By Dominic Casciani BBC News Online community affairs reporter

Sangatte has gone, the government has introduced tough new asylum rules. Asylum is undeniably one of the major issues for this government - but the debate is made all the more difficult by the fact that the figures are complicated, to say the least.

The 2002 figures show that there has been a huge jump in applications to 110,700 including dependents.

The figures for 2002 are deeply unsatisfactory, but no surprise, with applications from Iraq and Zimbabwe accounting for nearly all the increase from 2001 Home Secretary David Blunkett Labour's battle with asylum Click here for more

By far and away the largest group of asylum seekers last year came from just one nation: Iraq.

More than 14,000 of its citizens fled for Britain - twice the number from the next nearest country in the list, Zimbabwe.

While the focus of the debate is consistently on the numbers of presumed bogus asylum seekers, the figures plainly show that the highest numbers always come from nations experiencing war or significant human rights abuses.

In 2001 the top nation was Afghanistan, the year before it was Iraq. At the height of the Kosovo war in 1999 the highest number of applications came from - guess where - Kosovo and former members of Yugoslavia.

Merits of cases

The overwhelming majority of applications - 68% - were made "in-country". This is jargon for those who do not queue up in orderly fashion at a port and hand in paperwork.

APPLICANTS BY NATION: TOP TEN Iraq: 14,940 Zimbabwe: 7,695 Afghanistan: 7,380 Somalia: 6,680 China: 3,735 Sri Lanka: 3,180 Turkey: 2,890 Iran: 2,685 Pakistan: 2,440 DR Congo: 2,315 Source: Home Office

Most asylum seekers have their first whiff of the system when they are dropped at roadsides by well-organised trafficking gangs.

The government sought to clamp down on in-country applications in the 2002 Act - but the section withdrawing support from these people could be confined to the dustbin if the home secretary loses a critical High Court appeal on Monday.

So how many of these people are "authentic" asylum seekers? The problem is that it's very difficult to know because of the way the figures are presented.

Internationally, the UN's refugee agency says the UK receives just 2% of the world's refugees.

Of those who arrived in 2002, the government says 10% were granted refugee status - 8,100 people. This does not mean the remaining 90% were false applicants.

A quarter were given "exceptional leave to remain", a mechanism which allows people to stay if immigration officials can't fit them into the legal terms of the 1951 Refugees Convention.

It is this mechanism the government says is being abused, and which it plans to replace with "humanitarian protection". Nobody knows at present how this will operate.

So taking these into account gives the government its rejection tally of 66% of all applicants.

More complications

The problem with this number is that it does not include appeals. In 2002 there were more than 13,000 cases where specialist adjudicators ruled the Home Office had got it wrong.

Asylum seeker figures Total applications: 85,865 Total including dependents: 110,700 Rise over 2001: 20% 50% accepted Applications across EU (excluding Italy) fell by 1% By far the biggest group came from Iraq

More asylum figures

So after adding all this up, we can comfortably say half of applications were accepted as genuine. But that's not all.

The Refugee Council and others say that the Home Office does not adequately record further appeals or occasions when it drops the case.

According to a figure put before Parliament, the number of cases withdrawn and given leave to remain in 2000 was 5,000 - some 16% of all the applications that year. No figure is available for this year or last.

Paperwork

Confused yet? Well there's more.

Some of those who are classed as false applicants are never removed because they cannot prove their nationality.

Quite simply, there is no country which can "take back" these people. This undocumented group are in a legal limbo, neither accepted as genuine refugees nor deported for being bogus.

Finally, there is the paperwork test. In the last quarter, almost 12,130 people (15% of applicants) were failed on "non-compliance grounds".

This means they failed to get their paperwork right. This documentation is 19 pages long and must be completed in English within 10 days.

No allowance is made for asylum seekers who cannot find a lawyer or immigration advisor to help them within that period and this, says the Refugee Council, accounts for a large number of the rejections.