Reform’s Plan for Dealing with Illegal Migrants is a Good Start
In a recent interview with the Times, Reform leader Nigel Farage unveiled his plan for dealing with Britain’s illegal migration crisis. It involves four key elements:
- Leaving the ECHR and suspending other relevant treaties
- Banning those who arrive through irregular channels from claiming asylum
- Moving illegal migrants from hotels and rented accommodation to disused RAF bases, and keeping them there
- Striking deals with migrants’ home countries, or failing that, deporting them to third countries or British overseas territories like Ascension Island
Predictably, the plan has been criticised by Farage’s political opponents. One Tory MP claimed that he “is just recycling many ideas the Conservatives have already announced”. Which would be easier to take seriously if the Tories hadn’t had 14 years in government to implement some of those ideas.
Meanwhile, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats claimed that Farage’s plan won’t work. Labour called it “pie in the sky” and the Lib Dems insisted it “doesn’t offer any real solutions”. But what would a real solution look like?
The current situation is manifestly preposterous: tens of thousands of migrants turning up uninvited on the South Coast, and then being housed in hotels and private accommodation at taxpayers’ expense – to the tune of billions of pounds per year. And crucially, the overwhelming majority of such migrants are adult men.
Of the 237,592 attempts made to illegally enter the UK since 2018, 85% involved men. (I’m excluding individuals for whom sex was not known or reported). This is arguably the single most important statistic in the entire debate. It is also worth noting that, of the attempts involving men, 83% involved men aged 18 or older (and the true figure is almost certainly higher because some migrants lie about their age).
In other words, the people that British taxpayers are paying to house in hotels all across the country are not desperate women and children with nowhere else to go. They are overwhelmingly drawn from the least vulnerable demographic group.
Even by the Left’s own self-professed values, this is an absurd policy. There are millions of people around the world that are far more needy than the people who turn up uninvited on the South Coast. And we could help them by providing food, medicine and other essentials in situ. Does anyone really believe that covering hotel bills for adult men in Britain is the best way to help the world’s poor?
Even the Economist, long a bastion of pro-migration sentiment, admits that Europe’s asylum system is not working and should be scrapped. As the magazine correctly notes, “it cannot cope with a world of proliferating conflict, cheap travel and huge wage disparities”.
As far as I can see, neither Labour nor the Lib Dems has any plan that would prevent the continual inflow of illegal migrants into Britain. (Saying that you would “create safe and legal routes” is not a plan.) And the current situation is simply not sustainable: of course people don’t want large numbers of adult men being housed in their communities.
The main weakness of Farage’s plan is the difficulty of striking deals with countries like Iran, which is among the biggest sources of illegal migrants. Britain does little trade with Iran and already imposes sanctions on its government. In fact, sanctions relief might be the only way to make them take their citizens back.
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I don’t believe the official number of illegal migrants when you consider the enormous rise in the population and low pay jobs. Legal migrants are not allowed to take low pay jobs.
They continually say that we need immigration despite the fact that there are many unemployed, many on benefits due to low pay, unaffordable housing with the minister responsible having her snout in the trough.
The truth is the socialists, or should I say Communists are hand in hand with greedy global corporations, it’s a marriage created in hell and we are all now suffering the consequences.
The likes of Soros, Schwab and all the other WEF tyrants are the most corrupt and disreputable creatures on the planet. There is nothing good at all that can be said of these disgusting people.
We need to stop ALL migration, now, for an indefinite period, to stand any chance of saving our country. Legal migration is almost as damaging and the numbers are much higher. Any discussion or political party statement or policy regarding migration needs to be very clear about exactly how much and what sort of migration is deemed appropriate.
You are right in that the legal immigration numbers dwarf the illegal ones. But stopping all immigration doesn’t sound realistic. The UK receives overseas students in its private schools and universities, which are perfectly legitimate and don’t pose any disruptive threat to the country. Similarly many companies need to move people in (and out) with people that pose no threat of cultural transformation. There are a number of very successful industries in the UK that would be essentially wrecked by a complete ban in immigration. Premier League football for starters.
The solution needs to be a tiny bit more surgical, in my view, if we don’t want to make Britain appear to be going off the rails even more than it already does.
Can’t we just go back to sensible, moderate immigration that we had in the 80s and early 90s? Why is that so hard?
We should redefine the terms. A holiday maker is not an immigrant and data should recognise that. Unless they have special permission their time here is limited by the standard visa. Visiting business people, performers etc are also able to come and the terms should be redefined bit they are not immigrants. Their permission to stay is tightly limited. Student visas need to be revised so, in general, dependents cannot come and when they do they must be self-financing. The ability to work must be limited and thei visa should end soon after the course finishes. All the above should have to produce evidence of health insurance on arrival and on registration with any institution. Any criminal activity would terminate their visa.None would get the right to remain by making a woman pregnant, by marriage or by other opersonal relationships. They would not be entitled to any social benefits. For high skilled, high paid workers there should be a visa work permit regime. Health insurance and self financing would be required. Any criminal activity ofr the discovery of earlier ones would terminate the visa. HNRC wopuld ensure that taxable annual earnings (or over a shorter period using NI data) must… Read more »
Very well put
I would do it rather differently.
I can see no reasonable explanation why not to have complete freedom of movement and exchange of people between western countries. I just don’t. The UK isn’t going to be flooded with Canadians, for example, any more than Canada is going to be flooded with Brits. And culturally speaking we are so similar, the effect of the movement of people between western countries is small.
