BASIL Fawlty said ‘don’t mention the war’ and the political classes and the BBC say ‘don’t mention immigration’, otherwise one is racist, fascist or xenophobic. But, ladies and gentlemen readers, being a retired Higher Courts Solicitor-Advocate and an ardent believer in debate and freedom of speech all my life, I am going to mention immigration. My heart goes out to those who on reading this article will indulge in much hand-wringing and suffer an attack of the vapours.
Our country has a predominant Judaeo-Christian culture and our duty is to welcome immigrants and treat them with the utmost respect. No one can blame the people who come here for a better life. We would all do the same. One can criticise, however, the political classes for introducing mass uncontrolled net immigration which England, for that is where the vast majority live, cannot assimilate. The population of the UK in 1997 was 58million; now the recorded population is 67.5million.
England is the most densely populated country in Europe, leaving aside small islands and city states. In the EU Referendum vast immigration was the number one issue, trumping the economy. The mantra of the politicians supporting Leave was to take back control and become a sovereign nation state once again. EU free movement would end once we left and immigration could be controlled to a reasonable level by a points-based system. Before Blair became Prime Minister in 1997 the net immigration yearly figure was a maximum of 76,000.
However, all the Conservatives have done is to issue more visas for immigrants from outside the EU to make up for those no longer coming from within the EU. The numbers for net immigration are 816,000 for the last three years ending March 2020. That is about the size of the population of Newcastle upon Tyne, including its urban area, arriving every three years.
Then we have 28,431 illegal immigrants coming across the English Channel last year, and more than 18,000 already this year, an influx which the Conservative Government is seemingly powerless to stop. The arrivals are put up in hotels at the expense of the taxpayer, when we have British people living on the streets, including services veterans.
The illegal immigrants come for benefits which are unavailable in Europe. No criminal record checks are made on them. It was revealed at the weekend that four out of ten Channel immigrants over a six-week period this summer were from Albania, a Nato member and applicant for EU membership which has been peaceful for 25 years. Reform UK leader Richard Tice said: ‘While most Albanians are delightful, law-abiding people, Albanians make up the largest group of foreign nationals in UK jails. There is also a growing problem of organised crime, money laundering, human trafficking and drug-dealing. Are the people being smuggled across the Channel by gangs going to be used as their footsoldiers, or worse, kept in modern forms of slavery?’
If you analyse the political classes’ attitude to mass immigration there are some conclusions one can draw. They either wish to encourage mass immigration and perhaps wish to please their benefactors, the global international companies, who desire cheap labour from abroad to enhance their profits, or perhaps the politicians are globalists and have no concept of patriotism or love of country or the people, and wish to destroy our nation state and its English culture.
Or perhaps the political classes are just incredibly dense. Let me give you an example: the scheme where at the expense of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, illegal immigrants can be deported to Rwanda. But this is not possible because we have signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, and Blair imported that convention into our law under the Human Rights Act 1998. All the lawyers have to do is to plead, for example, a right to family life, including owning a cat, or an allegation that the legal system in Rwanda is not up to scratch, and an illegal immigrant cannot be deported. So if the immigrant’s application fails in our courts he can appeal to a foreign court, the European Court of Human Rights, and there he has a very good chance of success. Why did the Conservative Government introduce the Rwanda scheme knowing it would not pass the human rights test?
The most pathetic excuse the Conservative Government makes is to blame the lawyers. They are merely doing their job. Why doesn’t the Conservative Government take steps to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and withdraw from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights? Then it could deport illegal immigrants and immigrants who commit crimes.
Immigration, according to Migration Watch UK, fuels 80 per cent of the new homes built in the UK and is the prime mover in the vast increase in population. As a result our infrastructure and public services cannot cope. The NHS has a waiting list of 6.5million. Covid was a symptom, not the cause, of the NHS not coping. Our roads are congested, high density housing estates are despoiling England’s green and pleasant land, our youngsters cannot afford housing, a GP appointment is hard to get, schools are difficult to get into. What happens when the water runs out?
