London - Asylum-seekers as young as 14 will be fingerprinted in a bid to crack down on lawbreaking immigrants, the British Home Office said yesterday. Britain is "opting in" to a proposed new EU electronic fingerprint database.
The aim is to stop "asylum-shopping", when immigrants denied asylum in one state pass on to another. It is also hoped the "Eurodac Regulation" will make it easier to enforce the Dublin Convention under which the first member-state an asylum-seeker passes through has responsibility for processing the claim.