So far the UK has managed to avoid the kind of clashes between asylum seekers and local residents that blight other European countries. Our workforce is now 19 per cent immigrant – an even higher percentage than America’s. But this relative harmony might soon be threatened.Since 2018 the processing backlog for asylum seekers has grown to a staggering size, thanks to the Home Office’s failures, Covid lockdowns and, to a lesser degree, a recent rise in the number of Channel crossings. The existing accommodation stock is overflowing – with 37,000 migrants being put up in hotels at a cost of £4 million a day.The Home Office needs an urgent solution, but the one it has found is far from ideal. Small towns and rural communities are being told they must host ‘processing centres’ and/or house asylum seekers – leaving desperate, bewildered migrants, who are banned from working, stranded in the countryside.