THERE ARE THREE holding rooms for asylum-seekers at Dover Eastern Docks and, on the afternoon that I visit, there are 60 or so people in them. Most are just off the boat, literally, though some are “axle-grabbers” or came in the back of a lorry. They sit on the benches, for the most part mute, and wait to be processed. This involves a short immigration interview, plus being photographed, fingerprinted and given an identity card.

Most come with nothing but their stories and now they must tell them to immigration officers who will decide then and there if they are lying. If so, they will be sent to the new Dover removals centre or to Oakington in Cambridgeshire, the closed reception centre that provides a fast track out of the UK.

A crocodile of people squeezes past us in the hallway. “They are going to Oakington,” an officer says. Some are Chinese, some Roma Gypsies, the rest are nondescript. I wonder if they know they are doomed, and also how the Home Office will remove the Chinese as I have heard that Beijing refuses to have them back.

Everyone else will end up in bed and breakfast in or near Dover for 10 days before being dispersed around the country. Over the past few years the Government has privatised care and control of asylumseekers. So, for example, the processing at Dover port is handled by the US company Wackenhut, while the charity Migrant Helpline takes care of the 10-day period until dispersal. This is by far the most efficient part of the entire system: 97 per cent of asylum-seekers are processed within 24 hours.

A man named Ahmed is plucked off the bench to show me how the fingerprinting machine works. He is tall and his scalp is unevenly shorn. He looks rough: a burst blood vessel has turned part of one eye red. His ID card says he is from Afghanistan.

It is not possible to know his story. We have no common language, and the circumstances are against us anyway. This gulf of understanding is a defining characteristic of Britain’s asylum debate. When I tell people about this story, they often react in anger. “Don’t talk to me about asylum!” says one man, who declares that everyone from Albania is a thief. Does he know any Albanian asylum-seekers? No, he says, but he knows someone who does.

Do Britons not want anyone, whatever their circumstances, to seek asylum here? A MORI poll found that only 26 per cent of adults and 19 per cent of teenagers welcome asylum-seekers. Nor is there much grasp of the facts. Young people said the UK took 31 per cent of the world’s refugees, though the real figure is 1.98 per cent.

Gwyn Prosser, the Labour MP for Dover, says people’s attitudes to asylum-seekers can transform when they know one. But most of us have never met an asylum-seeker and, as things exist, never will. Everyone involved with asylum is afraid: the Government feels under siege from press and public, the charities are over-protective and the asylum-seekers themselves are frightened about almost everything. “Yes, he is paranoid,” said the lawyer of one man who, at the last moment, balked at talking to me. “But then he has every reason to be.”

Nick Hardwick, chief executive of the Refugee Council, says the Government’s tough talking creates more fear. “The whole tone of the debate has become much harsher. There has been a real shift, and I do think that it comes across as panic. It comes across that they are running around like headless chickens, an announcement a day keeps the vultures away, you know. And they keep announcing things that are absolutely impossible.”

When you go back and study these announcements, it is striking how unrealistic they are. For instance, the Government said its target was to remove 30,000 failed asylum-seekers this year. After only 5,030 had been sent home by the end of June, the Home Secretary had to admit that the target had been dropped.

In most cases, though, the Home Office trumpets announcements that are never heard of again. For instance, in July it was announced that failed Afghan asylum-seekers were to be sent back. So far, however, none has been. “There is no fixed date for the commencement of removals to Afghanistan,” a Home Office spokeswoman says. Similarly, in July the Immigration Minister, Beverley Hughes, said the Government “hoped to be in a position to begin enforced returns shortly” for Iraqi Kurds. To date, no Kurd has been returned.

In August the Home Office made the front pages with an announcement that Afghan asylum-seekers were to receive up to £2,500 each to go home. Some 17,000 were eligible. In September, the Home Secretary underscored this idea, saying he had no sympathy for young asylum-seekers, who should “get back home and rebuild their countries that we freed from tyranny, whether it be Kosovo or Afghanistan”.

Yet The Times has been told that so far just 13 Afghans have taken up this offer. Clearly it is not as simple as the Home Office thought. But what is the problem? Most Afghan asylumseekers shun the press, but finally, a young man named Hussain agrees to talk, though he does not want his full name used.