THE first language of students in Dover, the Kent town chiefly affected by the influx of asylum seekers, will be the Afghan dialect of Pashtu by 2006, according to a new report.

The Hobbes Institute for Policy Research claims 55 per cent of pupils in the port town will only use English as an alternative.

In its report Asylum, Economic Migration and Southern Britain, the group also warns that social services in the Kent town may have to cut funds.

It says officials will need to sustain benefit payments to asylum seekers. A spokeswoman for Kent County Council played down the report's claims, saying of the 16,000 school-aged pupils in Kent, only 72 were from families seeking asylum from many different countries.

The number of asylum-seeking children in the county was actually going down, she added.

The spokeswoman also refuted claims that social services funds for the elderly would suffer due to the influx of asylum seekers. She said: "The Government has taken over responsibility for asylum seekers apart from unaccompanied minors and then we get all payments back from central government."