By Dominic Casciani BBC News Online community affairs reporter

Getting tough: More removals - but are they fairer?

On 9 January 2003, a 28-year-old man from Cameroon was denied asylum support because he had declared himself too late to qualify.

Had he applied as he arrived, rather than sleeping in a Leeds car park, he might have been given a room and a meal.

But he says he didn't know how the system worked. And so he became the first person affected by a new rule - 'Section 55' - which denies support to asylum seekers who don't declare themselves immediately at the port of entry.

That case and the 1,000 similar court battles which have followed sum up the past year's furore over asylum.

It's been a year of tougher rules amid pressure on the government to do something to cut the numbers.

Whether the man from Cameroon had a case for protection never got debated.

Age-old question

If asylum had been a political controversy in previous years, it was nothing compared to 2003.

Even though it is by no means the largest piece in the migration jigsaw, it remains the most unmanageable - and therefore the most open to political controversy.

And as the most talked-about element of migration, it has come to represent the age-old question that has never reached a consensus: Is continued migration a good thing or not?

Despite years of immigration and social change in the UK some people do not feel happy about continued migration.

WHO ARE ASYLUM SEEKERS? Key facts about the people coming to the UK At-a-glance

They see a "crowded island" with dense urban populations.

There is a feeling - though no evidence - that increased migration is the problem with some public services.

A fair number - including ethnic minorities - object to new arrivals if they believe they are getting something for nothing.

And so when television pictures show young men rushing down a bank to jump on a Channel Tunnel train, it's perhaps no wonder that they feel queasy.

It's against this backdrop - and 2002's record asylum applications - that the government decided to make 2003 the year of tough words.

A year on, the prime minister's target to halve asylum applications has been met.

Decisions are coming faster, fewer are being recognised as genuine and more of the failed are being removed, confirming suspicions that the majority don't have a case.

Emerging system

But then again, successful appeals against rejections have risen dramatically -and the vast majority of asylum seekers come from countries scarred by conflict and human rights abuses.

David Blunkett, the home secretary, has sought to prove the emerging system is compassionate to the deserving and firm with those who are not.

One of his most surprising moves of the year was when he dropped thousands of cases involving families who had yet to have a final decision on their applications.

Reaction was divided between those who thought he was being fair-minded and those who thought he had simply lost it.

Amid the furore over the figures, something surprising happened.

Children: Fears they could be forced into care

Mr Blunkett, seeking to seize the debate back, became the first home secretary in a long time to be absolutely unambiguous about what migration means to him.

He declared there is no upper limit to managed economic migration because it can only be to the benefit of the UK. He says he will continue to open up legal routes to prove so.

But at the same time, he says, asylum remains problematic and should be subject to strict controls.

As for wider community cohesion, he believes this balance will pull the rug from beneath racists who have stirred up tensions in the past five years.

It was a bold move - but his problems going into 2004 remain huge.

His critics on the political right say he has no control over our borders.

His critics on the left say if he wants to stop the racists he should scrap policies that force people into the black economy and treat asylum seekers as criminals.

Those working with refugees say his new Bill makes a mockery of government claims to be compassionate, not least the proposals to take some asylum children into care.

Fear of the stranger

Amid all of this, fear of the stranger is running high in British society. At rallies against planned asylum reception centres, you will hear concerns that the arrival of large groups of young men will destabilise their area

Elsewhere, racism has risen and we have seen clashes, such as those in Wrexham, between locals and new arrivals.

Looks bleak? Well before we look ahead, it's perhaps worth looking back.

Just over 30 years ago, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin decided to kick all the British passport holding Asians out of the country.

The then Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath, in the face of bitter opposition, said the UK was morally bound to offer them refuge.

Leicester, fearing the city would be swamped, tried to deter the would-be newcomers by taking out adverts in the Ugandan press.

Return to Leicester today and you will find some 30,000 of the city's jobs have been created by those families who ignored those adverts.

Elsewhere, Ugandan Asians and their children comprise some of the most successful people in the country.

Leicester knows, happily to its fading embarrassment, how wrong first impressions can be.