If Labour thinks they can continue to sideline illegal migration, they are gravely mistaken

The Government must reckon with the reality that the old international treaties are no longer fit for purpose

Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
From the Department of Unexpected News comes the revelation that since Labour came to office in July, 9400 people who were in Britain illegally have been returned to their home countries. Nearly 2600 of them were forced deportations.
That represents an increase of 19 per cent over the same figures from the previous year. We should not be too surprised at this Government’s enthusiasm for enforcing immigrations law; Labour recognises its reputation in UK politics as a perceived pushover when it comes to forced removals. 
It was the last Labour, not Conservative, government that came in for years of blistering attacks from the media for arresting entire families at their homes early in the morning and carting them off to detention centres ahead of their return flights to whichever countries they came from.
The chief difference between deportation arrangements now with a year ago is that they are no longer accompanied by “open letters” published in the media and signed by pearl-clutching Labour politicians objecting to the law being enforced. It is likely that such round robins will circulate again if a future Conservative Home Secretary takes office and chooses to pursue exactly the same strategy as his Labour predecessor. In which case we can prepare ourselves for all the usual frothing and fussing about civil rights and inhumane treatment of immigrants.
In the meantime, those normally voluble voices are silent and rather than ask why, we should be grateful. 
While the Government’s actions should be welcomed by anyone who gives a fig for the principle that all sovereign nations have the right to decide who can come and live here and who cannot, and while we should welcome recent progress in the fight to dismantle the people trafficking gangs who make a fortune from sending economic migrants on perilous journeys across the English Channel from France, it has yet to sink in with most of our political establishment that the old ways of securing our borders are not fit for purpose.
In the age of mass migration, with all of Europe suffering from historically high and unprecedented numbers of new arrivals on its southern shores, chartering a dozen or so jets every so often to take such people back to where they came from can barely put a dent in the numbers arriving here or in Italy or Greece. 
Labour ministers love to mock the very notion of the Rwanda scheme and to pretend that it had failed in its intentions – a claim that is only true if you discount the fact that it had yet to start operating by the time Labour won the general election. It was a radical, expensive and morally dubious scheme. But its most dangerous facet was the risk that it might actually work in deterring residents of France to pay good money for a perilous dinghy journey only to end up in east Africa.
The progressives joined the traffickers and the potential migrants themselves in celebrating the demise of that scheme, even as, in Italy, the government chose to develop a similar one involving the processing of arrivals in Albania, a project that others EU countries were eyeing optimistically as a possible solution to the continent-wide problem.
But that scheme has also run into legal difficulties and has had to be delayed, just as in Britain, plans to deport a violent, predatory paedophile has fallen foul of human rights legislation with the assailant now given permission to remain in Britain instead of behind packed off back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he clearly belongs.
It is beyond unlikely that we will see radical suggestions from this Government for reform that will allow such people to be removed more easily. The European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Human Rights Act are considered sacrosanct and unchangeable. At the same time we are forced to accept that a judge can prioritise a criminal’s “right to a family life” over the state’s right to remove that criminal from a country whose hospitality he has abused – even when the victims in this case were members of his own family. 
Removal flights of illegal immigrants are necessary but they’re not enough to relieve the pressure on hotel accommodation currently given over to people whose asylum applications are still being considered. They’re not enough to reassure UK citizens that immigration law cannot simply be bypassed by people who do not wish to or cannot afford to go through the proper channels to apply for residency here.
One (or more) of three changes need to be made to the current structures when it comes to illegal immigrations: the ECHR has to be amended or abandoned; some sort of third country scheme should be adopted to process asylum cases; and judges should lose much of their legal rights to second guess and overturn ministerial decisions on residency status.
Alternatively, we could just go on as we are, press releasing the latest figures on removals and hoping the public believe that such tiny measures really are making a difference.
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email