Immigration is the central question for Britain’s EU membership
SIR – The official net migration figures (report, August 27) make worrying reading. At this rate we would need to build a city the size of Birmingham every three years just to house the migrants, while providing support services, transport and jobs.
That is if this influx only continues at the present rate. All it takes is for a hard-pressed Greece, Italy or Hungary to issue passports to their own floods of migrants to make the current totals seem mild.
Even so, the figures do not take into account illegal immigration, which must grow as those now crossing the Mediterranean arrive at the Channel.
The Prime Minister must renegotiate the legal right of EU citizens to live in Britain. If he does not get this we would have to leave the EU.
Roger Bellamy
Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire
SIR – The BBC reported this week that an Afghan teenager had walked all the way from Afghanistan across Turkey to Croatia to seek a new life in Europe, a remarkable feat. Moreover, he achieved it pushing his grandmother all the way in her wheelchair.
I think that young men of this calibre would be a very positive addition to society here in Britain.
Nigel Dwyer
Solihull
SIR – The EU has said that each state should take a fair share of immigrants. It is interesting to examine population figures over the past 15 years. Britain’s population has increased by 10.5 per cent and that of France by 12 per cent, but most EU members have seen small increases or decreases. Germany’s population has hardly increased at all.
The increase in population in Britain is largely due to immigrants. If other EU states accepted the same percentage increase, to accommodate the current influx, it would mean for Germany 8,610,000 new immigrants, for Poland an increase of 4,045,650, and Hungary 1,060,290.
Peter Amey
Norwich
SIR – Richard Shaw (Letters, August 27) asks whether Israel has a migrant problem.
It certainly has, though not related to the turmoil in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, for few Muslim refugees would choose to take refuge in the Jewish state. Israel faces an influx of African immigrants, mostly Christian, from the oppressive regimes of north Sudan and Eritrea.
They have traversed the desert, usually on foot, paying huge sums of money to people-traffickers. Along the way, smugglers have sometimes kidnapped them for the sex trade, held them ransom, tortured the men and raped the women.
There are now some 60,000 illegal African immigrants in Israel, largely in Tel Aviv. Since Israel never deports persecuted individuals or groups, there they remain, as “asylum seekers”, causing the authorities many a headache, and generating the familiar sort of hostility among the population.
Neville Teller
Beit Shemesh, Israel