The migrant crisis is an invasion – and neither party has shown the will to end it
It would be difficult for anyone who believes in laws and borders not to resent these illegal Channel crossings
AThis is about the ineffectiveness of governments – and here the choice of words really does annoy us: they talk tough, but act weak
t the end of last month, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, said in Parliament that “the British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast, and which party is not”.
For her use of the word “invasion”, Mrs Braverman was execrated. Her critics were given much space, particularly by the BBC, to attack her “inflammatory language”.
Obviously, the choice of words on sensitive subjects matters, but if officialdom suppresses truth, that is itself inflammatory. Was the word “invasion” wrong? To talk of an invasion is not necessarily to insult the invader. We know that Julius Caesar invaded Britain 2,000 years ago (landing on much the same beaches as those now chosen by the people-smugglers). Do we think the worse of him for it?
News reports sometimes speak of football fans “invading the pitch”. Sometimes it involves violence, but often these invasions are peaceful celebrations and the word carries no stigma. There are two points about all invasions, however. One is that they are against the rules. The other is that they involve a lot of people.
I live near the south-east coast of Britain, where the boats come in. We have been invaded on all calm days this year. Most of us don’t like it. Few accuse the arrivals of evil intent. We can sympathise with their desire for a better life. What annoys us is that their journeys are illegal and profit criminals. At 40,000 people this year (almost as large as the entire population of Folkestone), their numbers are too great to be shrugged off. It is amusing to see the contrast between the local BBC, which understands the feelings on the shoreline, and the corporation nationally, which moralises from a great height.
Another thing Mrs Braverman said was “let us stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress”. I felt uneasier about this way of putting it than about the word “invasion”, because it seemed to imply bad motives. But the Home Secretary was nevertheless pointing to an important truth.
Some of the 40,000 – notably the Albanians, roughly 40 per cent of recent arrivals – are not fleeing persecution or war in their own country. Indeed, 100 per cent of all these boat passengers are not, in the usual definition of refugees, “seeking safety”: they all set off from France or Belgium, both of which are designated safe.
They could have stayed there without fear of persecution or war. They prefer Britain for non-refugee reasons – freer job opportunities, more accessible public services, weaker ID requirements, relations already in the country, the English language. All understandable motives, none asylum-related.
Even if, among the 40,000, there is not one single drug dealer, gang member or Islamist extremist; even if, which is likely, most of those coming are well motivated to work hard and be good citizens, they add up to a big problem. They are all trying to jump the queue of legal immigrants and they all need expensive public services: police, housing, education, children’s services, NHS. Collectively, their actions prove that we are not masters of our own borders. How could anyone, except those who disbelieve in law and borders, not resent this situation?
So when we watched too many people being admitted to the asylum centre at Manston – a story which the BBC saw as apocalyptic last week and now seems to have forgotten about – the majority was less inclined to regard this as the result of heartless cruelty by Mrs Braverman than of a system which is badly overloaded.
She said it herself: “Illegal migration is out of control, and too many people are more interested in playing political parlour games and covering up the truth than solving the problem.”
We feel frustrated that an abuse of which politicians repeatedly complain is nevertheless allowed to persist. This is not about race, but about the effectiveness – or rather, the ineffectiveness – of government. And here governments’ choice of words really does annoy us: they talk tough, but act weak. This one has done so for 12 years. Now that last week’s media/ Whitehall attempt to get rid of Mrs Braverman has failed, this inadequacy is the focus of the argument.
It seems appropriate to re-examine her sentence in which the word “invasion” appeared. She said the British people deserve to know which party is “serious” about stopping the invasion. We do indeed, but the answer, which will not please the Home Secretary, is that we still don’t know.
Indeed, behind the tut-tutting which oppositions prefer to policy, Labour is not all that far away from the Conservative position. Stephen Kinnock, the shadow minister for immigration, seems quite hawkish on migration in general and wants to extend a version of the Biometric Residence Permit (BRM) from legals to illegals so that they can be better controlled. Rhetorically, Labour is more woke, but the policy difference is not huge. Like Priti Patel before her, Mrs Braverman is talking up reform, but the Government, as a whole, still does not display much will to solve the problem.
To do so, the Government would have to advance on several fronts at once, and speak in terms that were more informed and less angry. Famously, our national independence has been preserved by the existence of the English Channel, because that short stretch of water has made an opposed landing so difficult. Unopposed, the crossing is a fairly safe and simple journey for more than half the year, and no humane way has yet been devised to impede it.
Much more effort is therefore needed to head off voyages before they can start. The immigration expert, David Goodhart, in a forthcoming paper for Policy Exchange, wants to improve and expand the Rwanda idea, arguing that the policy should not be outsourced to local foreign officials but “offshored” with British ones in agreed processing centres, ideally in countries close to sources of refugees. All would-be entrants would have had to be processed before setting foot on British soil, so arriving unprocessed would become futile. He also argues that British aid payments should be linked to a recipient country’s promise to take back those applicants Britain rejects.
There is also more talk, including in centrist circles, of returning to the subject of compulsory ID cards (with biometric information), without which no one could legally be given a job or receive most public services. If you want state benefits, the state needs to know who you are. Britain’s lack of ID cards when most continental countries have them makes this country a magnet.
There are foreign allies to be made here, particularly with new, more Right-wing governments in countries such as Sweden and Italy. There is more diplomacy to be done with France, with less shouting.
As long as what Goodhart calls “the limbo people” are held in this country for a long time – able in many cases, to disappear into the hinterland, or defended by lawyers expert at manipulating human rights law – there will be a critical mass of people here who will outwit the authorities. Deportation to processing centres abroad must be automatic and quick. It cannot be right that people who came here against the law can then use that law against the country they have entered.