Category Archives: Immigration

Britain, Government, Immigration, Politics, Society

Labour’s immigration plan: language not fit for purpose

BRITAIN

IMMIGRATION policy is an important plank of any government, and the one led by Sir Keir Starmer is no exception. Laws are required to establish the terms under which migration to the UK is allowed, and to deal with the range of complexities surrounding irregular arrivals. But the decision to publish an immigration white paper (which allows for consultation) a week after Reform UK made significant gains in local elections, where Nigel Farage is riding high in national polls, is hard to defend. Rather than defusing public concerns, the PM risks playing into the hard right’s hands – and directly undermining the community cohesion he says he wants to protect.

Some of the proposed measures are reasonable. Others are not. Visa rules are complicated and ministers have identified real concerns about the way the system works. But the timing and language, particularly Sir Keir’s references to an “island of strangers” and forces “pulling our country apart”, were dreadful choices. The danger is that such rhetoric ends up reinforcing divisions and xenophobia.

Labour’s target is the opposition’s record. Starmer was right to assert that the policies of the Conservatives were a cynical disgrace. Legal migration rose from 224,000 in 2019 to a staggering level of 906,000 in 2023. Voters who were entitled to think they had opted for reduced inward migration, both in the Brexit referendum and by electing a prime minister, Boris Johnson, who vowed to “take back control” of borders, instead got a free-market experiment. While the Tories ramped up their inhumane Rwanda scheme as a distraction, employers intensified overseas recruitment as skill thresholds were lowered.

In manufacturing, transport, and engineering, the subsequent increase in foreign employees is correlated with a decline in the UK workforce and apprenticeships. The failure of this laissez-faire approach to the economy has not been limited to jobs. Living standards have stagnated, with lower rates of growth than in the eurozone and US. The Labour government is right that employers should invest in people here, as well as scouting in other countries for highly skilled workers. If it is well run, the new Labour Market Evidence Group could play a positive role in a more industrially activist government. It is good to signal a looser approach to refugees working, and reasonable to expect migrant workers’ dependants to learn English. Councils should support this.

However, the white paper, in both tone and substance, is distinctly illiberal. It uses the language of “fairness”, “integration”, and “public confidence”. And yet, its core proposals represent a consolidation of executive power, a curtailment of individual rights, and a weakening of judicial independence. These are not reforms – they are regressions.

The pledge to deport more foreign criminals speaks volumes of tabloid politics. Granting counter-terrorism-style powers to the Border Force risks stoking, not easing, fear. Cancelling social care visas on the grounds of “abuse” threatens a sector already on the brink. Raising income thresholds for those with dependants penalises lower-paid workers. And while student visas are in need of review, the real issue is the crisis in underfunding of higher education – not the students themselves.

Starmer’s anger about the Tories’ track record is justified. It harms democracy, and has helped opportunists like Nigel Farage, when parties tell voters one thing while doing another. But past mistakes do not justify present ones. Migrants have been and will remain a vital part of the UK’s labour force and student bodies. Positives that require to be reinforced loud and clear.

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Britain, Government, Immigration, Politics, Society

Stopping the small boats. Labour is doing well.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

TWO MONTHS after taking office, there are tentative signs Keir Starmer and the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, may just be starting to get to grips with the Government’s most significant – and seemingly intractable – problem. Stopping the small boats.

Recent headlines have been telling a very different story. “Migrant crossings top 20,000 so far this year,” announced the BBC in the last few days. “Record numbers of people have crossed the Channel in small boats since January,” declared the Guardian. Neither headline was from a media outlet exactly famed for highlighting the perils and extreme dangers of illegal migration.

But inside the corridors of Government, they’ve been crunching the numbers, and they paint a different picture. The line Labour’s political opponents have been trying to peddle is of a new liberal administration losing control of the nation’s borders by axing the deterrent supposedly provided by the much-maligned Rwanda deportation scheme.

Yet, in reality, the actual figures show Starmer performing slightly better than his predecessors.

Our new Prime Minister hit the dubious milestone of 6,000 new arrivals on August 27, the 54th day of his premiership. Liz Truss reached it after just 29 days, Rishi Sunak after 38.

Similarly, the period between the start of the year and election day saw the highest number of small boat arrivals on record, with more than 13,000 people landing on Britain’s shores.

But since then, the rate of new arrivals has actually fallen – it is currently 25 per cent lower than the 25,000 who had arrived by this stage in 2022. And that’s despite the warm weather and calm seas of the past month.

Ministers believe there are several reasons for this positive turnaround. The first is a decision to redeploy the huge resources the Home Office was funnelling – and failing – to get the Rwanda flights off the ground. One of the first acts of the new Home Secretary was to move 300 officials off the Rwanda scheme, and on to ordinary deportations.

This produced immediate results. Although it was implemented with little fanfare, on August 23 a flight left the UK with 220 illegal migrants on board. Ministers refuse to reveal the destination for reasons of diplomatic protocol, but it represented the biggest single-day deportation in British history. It was processed without the last-minute legal wrangling and recrimination normally associated with previous removal efforts. Ostensibly, one of the reasons for this improved efficiency is the burgeoning working relationship between the Home Secretary and the Director General of Immigration Enforcement, Bas Javid.

