Asylum seekers are dying in British ports. It’s time we looked after them properly.

The tale is now familiar: shouts are heard from inside a freight container and police are called. A cargo of human beings is discovered, some gravely ill. This happened last Sunday along the Thames at Tilbury docks. Thirty-five Afghans were discovered. One of them, Meet Kapoor, was already dead. Days later, 15 Kashmiris and Eritreans were found on a lorry pulled over in Somerset, dehydrated but alive. Dozens of people are now being found each week in these kinds of circumstances.

It is not just economic migration: the Afghans found in Essex were Sikhs, for example, a group singled out for repression under the Taleban. Once they must have hoped that a stable government would emerge in Kabul, allowing for the return of the 1.4 million Afghans still in exile. But this did not happen, and Britain and America are pulling out, leaving a weak government. The Taleban is now so strong that it is focusing its attentions on Pakistan (and killing policemen in Karachi).