What's wrong with this picture?
What’s wrong is that 220 desperate asylum seekers crossing from France to the UK since November, is described by the Home Office as a “major incident”.
Official figures showed an increase of 248,000 immigrants to the UK from the rest of the world in the year to June. 220 Desperate asylum seekers are not the problem. Proper controls are needed, but there are two fundamental things wrong with Britain’s emerging immigration policy.
The first is that, because of Brexit, freedom of movement for EU citizens is exchanged for a right to all-comers. This would significantly impact on our economy. If we separate EU migrants from the rest, figures show that EU citizens, because they want to work, contribute through taxes and do not incur a net cost to the economy. The same figures (MigrationWatch UK 2016/7) show that immigrants from other areas provide a net economic cost to the UK of over £6Bn. As Europeans decide to return home, immigration to the UK is rising, particularly from South Asian countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan.
The second problem is that the emerging immigration policy is based on skills rather than need. The requirement that immigrants should be able to show an income potential of £30,000 per year implies that menial jobs are consigned to UK citizens. This makes no sense for a knowledge economy like ours where we should be educating ourselves out of low-paid, low-skill jobs – the sort of jobs, EU nationals have been doing.
It is not EU freedom of movement that has generated an immigration crisis. The truth is that throughout the period of Theresa May’s time as Home Secretary, our borders have been poorly policed.
In 2011, Mrs May admitted to Parliament, “We will never know how many people entered the country who should have been prevented from doing so”.
Yvette Cooper, the Labour shadow home secretary said: “that instead of strengthening [border] checks year on year as all previous ministers had committed to do, this Home Secretary decided to water them down as official government policy, even though she never told this House.
Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister at the time, pointedly refused to back the Home Secretary, saying the issue was of “great concern”.
This government has contributed to rising immigration and losing control of our borders. They will soon deny Europeans free movement but continue to allow Asian and African immigration. Only 31% of these are looking for work or have a job here; 15% come here not to work but to join family already here (ONS Nov 2018).
Right now, the government diverts our attention by claiming to be taking decisive action over 220 refugees and fails to set realistic conditions for future immigration.
