Unsustainable immigration is now a national emergency

Six and a half years ago, in a mood of desperation, the British electorate voted to leave the European Union, with which it had never felt at home, in order to regain national sovereignty and, with it, control of our borders. Today, with 40,000 illegal immigrants having so far crossed the Channel this year and 1.1 million visas handed out to legal entrants in the year to June, we live on an island that is treated as Liberty Hall – an open-access global amenity – by the world and his dog.

“Take back control” – they’re having a laugh, right? Boris Johnson took office, promising that Channel crossers would be “sent back”. Previously, he had been canvassing an “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. During the last days in the bunker, the Truss administration was planning a more liberal visa policy (more liberal than 1.1 million) and opening the floodgates to populous India, in return for a trade agreement.

There has been a surreal quality to life in Britain over the past 60 years. During the controversy over immigration in the wake of a 1968 speech by Enoch Powell (who, as health secretary, had imported half the population of Jamaica into the NHS), an exchange took place in the House of Lords which set out the rules of engagement on this issue for decades to come.

On 14 May 1968, Lord Elton asked a formal question: “To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the fact that a great majority of the electorate, reported by a national opinion poll on April 25 to amount to 93 per cent, desires a drastic reduction on further immigration into this country has caused them to reconsider their present policy in this respect; and, if not, what they consider to be the relevance of the wishes of the electorate in contemporary democracy.”

The government response was that “the public opinion poll to which the noble Lord refers does not reflect an awareness that immigration is now strictly controlled, and that, apart from dependants, the entry of new immigrants is related to the economic and social needs of the country”. That sounds uncannily like Boris, or Theresa, or the egregious Dave – the bland, meretricious assurance that everything is under control, when the dogs in the street know it is not.

Understandably, the government spokesman did not refer to the question regarding the status of the wishes of 93 per cent of the electorate “in contemporary democracy”. He would have had difficulty in explaining to the untutored lumpen-electorate that eventually generated Brexit that, seasonally adjusted, the wishes of the remaining 7 per cent were of more importance, because they represented what Gordon Brown would later term “the progressive consensus”.

That is why, although the public might naively have supposed the views of the 93 per cent, in a democracy, would inform government policy, such democratic fundamentalism was already out of date. By coercive laws against free speech, relentless media (later joined by social media) propaganda, lobbying by NGOs and a bogus “moral” crusade, public expression of opposition to immigration was banished from the public square. Only within the past decade, when the situation became unsustainable, did the dam burst, so that public concern was freely ventilated and the censors’ attempts to play the intimidatory “race” card scornfully disregarded.

Thanks to the prohibition on debate for half a century, with the most pressing cultural, economic and social issue of our time banned from critical discussion, we are now in a national emergency. The problem is not simply illegal immigration, it is all forms of migration into this overcrowded country; 14 per cent of our population is now foreign-born.

Illegal migration, which attracts the most headlines, is hopelessly out of control. So far this year, a record number of “irregular” migrants – as the government coyly terms them – have crossed the Channel. By the end of the year the likely total is 50,000. Yet all our politicians can do is cavil at the lack of “appropriate” accommodation for the incomers. The only appropriate accommodation for illegal immigrants is a prison cell, for 24 hours, followed by a swift return to their point of departure.

But, of course, that is out of the question, chorus MPs, lawyers, NGOs and assorted lobby groups. The problem is that the United Kingdom is hamstrung by laws and treaty commitments that make a nonsense of our sovereignty. Chief among them is the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). So long as we adhere to that Convention, there is no possibility of preserving our sovereignty or controlling our borders. There is no point in attempting to negotiate exceptions or derogations – shades of our wasted years negotiating with the EU – the only answer is to leave.

Of course, the same horror that greeted our ambition to depart from the EU is being expressed at our putative departure from the ECHR, by the same opponents of British sovereignty. When Rishi Sunak offered Suella Braverman the Home Office, her sole question should have been: “Will you support me in leaving the ECHR?” If not, the office is meaningless and impotent. That is also the litmus test for any political party’s electability, in the face of the immigration crisis: “Will you leave the ECHR?” If the answer is no, it is unelectable.

Another, similar incubus is the ludicrous Modern Slavery Act, which we owe to Theresa May: a completely superfluous piece of virtue signalling, to embrace the recent liberal fixation with slavery, which is being massively abused by bogus asylum seekers. Albanians, despite their country being listed down at 43^rd on the Global Slavery Index, far outnumber claimants of other nationalities, Albanian claims having increased 611 per cent since the passing of the Act.

Everyone is taking Britain to the cleaners, assisted by the complicit liberal establishment. Incredibly, the majority of asylum claims are accepted. Of the 4,500 people who entered the UK illegally in boats during the first quarter of this year, less than 0.1 per cent have been removed. Since 2019, removals of serious foreign criminals have fallen by 40 per cent and, since last year, asylum-related returns have dropped by more than 20 per cent.

The Home Office is spending £5.6m of taxpayers’ money every day on hotel accommodation for asylum seekers. That totals £2.044bn per year, equivalent to the salaries of 51,953 newly qualified Band 5 nurses or 21,457 Metropolitan Police constables.

Nothing is being done about this scandalous situation because the government lacks the political will to act. The Tories have been brainwashed by leftist claptrap into believing that support for unlimited immigration is “moral” and that opposing it is “racist” or “xenophobic”. The great surge in immigration under Tony Blair, we know from his erstwhile speech writer, was motivated by a desire “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity”. For that frivolous, partisan reason, Britain’s health, education and other public services have been subjected to intolerable strain.

The quality of life, contrary to political hype, has declined for many as a consequence of immigration. The danger is of focusing on the illegal problem, without exposing what is happening via legitimate channels. The Tories’ granting of an unprecedented 1.1 million visas in the year to June represented a 72 per cent increase in work visas since 2019 and a 71 per cent increase in study visas. Albanians in dinghies begin to look almost irrelevant, compared to the massive influx the government is inflicting on us.

If this continues, along with the other economic and social tensions afflicting this country, Britain will degenerate into a failed state. The numbers are unsustainable and so are the costs. We need to leave the ECHR, scrap the Modern Slavery Act and other legal impediments to border control, replacing them with realistic laws restoring national sovereignty. It should be statutorily enacted that nobody who comes to Britain illegally will ever be granted asylum or allowed to remain. Even future legal applications should be invalid.

As for legal entrants, they must be drastically cut. We should consider a moratorium on all further immigration until we get the current mess sorted out. A five-year moratorium, admitting a maximum of 10,000 specially qualified immigrants each year, would afford us much-needed breathing space. The present situation cannot continue, nor will the public permit it to do so.

If the Tories had the least sense of self-preservation, one would have thought that, finding themselves straight-jacketed on fiscal policy, they would have sought electability by fulfilling their repeated promises to control immigration. Yet even such basic common sense seems to have deserted them. In the mounting emergency, it is unlikely that the choice will any longer rest with them.

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