lodged asylum claims, 80 per cent of which were judged to be bogus.
All genuine refugees are meant to claim asylum in the first safe country they reached and therefore should have sought refuge in France or elsewhere.
David Blunkett tried to present the deal as a triumph for Britain,
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