I would put lots of restrictions on immigration from countries that are nothing like Britain, that are far poorer than Britain and so have a big incentive to come and who integrate badly when they are here.
That makes more sense to me. And if done reciprocally it would open up much of the world to Brits, at least to places that are equally prosperous.
That’s how I would do it.
Complete freedom of movement is unworkable anywhere there is a welfare state and health care free at the point of use. An unlimited population is not economically feasible viewed from any angle.
You think if there were free movement between the UK and the US that there would be a flood of Americans into Britain to take advantage of the UK’s welfare programmes?
I doubt it very much. If it were like that, youd have lots of English people moving to Scotland where by all accounts social programmes are more generous.
If there were freedom of movement between the US and the UK, if anything more would move to the US because of the bigger economic opportunities. But probably not by much. And in any case it wouldn’t change things in either country very much, other than making life easier and better with a wider range of opportunities for all and a hell of a lot less bureaucracy.
I recently had lunch with a Texan friend who told me about being treated here for a broken leg with no bill from the NHS. Are you seriously suggesting offering free healthcare to 340million Americans?
Are you seriously suggesting 340 million Americans will come to live in Britain just to enjoy NHS service?
I think you may be misguided about 2 things.
1. There is public healthcare in the US. Most Americans have some degree of medical coverage. Many of them have excellent coverage. Few have nothing.
2. The NHS is crap and not by any stretch of the imagination the model for healthcare that Britons have been brainwashed to believe. Healthcare in most western European countries is at least as good and in many cases better.
The thing about barriers is that you never know why you needed one until after you have taken it down. To think otherwise is misguided.
I am pretty much on the same page as EppingBlogger with the points he makes below.
The reason I think we should be aiming for close to zero is because we have had far too much and a return to “moderate” immigration is not enough to correct the cultural and demographic changes.
Stopping all immigration doesn’t correct it either. I suppose the only thing that “corrects” that is kicking people out.
If you have immigration – or movement of people – from the “right” kind of countries it wouldn’t interfere with whatever actions you wanted to take to “correct the cultural and demographic changes”.
I have to say, though, kicking out people who are legally here just because we’ve decided we are fed up of them is beyond the pale for me. More so if they have been here for years. Not renew temporary residence permits – fine. Deny applications that are in process – fine. But revoke a current valid permit, that’s just too arbitrary for me.
And if you begin to allow that, what other rights and property will the state want to confiscate just because.
Correct was not a good choice of word. We may not yet be at a crucial tipping point beyond which our culture will eventually cease to exist. The less immigration we have (unless it’s from Anglosphere countries – unlikely), the less likely we are to reach that tipping point.
I agree that people who are in this country legally and who have not committed serious crimes should not be removed. We could perhaps give some inducements to leave, and probably should cut welfare (probably for all), and we should be more forceful in defending our culture, but I agree with your basic point.
I’m up for cutting welfare programmes and restricting it to the very few that truly need it.. That will solve A LOT of problems, not just undesirable immigration.
Kicking out foreigners that have overstayed their visas, or are in prison, or have committed a somewhat serious offence, should be deported. It would also help to differentiate between the sheep and the goats, with protesters rejected as well.
And reports that the security services are tracking 40,000 islamists, with 3,000 under 24 hour surveillance highlights the misallocation of resources. What are they waiting for?
“Iran, which is among the biggest sources of illegal migrants.”
I guess there are ways of estimating this but if most of them destroy their papers and refuse to identify themselves, I wonder how we know this. Iran does have a lot of coastline. Leave them near the Iranian coast in dinghies?
Dynamic situations require flexible solutions.
The term “illegal” must include over stays from whatever vintage.
We should also tighten up the rules on visits by relatives and dependents because in migrant dense areas there are a great many of them and I don’t doubt they get benefits without contributing. Just by being there they add to stress and demand on local services.
If illegal immigrants were sent to Ascension and St Helena to live in tents and be fed basic rations then the crossings would cease within a month. This is the main point. A strong deterrent.
The primary solution must be to intercept the boats and return them to the safety of the French coast. This can be achieved using remotely operated vessels that can disable the outboard motor by snagging the propeller and then towing it using GPS to locate the nearest safe haven. The creation of the remote intercept vessels should be a relatively simple engineering exercise and as safety is the primary goal it ururps any humanitarian issues.
Illegal migrants, and other migrants, should have to pay back all the taxpayer money spent on them.
One of the commenters used the phrase ‘cultural and demographic changes’, which is a good euphemism for what, I’m sure, many of us really feel – that we have no particular desire to live in a country that ceases to have an overwhelmingly majority Caucasian population and an accepted adherence to longstanding Judaeo-Christian / Anglo-Saxon traditions and mores. I know I don’t, and that is not a racially discriminatory sentiment in the slightest, it is simply human nature and not wishing to be surrounded by the unfamiliar or different (be that of religion, language, dress, cultural norms or whatever).
As such, I am hugely concerned by Prof. Matt Goodwin’s recent modelling and the implications for future life in the UK. Whilst the distinction between legal migration, illegal migration and genuine asylum seekers is vital as regards policy decisions of a (hopefully sensible) future Government, there is a human, emotive, instinctive element to this subject which is never allowed for in debate, at least not Parliamentary or in public social media forums at all.