Immigration: too much of a bad thing

By Richard North - November 24, 2023

We all knew the migration figures were coming and there had been leaks suggesting a new record, so we can hardly profess surprise now that they are here. But one has to admire the creativity of the ONS and others who would wish to play down their impact.

In fact, the pre-emptive strike has been a stroke of Machiavellian genius. Rather than play around with this year’s total, they have revised last year’s record, adding 139,000 to the already scandalously high figure of 606,000 to deliver an even newer record of 745,000.

And by such devious means, this year’s figure of a mere 672,000 for the 12 months to June 2023 miraculously comes out at less than last year, enabling the guileless ONS to declare that it is too early to say if this is the start of “a new downward trend”. Despite that, they say the figures indicate a slowing of immigration and increasing emigration.

Now it could be that the ONS is totally above board, and the organisation wouldn’t even think of manipulating the figures to spare the government some embarrassment (heavens forefend) but the fact is that, over the past two years, net migration has reached 1,417,000.

This is a higher increase than any similar period in the nation’s history and, it is said, more than the total for years 1945-2000 combined – a sum of staggering proportions on a scale of which matches the populations of the cities Birmingham and Coventry, and which is clearly unsustainable.

Nor do we need any reminders that this is the Tory government taking the piss. Thirteen years ago, we had David Cameron – the very same who is poncing around Israel as Sunak’s foreign minister – promise to limit immigration to “tens of thousands” a year.

Said “Call me Dave” after net migration had reached 237,000 in 2007, net immigration of 200,000 a year – or 2 million a decade – was “too much”, only to have any promise undermined by Theresa May and then ditched in 2019 by the moronic Johnson.

It was he who insisted on introducing his version of an “Australian-style points system” which would “take back control of our borders”. He thus failed to impose annual quotas, thereby limiting intakes – a core part of the Australian system where obtaining sufficient “points” only gets you onto the waiting list.

The result of his stupidity (or cupidity) is now plain to see. When net migration to June 2019 was just under 200,000, dipping to close on 150,000 in 2020, rising to just over 200,000 in 2021, in the post-Covid world the figures soared in 2022 and again this year, to more than three times the pre-Brexit level that Cameron said was “too much”.

Now have to suffer the indignity of being taken for fools by the current administration, having the current home secretary, James Cleverly, gaslighting us, as he tells us with a straight face that the migration figure is “not showing a significant increase”.

And, in the deadly corporate-speak that infests the pronouncements of government ministers, he pledges that “we are working across government on further measures to prevent exploitation and manipulation of our visa system”.

Yet, far from there being an abuse by visa applicants, the huge inflow is very much a feature of the system, where there is effectively an open house to immigrants who can afford a university course, to the extent that study visas accounted for 643,778 entrants last year.

With “students” then being able to apply for work visas, once they have completed their courses – with virtually guaranteed qualifications – these people also account for a significant number of work permits, which ran to 585,774 last year, and many of the family visas, which ran to 82,395.

Although foreign students do not, by any means, account for the totality of immigration – and in any event the scale is a relatively new phenomenon – cutting back savagely on their entry would do much to reduce the figures for next year – with the possible added advantage of driving a substantial number of second-rate universities into bankruptcy.

That in turn might precipitate a reversion of many of these institutions to technical colleges, which needs to be matched by the removal of many degree requirements for employment in certain disciplines – such as nursing – and a concentration on practical vocational courses for  indigenous residents.

It would be facile to suggest, however, that the current immigration crisis that the UK is facing is just a numbers game. Last year, 1.2 million visas were issued and the vast majority – 968,000 – of those arriving were from non-EU countries.

Already, decades of multiculturalism, protected by an increasingly complex web of law and institutional measures, has reversed in many areas the process of integration, and this inflow of non-Europeans makes things worse.

Such stresses are exacerbated by the emergence of unconcealed radical Islam in this country, and self-serving Black exceptionalism. These have created sub-cultures which are quite openly hostile to traditional British values – and entirely incompatible with the maintenance of societal cohesion. Inter-ethnic rivalries are set to make the problems even worse.

The higher breeding rates of immigrant stock, and the fall-off in white British communities, combine cultural and number problems, where the establishment of what amount to ghettoes in an increasing number of our cities and towns are changing the face and character of the nation – and not for the better.

Interestingly, the recently departed home secretary, Suella Braverman, has not been reticent in expressing her views on the current figures, noting that the pressure on housing, the NHS, schools, wages, and community cohesion, is unsustainable. “When”, she says, “do we say: enough is enough?”.

“We [the Conservatives]” she adds, “were elected on a pledge to reduce net migration, which was 229,000 in 2019”. The current record numbers, she avers “are a slap in the face to the British public who have voted to control and reduce migration at every opportunity”, asserting that: “We must act now to reduce migration to sustainable levels”.

Braverman argues that Brexit gave us the tools and it’s time to use them. As home secretary, she claims, she pushed to put an annual cap on net migration, to raise the salary threshold to £45,000 for those seeking work permits, closing the graduate visa route, capping health and social care visas, and limiting dependents on all visas.

While Sunak would have us focused on illegal immigration and asylum seekers, it is legal immigration which must also be the centre of attention, and Braverman’s nostrums are sound – as far as they go.

But such are the numbers already in this country that any government that is to survive what will be the inevitable backlash must start thinking in terms of the unthinkable – an active programme of repatriation, part voluntary and part compulsory, the  latter applying to migrants who have committed criminal offences or are unable to support themselves financially.

British citizenship granted to migrants should be like driving licences – revoked automatically in the event of certain offences. Deportation should follow with extremely limited rights of appeal.

While the ONS talks glibly about whether there is a trend detectable in the current figures, events overnight in Dublin could most certainly be the harbinger of things to come. There, rioting has broken out after a man, said to be an Algerian asylum seeker, stabbed three schoolchildren and two adults who sought to protect them.

When the police refused to identify the nationality and status of the assailant, the frustration of the crowd – where tensions were already high over migrant behaviour – boiled over. A police car, a tram and a bus were set alight, and a city-centre hotel used to house asylum seekers was trashed, while immigrants looted a local department store.

Needless to say, the demonstrators have been quickly branded as “far-right” – even by the supposedly “right wing” Telegraph, which should know better.

But then, so has been the victorious Geert Wilders whose Party for Freedom (PVV) has won 37 seats in his country’s general election, on an anti-Islam platform, trying to prevent more parts of the Netherlands descending into third-world slums.

And there is where one of the major battle-lines lies. We must stop politicians and others gaslighting people who have concluded – from the evidence of their own eyes – that mass immigration and multi-culturalism are not an unalloyed good. To object to either or both does not warrant a “far right” label.

Those who so freely resort to this epithet need to realise that, if they continue to overuse it, so many people become “far right” that the term loses its power, and nobody cares anymore – as is happening with the term “racist”.

Demonising people who agree with Braverman that “enough is enough” will only go so far, until they decide that the level of immigration is too much – which cannot be far off. Unless something is done before then, more than a few police cars will be burning. People will only take so much.