WHEN it comes to the migrant crisis in our country, you hear a lot of numbers bandied around.
There are the thousands who make it across the Channel each month.
GettyMigrants in France dash to a dinghy to illegally cross the Channel[/caption]
LNPBoris Johnson’s post-2019 policies opened Britain’s doors to nearly three million migrants in just two years, despite Tory promises to do the opposite[/caption]
GettyMillions of legal migrants on work, family and refugee visas are now set to gain Indefinite Leave to Remain[/caption]
There are the millions handed to smugglers to facilitate their crossing.
And then there are the BILLIONS that we, the British taxpayers, end up paying to deal with this mess.
Like the £2.1billion spent on migrant hotels in just one year — a figure (to March this year) which is not an estimate, but one revealed by the Government itself.
As is the figure of £5.4billion, which we now spend every year on asylum seekers.
It’s breathtaking stuff, isn’t it?
And I’m sorry to tell you that it’s about to get worse. Much worse.
Five billion quid a year will soon look like peanuts as the real cost skyrockets ten, maybe twenty, maybe thirty-fold.
What am I talking about, exactly?
I’m talking about an enormous bill that will soon be handed to the British people to pay for the millions of legal migrants who have flocked here on work, family and refugee visas in recent years and are about to gain something called “Indefinite Leave To Remain”.
That is, the right to stay in Britain for ever.
And not only that, it is the right to get full access to the National Health Service, full access to social housing, full access to welfare benefits and full access to things such as student loans.
It also grants them the right to bring in more of their relatives from overseas, who can then also apply for ILR and acquire British citizenship.
A record 1.3million migrants in 2023
Now, under the current rules, new migrants can apply for this right to stay once they have been in the country for five years, though Labour recently suggested extending this to ten years.
But this does nothing about the millions of migrants who have already entered Britain in the past five years, including during the so-called “Boriswave”.
There is, in other words, no democratic mandate from the British people to have these millions of migrants in Britain to begin with, never mind giving them the right to stay for ever.
In what will certainly go down in the history books as one of the most idiotic policies in British politics, Boris Johnson and the Tories betrayed their own voters, after 2019, by doing the very opposite of what they promised.
In just a few short years, from 2021 to 2023, they flung open our country’s doors to nearly three million migrants — a record 1.3million in 2023 alone.
In doing so, they not only broke their promise to “lower the overall number” of immigrants, but went on to set the stage for all the chaos and carnage you see today.
There is, in other words, no democratic mandate from the British people to have these millions of migrants in Britain to begin with, never mind giving them the right to stay for ever.
GettyAround 1.7million migrants could gain permanent residence unless new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood extends the qualifying period to ten years[/caption]
And what makes this even worse is that Johnson and the Tories didn’t just put mass immigration on steroids, they also flooded Britain with migrants, many of whom are likely to have taken more out of the economy than they’ve put in.
Masses of low-skilled and often poorly educated migrants arrived from places such as Nigeria, India, Ghana, Pakistan, China, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and beyond.
In fact, while our politicians wax lyrical about all this immigration being good for the country, not even one in five migrant workers came in on skilled worker visas.
Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone else does not have skills, but I’d wager a good chunk of them end up with very low-paying jobs, if they are in work at all.
CPS data suggests as few as five per cent who came in during these years ended up in highly paid jobs, such as the NHS doctors and trained medicals you hear so much about.
The vast majority, it seems, were relatives of workers, refugees, students or low-skilled workers, imposing an enormous burden on public services, including the NHS, housing, GP surgeries, schools and more.
Which is precisely why today, even highly influential members of The Blob, such as the Office for Budget Responsibility senior executive David Miles, have changed their tune on mass immigration in recent months.
He wrote recently: “Immigration — which primarily involves those of working age who are many years away from retirement — both delays the impact of the ageing of the population and is the driver of population growth.
Around 270,000 migrants will become eligible to apply for Indefinite Leave To Remain next year, with another 416,000 in 2027, and then another 628,000 in 2028.
“Some conclude from this that a faster rise in the population . . . will be beneficial in alleviating acute underlying fiscal pressures.
“But, even setting aside the fact that it is GDP per capita that matters for average standards of living — and growth in population does not obviously boost it — there are serious problems with the idea that faster population growth can consistently alleviate fiscal problems.”
Highest figure for 13 years
So, the man with a good claim to be an expert in this area says we have “serious problems” with our immigration.
Around 270,000 migrants will become eligible to apply for ILR next year, with another 416,000 in 2027, and then another 628,000 in 2028.
And this is already on top of the 172,798 people who were granted the right last year, the highest figure for 13 years.
It is estimated some 1.7million people will qualify for the right to permanent residence in Britain unless the new proposal to extend the period to ten years is also applied to those “Boriswave” migrants already here.
If Labour genuinely want to save the country and make it a better place to live, then Keir Starmer and his new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood must do this.
Another helpful policy would be to restrict ILR only to those people who can show, through their taxes and their bank balances, that they have actually made a net financial contribution to Britain.
After all, is this not how you maintain a social contract in a nation state — by ensuring everybody who lives in it contributes to the collective pot?
Starmer has spent much of the already disastrous “phase two” of his government telling anybody who is still listening that he, not Nigel Farage, is the “real patriot”.
But I ask you, what kind of patriot would force their own people to have to live with open borders and the extreme, reckless policy of mass uncontrolled immigration?
And what kind of “patriot” would knowingly impose a bill of tens of billions on their own people for a policy nobody voted for?
So, it’s over to you, Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood.
Are you really the patriots you say you are, on the side of the hard-working majority?
Or are you instead on the side of unfettered immigration and a set of terrible decisions in Westminster that could soon have utterly disastrous consequences.
Attacking Nigel Farage, Keir Starmer claims to be the ‘real patriot’ – yet his policies leave Britain facing open borders and mass uncontrolled immigrationReuters Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
