UK newspapers and X are full of stories about illegal immigrants arriving on our beaches or more often than not being picked up by what has become a government and RNLI sponsored taxi service. I am sure that some people will object to my use of the word illegal, but being factual, they are entering the UK illegally from a safe EU country.
We have a border that has to be one of the easiest to protect (a large expanse of water) but our government as usual is making an absolute hash of it and the numbers crossing the channel from France are once again increasing. Some will vociferously defend the immigrants right to asylum in the UK because they are escaping persecution and war but others will point out that they are in fact leaving a very safe country (France) and risking their lives in the English Channel out of choice. Some will also point out that 87% of the people arriving are fit young men and not families ravaged by war and persecution in their home countries. It leads to intense frustration when we have British people sleeping on the streets but immediately house illegal immigrants in hotels and give them pocket money. I share this frustration because it is evident that the UK is struggling to look after the present and rapidly rising population never mind increasing it exponentially. It is also incredibly frustrating that at the same time as we accept illegal immigrants it has become very difficult to move to the UK legally even when highly qualified and with a great deal to offer the country. It took five years, jumping through numerous hoops and significant expenditure for my wife to join me from Azerbaijan and I know other skilled people who are struggling to get work visas at this moment. I could carry on being negative and detailing, sexual misconduct, fighting amongst immigrants, trashing detention centres and forming intimidating groups in town centres but it does not help. We do however need everyone and I mean everyone to agree that there is a huge problem housing together in hotels, a large number of testosterone fuelled young men from a culture that has a significantly different attitudes to gender equality LGBTQ etc.
Does this mean that all asylum seekers are bad, as the press and posters on X tend to suggest? The answer is of course no, but the present situation is unsustainable. I cannot understand why it is so difficult for the government to get to grips with the problem and even turn it to everybody's advantage. So what would Mr Jones do in order to protect those in real danger applying for asylum whilst deterring purely economic illegal migrants from crossing the channel.
Mr Jones would put aside fears of losing the votes of a percentage of the electorate that for cultural reasons believes unfettered immigration is good and believe that there is a money tree that can support incomers who have not and will not in the future pay any taxes in this country.
Mr Jones believes strongly that existing laws should be strictly adhered to, but if not fit for purpose then they need to be changed. I do not mean endlessly talking about changes so that they never actually occur. I mean do it immediately. If it's a holiday then recall parliament because the British public are sick of delays, broken promises and government incompetence.
So what would Mr Jones push through first? Straight to Paris and make it clear that the UK will agree to take a manageable number of asylum seekers but interviews to be held on French soil and only when/if agreed will they be allowed to enter the UK. Priority to be given to the most vulnerable or those that have relatives living legally in the UK. With a procedure to process an agreed number of at risk asylum seekers in France in place, all future illegal immigrants arriving in the UK or intercepted in the channel, to be returned to the country that they came from i.e. France. If the EU has a porous border then that is an issue for them to resolve and not for a non EU member to be disadvantaged by. This hard approach benefits all, because the most vulnerable are processed for asylum quickly and do not need to risk their lives crossing the channel and economic migrants will no longer see the UK as the promised land. Why would any sane person think that rather than helping those at risk through a controlled process on French soil, it would be better to send them all to Africa at huge cost. What sort of a hare brained idea is that?
So what do we do about the thousands of illegal immigrants already in the UK, some of whom have absconded and are now part of the black economy or involved in crime. We need to be honest with ourselves and admit that once in the country, it is highly unlikely that they can ever be ejected, because they have no papers to prove their country of birth or previous residence. Better to prevent any more arriving and do something that is good for those already here and the UK. We have a large number of job vacancies in the UK that our young people do not want to fill, so why not use this small army of young men. Yes it will cost money to provide training but the training can be work specific and also cover the behaviour expectations and laws for people living in the UK. Let them join society rather than remaining as outcasts and becoming involved in crime or simply disappearing into areas of the UK where integration is already a major problem.
I lived in Singapore for a number of years and I witnessed the methods for ensuring that integration into the culture of the country is enforced, and whilst they are too draconian to be implemented here, I do believe that their extremely harsh penalties for breaking the law should be applied in this country. We do not, as the government tells us, have too many prisoners, we have too few prisons and the sentences are too lenient. We need sentencing and conditions within prisons to be a deterrent and laws changed to allow immediate deportation when the jail sentence has been completed. Does this sound harsh? Those that have been allowed to stay in our country but have chosen to break the law have given up their right to remain in this country. No endless appeals process paid for by UK citizens, the law to be changed to allow transportation straight from prison to their country of origin.
We have a responsibility to assist genuine asylum seekers and protect those that are at risk in their own countries but the present situation cannot continue as it works to the detriment of the most vulnerable and favours illegal immigration for purely economic reasons.
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