Mr Javid, a former police officer, impressed Ms Cooper during the “access talks” that took place before Labour entered office.

Javid, the brother of the former Tory home secretary, Sajid Javid, made two important recommendations that Cooper has decided to implement. The first was to focus on the removal of illegal migrants from those countries with “low grant rates”. In other words, those nations where there is virtually no chance of an asylum request being approved and options for a successful legal challenge are much more limited.

The second was to align those removals with enhanced operational intelligence on where those particular illegal migrants are operating within the black economy. For example, it was discovered a large number of those with low grant rates are working in carwashes, nail bars, and some specific areas of the hospitality sector. So, the decision was taken to start prioritising raids on those sectors. And it’s working.

A third component of the Government’s strategy is down to Keir Starmer’s own personal “obsession” with smashing the people-smuggling gangs. It’s one of those issues that invariably takes him back to his time as Director of Public Prosecutions: he’s wholly committed with stopping the boats. The Prime Minister is convinced we can take these gangs down, smash them, and destroy their business models.

As part of this process, Labour’s Eliot Ness believes the key is not just preventing the smugglers from launching their boats from the beaches of France but tackling their operation “upstream”. In particular, he has demanded a new emphasis on targeting the corridor that operates between Germany and France and is used to transport the large dinghies that carry the migrants to the South Coast of England. A crackdown on human-traffickers is very much a priority for Sir Keir Starmer’s Government. Mr Ness is the US lawman whose team of Untouchables brought down Al Capone.

Analysis by the National Crime Agency indicates the clampdown is already having an impact. The larger dinghies operated by the smugglers carry an average of 50 people. Since 2018 there have been 32 instances of boats with higher occupancy rates, and a third of those have been intercepted since the election.

In addition, UK and French border officers have noticed an increasing number of engine failures and dinghies failing to make it out of French waters.

This shows the smugglers are finding it more difficult to secure the boats and equipment they need to facilitate the crossings – helped by shutting the German corridor. But the fight with the profiteers in human misery is set to be a protracted one. The Prime Minister, Home Secretary, and their Cabinet colleagues are a long, long way from declaring victory.

They are well aware that the traffickers will adapt their own tactics. And there’s a recognition they are in part at the mercy of the elements, with a mild autumn and winter potentially reversing the successes of the summer.

There’s also an acceptance within Government that to really break the people-smugglers’ stranglehold some major new deterrent policy may have to be unveiled. With the Rwanda scheme deemed a costly shambles, Labour might have to look at some sort of offshore processing model in order to send a firm signal.

Rishi Sunak famously pledged, “We will finally stop the boats”. His failure to do so cost him his premiership.

We will not be hearing Keir Starmer making the same rash promises. But, there is no doubt, Labour believe they are in a war with the small-boat traffickers. And, so far, in these early days of rule, they are doing a good job in smashing the gangs.

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Britain, Government, Immigration, Politics

Why the contempt for common-sense on migration?

BRITAIN

IN Britain, it has been obvious for decades that this country’s humane and civilised rules on giving asylum to refugees have been grotesquely misused.

Laws designed and crafted to provide safety for persecuted individuals have been exploited by migrants seeking a better life in the UK. Yet, a large part of Britain’s privileged elite refuse to see this.

Not merely do they pretend to think that these migrants are all genuine refugees, and to heap bitter scorn on anyone who argues otherwise, but many of these privileged people keenly engage charities, protests, court cases, and other activities, frustrating any attempt to apply the law.

No doubt many of them are driven by noble motives. It is 170 years since Charles Dickens mocked his character Mrs Jellyby, in Bleak House, for exerting herself very much more about a distant tribe in Africa than in looking after her immediate family.

Let’s be clear. There is nothing wrong with compassion for the poor and for those who suffer in the world. But it should not become an excuse for failing in compassion and endearment to those living closer by.

The arrival in Britain of large numbers of people of whom we know very little has, of course, mostly troubled the poor and weak, who tend to live in the areas where migrants settle. For the more affluent, it is different. Large-scale migration has enabled the metropolitan middle class – for the first time in two generations – to employ domestic servants, though they do not call them that.

Many metropolitan liberals did not like Britain very much as it used to be. They prefer the multicultural nation which is replacing it. But this is only one side of the matter.

The BBC’s partiality, for one, is a point in case. A senior figure at the corporation has again and again given evidence in appeals against the deportation of Somali citizens. In several of the cases, the men being defended had severe and worrying criminal pasts.

Then there was the recent incident in which an “asylum seeker” stands accused of hurling corrosive fluid into the faces of a woman and her children.

The signs are that many well-off liberal minded persons living in ivory towers simply do not get it.

For centuries, those nations lucky enough to have secure physical borders have been careful who they allowed in. Many migrants do bring great benefits such as providing a wealth of talent in key areas. But some bring harm. A society which does not protect itself against this danger is irresponsible and weak and might in the end help to destroy itself. Just as a nation which neglected its defences might do.

The extraordinary revelations of the New Labour functionary Andrew Neather, that the Blair government had “a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the UK Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural”, provided the onset for this unholy mess the country now finds itself in. Contempt for the common-sense view of migration is endemic in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

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