The number of asylum seekers has fallen for two years - but rose in the six years before that, in line with most of our European neighbours.
The 34,000 arriving in 2004 represented 8.5% of the applicants to the industrialised world.
But the numbers have fallen, not least since regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Asylum seekers only make up 15% of immigrants each year - and an even smaller proportion of the 5m foreign-born residents of the UK.
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