If individuals apply for asylum and are not granted refugee status as a result of not fitting into this Convention definition they are likely to be labelled ‘bogus asylum seekers’, illegal immigrants attempting to cheat the system. This distinction, and the perception that a large number of asylum seekers are ‘bogus’ is the dominant representation of such individuals in the media in many European countries and is rarely challenged by governments . For example, British Home Secretary Jack Straw commented in 2001, that would-be migrants are taking advantage of one aspect of the Convention—namely, that it places an obligation on states to consider any application for asylum made on their territory, however ill-founded. These are not the words of a country committed to the principles inscribed in the 1951 Convention regardless of world political and economic circumstances. Yet they need not be, as Hathaway points out that international refugee law… increasingly affords a basis for rationalising the decisions of states to refuse protection. The view that many so called political refugees are actually economic migrants (and that the two can be easily separated) is blurring the border between the issue of asylum and that of immigration more broadly. Thus, the moral justification for limiting asylum is essentially one of protecting the domestic population economically, socially and culturally from the perceived threat of an unknown ‘outsider’.