Dan Hodges posted this tweet earlier today and the replies showed a lot of people struggling to answer it. So I thought I’d give it a go.
My view is that the current ‘deterrent’ policy isn’t working. The U.K. would have to have a brutal, economically disastrous (and in my opinion, immoral) closed-borders policy to stop people trying their luck in huge numbers (10s of thousands at the moment)
Even then, I still feel that many people would try and sneak in illegally and the lack of ID cards in this country makes it hard for us to track and enforce against human trafficking.
My view is that we should be much more open to refugees and asylum seekers, similar to countries like Canada, Sweden and Germany. However, we need to get a better grip on processing applications and have more control on economic migrants.
When I worked for an MP, I was shocked at how long people remained in the U.K. without a valid visa. Asylum and settled-status applications could take years and years to process. People would put in applications they knew wouldn’t be successful, because they knew they couldn’t be deported if they had a live application under consideration. Many of these people lived a life of limbo, with restriction on benefits and their employment. The system simply seemed to be failing everyone.
I think if we were to have open borders, we’d see literally millions and millions enter the country over the next decade. 850k eastern Europeans immigrants arrived in the U.K. between 2004 and 2011, many moving into areas without a longstanding history of immigration. My view is that areas of the country with high levels of ‘churn’ and a long history of immigration and diversity, such as London’s East End, can accommodate rapid demographic change, better than rural Lincolnshire.
But no matter where one is in the UK, most people are likely to be discombobulated by profound and rapid demographic change in their area. Not only will conflict over resources arise — for example, the idea that more needy migrants might be ‘jumping the queue’ ahead of longstanding residents in the wait for social housing, medical attention, jobs etc — there is likely to be anxiety that the area they once knew is irreversibly changed. The pubs, restaurants, sports and social clubs you knew are being replaced by social facilities that cater for the new community. You don’t have anything against your new neighbours due to their race or language, but you do feel a sense of loss and you struggle to form bonds with your new neighbours due to deep cultural and language differences. If you think this person is a bigot, would you say the same for an ethnic minority family who feel disconcerted, uneasy or even resentful towards incoming white gentrifiers?
Now you could argue that in a future socialist utopia there would be no ‘queue’ for resources or social security. Fair enough, but I am sceptical about that…
You may think that the most needy should come first no matter what and those who complain about more needy new-comers getting first dibs on housing etc, should just put up with it. However, I think anyone on the liberal-Left, who is not a utopian idealist, needs to think about how rapid demographic change and conflicts over local resources might lead to resentment and think hard about how we maintain the structural foundations for cohesive communities.
Personally, I believe we need to manage immigration to manage integration and social cohesion, while accepting that we have a moral duty to provide a safe haven to desperate people.
We also need to consider our need to provide new workers to support our economy which is burdened by an ageing population and a low-birth rate.
So here are my ideas for combating illegal migration.
- U.K. identification cards for all. These would include your biographic details and biometric data and confirm your current right to remain.
- Proactive channel scanning to collect small boats (yes it would encourage more to do it but too many people are dying even with our current harsh policies. Harsher policies won’t stop people attempting to cross, it’ll just lead to more deaths)
- Large processing centres dotted around the coast and entrance points. I won’t beat around the bush. These will be be prisons, but ‘Norwegian Style’ and have large cells for entire families to remain together. Assessments will be made here on whether individuals and families are refugees/asylum seekers or economic migrants and whether they have a right to remain. If assessment are due to take months or years, a short-stay ID card will be issued while their full application is processed and they can live and work freely during that period.
- Destroy the Home Office and rebuild it in an attempt to change its institutional culture. Invest huge amounts of money into UK visas and immigration so migrants can be kept in decent conditions, and can be processed quickly and efficiently.
- Those with no right to remain will be deported back to their country of origin. If they don’t leave voluntarily, border police will take them to a holding centre and put them on flights.
In the future, we will likely to see vast numbers of people displaced by climate change. Extreme weather and famine will likely cause war and conflict over resources and further conflict over managing displaced people. Western nations will need to come to collective agreements over the sharing of displaced people from the global south.
The issue of immigration is only going to grow as a political hot potato. Open borders would see unparalleled transfer of people to countries with the most favourable economic conditions and would likely cause widespread political destabilisation.
Migration needs to be managed, and that will mean some people being removed due to entering and remaining in a country illegally.
