REGULAR readers of this column will know an anonymous member of the Newport City Council hierarchy made the effort to provide a 500-word response to last week’s Editor’s Chair.

(As an aside, it seems rare these days for public servants – whether in elected positions or not – to put their names to such utterances.)

It was a shame that, while composing such a lengthy reply, the writer did not take the time to actually read last week’s column properly.

But such is life. Let’s move on.

Asylum seekers are never far from the headlines these days.

In the last week alone there have been controversies over allegations that Middlesbrough only housed asylum seekers in houses with red doors, and a requirement for them to wear wristbands in Cardiff to identify them as eligible for free food.

And yesterday we reported new figures which showed the number of asylum seekers per head of population in Newport.

There are currently 456 asylum seekers living in the city.

The figure equates to one asylum seeker for every 319 of the Newport population.

Proportionally, Newport has the eighth-highest concentration of asylum seekers in the UK.

Others in the top ten include the afore-mentioned Middlesbrough, Cardiff, Swansea, Glasgow, Liverpool and Rochdale.

By contrast, Cornwall has one asylum seeker per 545,000 people.

Others in the bottom ten include the likes of Bath, Wiltshire and Cheshire.

Let’s just stay with those figures for a moment.  In Newport, one in every 300-odd people is an asylum seeker.

In Cornwall, it is one in every half a million.

Let me make one thing clear.

I am not anti-asylum seekers. There must be a place in a compassionate nation like Britain for genuine refugees, for the dispossesed, for those escaping terror and torture in their homelands.

Many of those granted asylum play vital roles in our society.

There will be those who will condemn me as a liberal, a loony Lefty, or a do-gooder for holding such views.

And don’t we live in a strange world when ‘do-gooder’ becomes a term of abuse?

I don’t believe in open-door, unrestricted immigration.

But nor do I believe in refusing a helping hand to a fellow human being in their hour of need.

However, the way in which asylum seekers are dispersed across the UK is wrong.

It cannot be coincidence that those areas with the highest concentration of asylum seekers share similar traits, as do those with the lowest.

There is more than a whiff of social engineering about this.

It cannot be right that areas that already have many social problems are taking the highest numbers of asylum seekers.

It cannot be right that towns and cities already suffering from deprivation are bearing the brunt, while better-off areas simply do not take their fair share.

Newport West MP Paul Flynn – not exactly someone who stands on an anti-immigration ticket – makes valid points when he says schools and the health service in constituencies like his are creaking under the unfair pressure created by the way in which asylum seekers are dispersed.

Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that the most multi-cultural areas in Britain also tend to be the most deprived.

That is true for Newport as it undoubtedly is for some of the other areas in the top ten for asylum seekers.

Such an obviously unfair distribution system just adds to such problems.

All of the above does not suggest Newport should not become home to those seeking asylum. Of course it should. The city has a proud history of cultural diversity.

But so should those areas that house few asylum seekers.

The system simply needs to be fairer.

And it is an issue the governments in Cardiff and Westminster should address.