Yes.  I am raising the one topic that Politicians don’t want to discuss….apart from the BNP!

And no….Immigration is not about race/colour/nationality……it is….a purely economic issue.  Yes.  ECONOMIC! 

Immigration is the great taboo subject.  The moment it is mentioned, the race card is immediately played.  Speak about restricting immigration into our nation and the ‘left’ immediately invoke the term ‘racist’ and reference someone as being a card carrying member of the BNP.  Hence, real debate is immediately stifled! We deserve better than this.

And yes, immigration is hard to discuss for Conservatives without having the spectre of Enoch Powell’s ’Rivers of Blood speech’, being submitted as a battering ram against any sensible discussion or argument. 

So this blog article is looking at immigration and how sustainable UK entry levels are in a recession, with a strangling, cancerous level of public debt, spiraling unemployment and massively overstretched public services….. and presenting facts for your thoughtful reflection.

Immigration is a HUGE concern to the British people.  It is, without fail, in the top issues that people worry about.  Go down the pub and it’s always a subject of healthy debate.  Hence this allows the BNP the freedom to play on these concerns….and the BNP use all the emotional tricks going to whip a feeding frenzy of publicity.  BNP associate rising unemployment with immigration….hence they publisicse that immigrants are taking British people’s jobs, immigrants taking ‘our’ benefits, immigrants causing crime and making our streets unsafe, immigrants stretching ‘our’ healthcare etc…those are the headlines that the BNP want to see and seek to generate….and some in the media happily pedal this base level argument, verging on vile filth.

The BNP should be nowhere in the polls….but the inability of our politicians…allow the BNP access to public debate….to the oxygen of publicity.  Brown pressed the emotional button with ‘British jobs for British workers’ and boy did this get the public fired up.  Then Brown realized that this was protectionist language and backtracked because Cameron reminded him that huge amounts of British workers were employed abroad, especially across Europe and if we promoted ‘British jobs for British workers’ then, if our European partners did the same, British workers abroad could lose their jobs. 

So David Cameron.  Let’s seize the argument over immigration and squeeze out the BNP.  Kill the issue and you kill the lunatics of the BNP.  How?….use facts in your argument and this will seize populist belief.

Let’s not sleepwalk to 70 million people in the UK, if we cant afford it…..and our public services certainly struggle to cope with 56 million!

Huge levels of immigration put pressure on existing issues we face and are not solving:

- Housing   (limited housing stock and depressed housing market, lack of money to build new houses)

- Jobs   (rising levels of unemployment, not enough jobs to go round)

- State benefit system  (already overstretched with unemployment benefit rising and depleted exchequer revenues)

- Health service  (stretched to the bone, not enough beds, increasing waiting times)

- Education  (already cuts in University funds are seeing students turned away, pressure on schools and classroom sizes)

- Travel infrastructure  (Decrepit roads at a standstill with overwhelming traffic, trains creaking–need for money and public not incentivised to travel on any form of public transport as poor service and very expensive)

- Environment  (building more houses in the countryside, growing pollution, more cars on the road, more wasteful emissions and wastage occurring)

- Depleting energy resources  (more people using more and more resources, speeding their depletion)

- Social Fabric  (how differing cultures seamlessly blend in stressful recessionary times and live harmoniously)

So let’s get to the facts….Immigration is not an emotional debate, it is an economic and social debate, over what the UK can afford and how society should grow, (as shown above).

So what is happening, what is the problem?…in facts we can understand not ‘emotive BNP propaganda’:

-     Net immigration has quadrupled since 1997 to 237,000 a year.  Yes New Labour have failed to get a grip on this

-     This means a migrant now arrives nearly every minute….yes every minute

-      Immigration will add 7 million to the population of England in the next 20 years – that is 7 times the population of Birmingham.

-      By 2008, almost one in nine British residents (6.5m) was born abroad.

-      Some estimates show that we must build a new home every six minutes for new migrants.

-      Much of the increase of immigrants has come from residents of the “A8″ countries that joined the EU in May 2004 – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

-     Of these, two thirds were Polish, making Poland the third most common country of birth for immigrants living in Britain, after India and the Republic of Ireland.

-     The latest government household projections show that immigration will account for 39% of all new households in the next 20 years.

-      England is already the most crowded country in Europe (except Malta)

-      To keep the population of the UK below 70 million, immigration must be reduced by 75%.

-      Asylum immigration, (much loved by the tabloids), only runs at 10% of net immigration, (30,000 per year)

-      There are more than 300 primary schools in which over 70% have English as a second language; this is nearly a half million children.

-     In London, which has long been home to immigrants from all over the world, one in three residents was born abroad by 2007. In the boroughs of Westminster and Brent, there are more foreign-born people than Britons.

-   Growing level of illegal immigrants, (classed as those who enter illegally on the back of a truck, visitors and students who overstay their visas, and rejected asylum seekers who the authorities fail to remove.  In March 2009 a study by the London School of Economics suggested a central estimate of 725,000 of which 518,000 were thought to be in London.

So, alarming figures.  With the UK in the midst of a severe recession, with a public debt that is cancerously spiraling the UK to bankruptcy, it is clear action needs to be taken.   Now, key to this, is not a discussion on the colour of skin, a particular race or culture, but a discussion on the burden that is being placed on public services, housing, environment, society and quality of life.

Defendants of immigration point to the economic benefits of immigrants.   So, what are the economic benefits of immigration?  Searching the Internet and Government papers shows only one major study into this area.  This was enacted by the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords in 1997/98. In April 1998 they stated that “We have found no evidence for the argument, made by the government, business and many others, that net immigration – immigration minus emigration – generates significant economic benefits for the existing UK population.” As regards the contribution of migrants to the Exchequer, they concluded that “The overall fiscal impact of immigration is likely to be small, though this masks significant variations across different immigrant groups.”

So who is to blame for the tidal wave of immigration?  New Labour have a lot of blame at their door as they have accelerated the numbers of immigrants, including 

-  Trebling the number of work permits issued from 43,000 in 1997 to 129,000 in 2007. (Dependants are additional—yes additional!)

-   Changing the rules in June 1997 to permit marriage to be used as a means of immigration. The numbers have since risen by 50% to about 42,000 a year.

-  Not removing those immigrants that are rejected each year so the pool of illegal immigrants continues to grow. Applications are currently running at about 30,000 a year.

 So what can be done by David Cameron & his Conservatives pre election?

-      Seize the moment and seize the issue. Cameron should address immigration with a clear policy.  This will be popular amongst voters but also make a difference to the economy.  A vote winner.

-     He should propose we stabilise the current population level to what it is,  (stabilise by balancing immigration & emigration).  Not approach levels of 70 million.

-     Propose we set an agreed target range for immigration and keep to it, (much as other countries do) eg say 20,000

-     Propose stronger border controls and increased investment to prevent illegal immigrants

-     Propose the UK cap the level of work permits.  And increase the number of points needed to settle here, (hence aid economic recovery)

-     Propose the UK cap the number of students immigrating in to study in the UK

-     Whilst asylum is low in proportion, propose measures to deport those who cannot demonstrate the need for true asylum

-     Propose measures to remove illegal immigrants.  Easy to say but hard to empower.  Start by massive punitive fines to employers of illegal immigrants.

All these proposals are potential election manifesto winners on this emotive subject.  I hope this blog demonstrates that the issue of immigration, when tackled sensitively in an economic and social basis, is a huge vote winner.  David…over to you……