Tania Amisi got asylum and repaid Britain with crime
AMIX of manipulative sentimentality and guilt-tripping deceit hangs over the debate about immigration. Dismissive of all concerns about the pressure on the welfare state, the enthusiasts for open borders constantly tell us that our economy could not survive without the vast annual foreign influx. At the same time, these ideologues trumpet Britain’s supposed moral responsibility to take in anyone who claims to be fleeing persecution overseas.
Yet this emotive analysis does not stand up to a moment’s scrutiny.
Its emptiness is exposed by cases like that of fraudster Tania Amisi who was jailed this week following her conviction for claiming £224,000 in bogus benefits from 22 different councils.
Amisi, who arrived in Britain as an asylum seeker from the Congo, used her taxpayerfunded income to maintain her luxurious lifestyle, which included owning two properties in London’s Chelsea Harbour, one of the most prestigious addresses in the world, as well as high-class travel, hotels, restaurants and fashion.
Britain provided her with sanctuary and she rewarded the public with extortion. Given the seriousness of her crimes her prison sentence of four years seems lenient; she could be free in less than two.
But this lack of toughness is only in keeping with the laxity of British officialdom, which has made public money easy prey to migrant criminals. Progressive campaigners wallowing in their phoney narrative about racism attack the supposed cruelty of the welfare system to migrants. As the saga of Tania Amisi proves, just the opposite is true.
HERE was an asylum seeker from Africa who, courtesy of the politically correct benefits system, enjoyed affluence far beyond the dreams of most of the Britons funding her.
She is a living symbol of so much that has gone wrong with the integrity of our civic life. The welfare state was founded to meet the needs of British people, not to provide a honeypot for foreign parasites and crooks.
Sadly her case is hardly an isolated one. Almost every month brings news of frauds perpetrated by asylum seekers and migrants.
In November police in Scotland broke a criminal ring that had secured £1million in tax credit and other benefit claims. Most of the 58 people involved were Romanians, which led to a predictable outpouring of anguish from the Left. “We have a duty of care to these families,” wailed one SNP councillor after the arrests, her words encapsulating the moral inversion that is wrecking our country.
During the summer failed asylum seeker Ramou Jarjusey from Gambia was found guilty of illegally pocketing more than £70,000 worth of benefits while living in the West Midlands. Once again the punishment was pathetically inadequate. She was given a suspended prison term of just 16 months and ordered to pay a nominal compensation of just £1,000, at £250 a month.
Equally indulgent were the 10-month jail terms handed out by a Manchester Court in April to wealthy Pakistanis Syed Zaidi and his wife Rizwana Kamal, who claimed free accommodation and welfare payments worth more than £150,000 when they were granted asylum here, despite the fact that they had savings of £250,000 in seven bank accounts.
What this catalogue reveals is the absence of rigour in the benefits system. Payments are being dished out. Entitlement is not based on any past record of tax or national insurance contributions, which is why it is so easy for cynical foreigners to exploit.
That reality is denounced by the pro-immigration brigade, pumped up with their anti-British theories about the virtues of the new arrivals and the alleged laziness of the natives. “Tax-paying immigrants past and present keep indolent British scroungers on their couches drinking beer and watching TV,” wrote TV and newspaper commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
But this is a complete myth. The fashionable mantra that “they all come here to work” is as bogus as one of Amisi’s benefit claims. According to the Office of National Statistics only 45 per cent of last year’s influx of 572,000 immigrants arrived here to work.
Contrary to the relentless propaganda of the progressive media, rates of joblessness and welfare dependency are much higher in migrant communities than among the British population. The rate of employment for non-EU foreign nationals is just 63.6 per cent, compared with 75.3 per cent for Britons.
Tdifferent HE reluctance to stamp out migrant freeloading is partly a result of politically correct dogma, which holds that any challenge to any negative behaviour by minorities is a form of bigotry or xenophobia. The soft touch of the welfare system mirrors the paralysis of the justice system in tackling migrant sex gangs, the spread of Sharia law and the prevalence of Islamist extremism.
But there is also a link with the doctrinaire arrogance that infuses the huge £13.3billion foreign aid programme, based on the self-loathing mentality that Britain owes a living to the rest of the world. In that sense, Amisi’s criminality echoes the eagerness of African governments to take our development money to feed their corruption.
At home and abroad we must stop this financial racketeering. Noble intentions of the past are fuelling present abuses.
‘We had provided her with sanctuary’