E/CN.4/1996/72/Add.4 page 11 48. Today, increasing numbers of nationals of the new Commonwealth, unlike those of the old Commonwealth, are required to obtain visas. The views held by the Commission for Racial Equality differ from those of the Government with regard to immigration and the right to asylum. The Commission considers that the measures introduced in that respect are more rigorously applied to nationals of third world countries. The Church Commission for Racial Justice stated in its communication to the Special Rapporteur that: “United Kingdom policy appears to be consistently based on the desire to limit the number of Black and minority ethnic people coming into the country, and hasten the departure of some of those already here .... Visa controls have been placed on many (black) Commonwealth countries, while being lifted on (white) central and eastern European countries.” 49. Furthermore, the Government is very strict with regard to family reunification, to the point of requiring male or female applicants wishing to join a spouse or fiancé(e) residing in the United Kingdom to meet conditions over and above the law. Applications may be rejected on the grounds that, according to the traditions of the country of origin, it is not the fiancé who joins his fiancée or the husband who joins his wife, but rather the reverse. This is frequent in the case of people from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. In some cases, fiancés have never seen each other and wish to meet in order to found a family arranged by their respective families, but they encounter difficulties if either of them wishes to travel to the United Kingdom because the immigration authorities suspect them of wishing to circumvent the immigration laws. The Government, for its part, takes the view that its immigration policy is devoid of any discriminatory criteria and presents the statistics in Table 2 below. 50. With regard to the right to asylum, Government measures are clearly intended to discourage the arrival of asylum-seekers, the great majority of whom are from countries in the southern hemisphere. The Government considers that the measures taken are necessary in order to curb the exponential increase in the number of applicants, which rose from 4,000 in 1988 to 40,000 in 1995; 70,000 applications are currently pending. “Over 50 per cent of the applications were from Africa, with 30 per cent from Asia and nearly 20 per cent from Europe and America”. 10/ The Government's goal is to limit the granting of refugee status or the right of abode on humanitarian grounds to 4-5 per cent. 51. The 1994 statistics show that the majority of applications were from Africa (16,960) and Asia (9,500). There were 6,250 applications from Europeans. However, a proportionally greater number of Europeans were granted asylum (140) or the right of abode on humanitarian grounds (1,365) than Africans (115 and 1,815, respectively) and Asians (570 and 480) (see Table 2). 52. The basic elements of the strictness of the policy on immigration and the right to asylum are detention under the 1993 Asylum Act and the 1971 Immigration Act and the bill on asylum and immigration which the Government tabled in Parliament this winter.