Hold on. The argument has little factual evidence to back it up, according to numbers gathered by a UN agency. "Somewhat frenzied" is the phrase used by Rupert Colville, spokesman for the refugee agency UNHCR in responding to the European panic. He and other senior UN officials worry about the effect the current political debate may have for future applicants for entry into the continent after fleeing oppressive regimes in search of political asylum.

Notwithstanding the anti-immigration hysteria in France, the Netherlands, Austria and Norway and race riots in England -- where "Pak-bashing," neo-Nazi skinheads are a problem -- there are few data to back purported fears of a widesepread, overwhelming crush of impoverished foreigners seeking handouts, the UN says.

For example, the total number of asylum-seekers arriving in member states of the European Union now is only a little over half of what it was just 10 years ago, according to statistics from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers.

But it is now in 2002 that the issue dominates the front pages and exercises noisy right wing demagogues eager to whip impressionable supporters to fever heat, and into the voting booths ready to vote for a halt to immigration. Happily, the extremists still are in a minority in most countries, but their numbers are high enough to eventually pose a threat to ancient democracies with a long tradition to embracing diversity.

"If you look at the annual average figure for each country, you will see that in many countries the numbers [of political immigrants] are not really so very high," says UNHCR spokesman Colville. This was particularly the case, he notes, if account is taken of the high number of refugees that there are out there -- running into the millions in Pakistan and Iran, for example.

In fact, since the Kosovo crisis, which produced a numerical increase at the end of the last decade, the total of refugee applicants remained fairly steady at 350,000-400,000 per year, Colville points out. Interestingly, 4 of the 6 states that produced the most asylum-seekers were themselves European nations in various stages of political turmoil -- as in the Balkans.

Taken together, says Colville, the UN's statistics provided little support for the idea currently popular in Western Europe that the EU states were "being deluged by fraudulent asylum-seekers -- to quote the common mantra, the vast majority [of the applicants] bogus."

UNHCR does not believe that every Iraqi or every Afghan who wants to get in should be granted refugee status in Europe, Colville emphasizes. But, he adds, it is "patently extremely unfair" to label people from these countries who have sought compassionate treatment as bogus or fraudulent.

While warning that the current debate is "considerably overheated," the UNHCR man fears a rush for changes in domestic laws and policies that may have "very dangerous results for future refugees, either in gaining access to Europe at all, or in getting a fair hearing and decent treatment once they are here."

Missing from the agency's overview were data about Australia, where an immigration debate is also raging. Or numbers for North America, where the events of Sept. 11 have fueled fears that potentially dangerous foreigners may already have managed to slip across inadequately protected frontiers. Fear also that good-hearted, honest but naive Americans and Canadians may be too easily suckered by heart-breaking, yet dubious, stories about the sad plight of hard luck guys posing as legitimate asylum-seekers.