The analysis of Home Office statistics comes as the government seeks to overhaul immigration laws.

BBC Correspondent Rory Maclean: Refugees from Kosovo are amongst an estimated 45,000 seeking asylum in th UK

Research by the Immigration Service Union shows less than 10% of the 268,595 asylum seekers who arrived in Britain in the past decade received the refuge they sought.

But less than 20,000 have left or been removed and 59,198 people remain unaccounted for.

ISU's research director John Tincey told BBC News Online he thought the government's proposals were insufficient to tackle the problem.

"The main provision in the White Paper is changing the benefit system to stop asylum seekers claiming and it will not be in place till 2000. It's been tried in Denmark and it isn't resulting in people wanting to go home once they've been rejected."

He said more fundamental changes would be required to stop the number of asylum seekers arriving in the UK.

"Essentially the system we have is geared to dealing with very small numbers of refugees who escaped from the Soviet Union and behind the iron curtain. Now we have very large numbers," he said.

Immigration workers want more radical changes than the government is proposing

"What we're proposing is that you have to separate genuine asylum seekers from bogus ones without disadvantaging those who are genuine.

"We've got to look at what bogus asylum seekers come for, which is money. We need to find a way of treating all asylum seekers properly without actually giving them any money in their hands and that way remove their incentive to pay criminals to bring them here."

Even without benefits, asylum seekers are still able to work legally after six months, Mr Tincey said, while illegal immigrants are not.

The ISU proposes setting up reception centres for the 45,000 asylum seekers who arrive in Britain each year.

It suggests starting these on an experimental, country-by-country basis, combined with measures to prevent seekers taking employment.

Once people realised they would not be able to easily find work in the UK, bogus asylum seekers would switch their attention to other countries, Mr Tinsey said, and those already in the country would be encouraged to return home.

The ISU puts the costs of supporting growing numbers of refugees to the UK taxpayer as £2bn a year, although the government says the true figure is much lower.

The Queen's speech is likely to propose an end to the multiple-tier appeal system for asylum seekers, replacing it with a single level of adjudication.

The government is also unveiling plans to ease the burden on local councils of the costs of caring for asylum seekers.

This is intended to shift the financial burden of asylum seekers away from local councils and replace it with a single body funded by the Home Office.

Local authorities in London and the south east have been particularly hard hit by an influx of gypsies over the last year.