It’s time to be blunt about Channel migrants: none are entitled to come to Britain

How many Albanian boat people are entitled to come to Britain? The answer is clear and simple: none. To qualify under the UN convention on asylum, you must be fleeing from persecution and grave danger. That is not true of these Albanians. Moreover, if you are a desperate asylum seeker – and you do not qualify unless you are desperate – you must seek asylum in the first safe country you reach. However much we like teasing the grenouilles, France is a safe country.

So the UK is not obliged to accept any of those who are crossing the Channel. This does not mean that they are all potential criminals, though some will be. Others might well be potential good citizens: hard workers who want to prosper. That is irrelevant.

Economic migrants are not entitled to asylum. Inasmuch as we need migration, we are entitled to pick and choose, looking for those who would be useful to this country.

There are those who would argue that this is too hard-hearted. The world is full of suffering and poverty, they would insist, and Britain is a rich country. So we could surely afford to be generous. Those who believe that we have a moral duty to all mankind will argue on those lines. Others will assert that charity begins at home. The potential demand for British residence is enormous. To quote Margaret Thatcher, we could be swamped. The prime duty of any British government ought to be the welfare of our people and unrestricted immigration would make that impossible.

In a sense, there is no point in having that argument. On the assumption that both sides know their own minds, there is no conceivable common ground. The moralists might argue for a higher number, but that would be based on a different reading of the labour market, not on a reading of the New Testament.

Those who are happy to be castigated as hard-hearted must now come up with practical solutions – urgently. We have to deter the people smugglers, and their customers. In the case of Albanians, send them home. If that is problematic, send them to Rwanda. If that does not work, and it is impossible to remove them from these shores, build camps offering meagre subsistence in the midst of discomfort.

As for the traffickers, they should be allowed ashore, to the nearest police station where they could be prepared for trial. As well as imprisonment, the punishment ought to include the confiscation of their boats and of any cash that they happen to be carrying. The message must be clear. Illegal immigration will not be tolerated, nor will those who organise it. The aim would be to persuade those ready to pay to be trafficked that they would be wasting their money on a fool’s errand. 

If the European Convention on Human Rights would interfere with any of this, legislate rapidly to derogate from the relevant passages. Although it would be better to withdraw completely from the ECHR, there would be a problem with Northern Ireland. But rigorous derogation should be sufficient. Otherwise, British immigration policy would be controlled by foreign judges and people-traffickers. Take back control, anyone? 

There is a further point. Every news story is full of Jeremy Hunt’s plans for fiscal tightening. Yet the cost of accommodating boat people is now around £2bn a year. Take a couple of billion and add it to another couple: soon you will be talking about real money. In the context of interest rates, there is a lot of talk about tightening policy. Well, unless immigration policy is tightened and tightened hard until the traffickers are deterred, the costs will grow and grow.

Those who have a principled objection to this implacable approach have an easy way of proving their good faith. There are NGOs whose employees are not guilty of sexual malpractice and who do good work in poor countries. The more their efforts succeed, the less the locals will be tempted to succumb to the traffickers. So these high-minded persons should stop complaining about Suella Braverman’s abrasiveness and prepare to abrade their own bank-balances. They could easily find an NGO which would use their cash well. They believe that the rest of us should make sacrifices. So why should they not set an example and let charity begin from their home?

Apropos of Braverman, she has clearly made a strategic decision. She is happy to become unpopular as long as she can deliver. Good on her. Over the email business, she was clearly in error, but at worst, that was a venial sin. Tolerating the invasion of the trafficked would be a far graver crime. Her predecessor, Priti Patel, talked tough. But nothing happened. To judge by the new Home Secretary’s performance so far, that will not do for her. 

It is said that she can be a difficult colleague. But if this is because she is too mission-driven to seek collegiate harmony, it is a fault on the right side. Successive governments have failed to be sufficiently ruthless over illegal immigration, perhaps hoping, as Gavin Williamson said of Vladimir Putin, that it would just go away. (Why the devil was he brought back to the government?)

Suella Braverman seems determined to make it go away. Anyone who complains about this should be obliged to offer an alternative. There are two obvious ones. The first would be to declare that we should put up with illegal immigrants. A lot of people on the left do believe that, but few are brave enough to say so. The second would be to offer an alternative. None seems forthcoming. So the Home Secretary’s colleagues ought to rally round her. After the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, she has the hardest job in government and deserves support, for it is in all sensible persons’ interests that she succeeds.    

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