Hostile environment? It’s not hostile enough
ALL we seem to have heard about over the past couple of weeks — apart from Brexit, obviously, and some wedding or other — is the Government’s mean-spirited ‘hostile environment’ towards immigrants.
The clippety-cloppety sound bursting out of the Westminster bubble has been that of selfrighteous Lefties on their moral high horses.
Let’s agree the treatment of the Windrush generation was a national disgrace. They are British citizens, living here perfectly legally, handled abominably by the bureaucracy.
The callous attempts to deny their citizenship and send them ‘home’ to the Caribbean cost Home Secretary Amber Rudd her job.
Thankfully, this scandalous miscarriage of justice is now being addressed. But that hasn’t stopped the open borders crowd exploiting it ruthlessly for their own purposes.
They have been allowed to pretend that the hostile environment for illegal immigrants — instigated by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary — applies to all immigrants, legal or otherwise. It’s a blatant lie which has been swallowed opportunistically by Rudd’s successor Sajid Javid, who has promised to take a much more ‘compassionate’ approach to migrants in future.
of course, we want to welcome those from overseas who come to Britain to contribute to society. But we shouldn’t buy the myth that all immigrants are law-abiding cancer surgeons, care workers and skilled construction staff.
We’ve more than our fair share of foreign gangsters, terrorists, fraudsters and assorted layabouts.
If there really has been a hostile policy towards migrants, it doesn’t seem to have deterred anyone from coming here. Quite the opposite, in fact.
official estimates put the number of illegal immigrants at one million, so you can probably double that figure as a basis for negotiation. The Government admits there is virtually no chance any of them will be deported.
If this is hostile, I’d hate to see soft. our approach seems to be modelled on Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition sketch. Fetch . . . the comfy chair! Take these news stories, all of which appeared over the past couple of days and show just how well the Government’s alleged hard line is working out.
The National Crime Agency has revealed that gangs are bringing people into Britain using private planes landing at any of 3,000 small airstrips across the country, most of them with little or no security checks. Thousands more are entering via boats and inflatables docking at 950 ports, harbours and marinas.
The closure of camps at Calais and dunkirk has had no impact on the number of migrants from the Middle East and Africa determined to cross the Channel illegally.
To meet overwhelming demand, people smugglers have now resorted to stowing migrants in refrigerated trucks.
In the film The Long Good friday, gangster Harold Shand — played
YETthousands of illegal immigrants are prepared to pay good money to come into Britain like a slab of frozen lamb, regardless of the indignity or the extremely high risk of dying from hypothermia.
I have visions of them being off-loaded at Toddington Services on the M1 and thawed out with blow-torches before legging it into the Bedfordshire countryside, never to be seen again.
How long before some enterprising people smuggler starts bringing over migrants in a fleet of specially adapted Mr Whippy vans? After Labour threw open the borders, immigration from Eastern Europe rocketed. No one is denying that the majority of those who arrived are hard-working, pay their taxes and have filled jobs the locals are either unable or unwilling to accept.
But we’ve also been forced to accommodate thousands of itinerant beggars, pickpockets and cashpoint crooks, including the colourful, raggle- taggle gipsies, tramps and thieves who have added so much to the rich diversity of our city centres.
Even many of those who came here looking for legitimate work ended up living on the streets.
There was a half-hearted attempt to kick some of them out, but we now learn that initiative has inevitably fallen foul of European yuman rites law. The courts have ruled that homeless EU migrants who were detained or deported are entitled to thousands of pounds in compensation, courtesy of the mug British taxpayer.
Tomas Lusas, from Lithuania, who was arrested after being found sleeping rough in London, appealed against being sent home and was awarded £10,000 damages.
As a result, the Home office — which was so enthusiastic about sending ‘ home’ genuine British citizens of Caribbean heritage — has abandoned all investigations into rough sleepers from the EU.
So much for hostility.
STILL,it’s only taxpayers’ money. Even when foreign criminals are caught and convicted, there’s a nice drink in it for them.
Aliou Bah, jailed twice for sex attacks since arriving here in 2007, won a payout of £110,000 after a judge ruled he had been held in detention for too long awaiting deportation. Since 2015, he has been living in a council house in Southampton. of course he has.
Bah is just one of more than 1,800 foreign criminals still here years after they should have been booted out.
far from the absurd claims of the open borders crowd, Britain remains the softest of soft touches. It’s why millions of people from all over the world are desperate to move here.
They keep on coming in their hundreds of thousands every year because they know once they set foot in Britain the likelihood of them being removed is virtually non-existent.
Yet still the Left claim laughably that this country operates a policy of hostility towards all migrants.
We don’t even create a ‘hostile environment’ for illegals and convicted foreign criminals. Instead, we give them council houses, legal aid and thousands of pounds from the poor box.
If this is hostile, it’s nowhere near hostile enough.