Britain's likely next prime minister, Gordon Brown, said Tuesday that immigrants who want citizenship could face doing community service as part of a Britishness "contract". Finance minister Brown added that issues such as Muslim extremism in Britain have fuelled questions about whether the nation needs a "stronger sense of national purpose".
The speech, which comes as the government pushes for closer ties between ethnic communities, is the latest salvo in an agonised national debate about what it means to be British in a culturally diverse 21st century society.
This has been complicated by the July 2005 London suicide bombings, carried out by four British Muslims, and a rumbling row over Muslim women wearing the full-face veil, labelled a "mark of separation" by Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Brown said a recent public outcry over alleged racism against Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in a television reality show demonstrated that Britons wanted their country to be known for "tolerance and fairness and decency".
"Being a British citizen is about more than a test, more than a ceremony; it's a kind of contract between the citizen and the country involving rights but also involving responsibilities that will protect and enhance the British way of life," he added.
"It's also right to consider asking men and women seeking citizenship to undertake community work in our country, or something akin to that, that introduces them to a wider range of institutions and people." Brown is widely expected to take over from Blair when the premier steps down before September this year.
The commuticised by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, which pointed out that it is normally carried out by people convicted of crimes in court. "It also does not get to the heart of problems of integration," added chief executive Habib Rahman. Brown's speech came as official figures showed that the government deported 18,235 failed asylum seekers last year, a 16 percent increase on 2005.
There has been a 127 percent increase in the number of asylum applicants being removed since Blair's government came to power in 1997.
Separate figures released Tuesday showed that the number of immigrants to Britain from the eight former Communist countries which joined the European Union in 2004 has reached 579,000. Poles make up 65 percent of the figure, which is far higher than government estimates of how many would come. Unofficial estimates say the true figure is larger still.