It is surely time for a rethink about immigration and human rights, and the best diversity and indigenous balance for the UK. In Sherbhert’s article last year on immigration the politicisation of this issue was rehearsed. See IMMIGRATON – THE LIGHTNING ROD FOR HATE.
ASYLUM SEEKING
UK politics, and indeed USA and European politics, have migrants at their centre. Trump, having no values, can implement extreme measures and so act effectively, in closing borders and in maximising deportations. The American constitution is long on rights of freedom for citizens but not for illegal migrants.
Asylum seeking is a European battlefield. In the UK as well as Continental Europe, international European conventions established after the second world war, some 75 years old, form the backbone of current rights for refugees and so asylum seekers. Their sentiments are admirable but the rights, many commentators say, were established not with mass migration from war torn or authoritarian countries in far off continents in mind. Honestly, is not the background a grim war in Europe in the 1940s and displaced Europeans? The background was not millions of displaced people crossing seas from ethnically alien, and religiously alien, countries with cultures which conflict with European models. And the obligations to accept migrants placed on signatory countries under these conventions are without limit.
Should any country be bound to take alien people in uncapped numbers because their own country cannot give them appropriate freedom? In theory, today, if they could all reach the UK somehow and apply for asylum here, perhaps 3 million Gazans would be worthy applicants for UK asylum. That would perhaps obviously be a UK disaster and unsustainable. The same could be true of the Sudan, Yemen and even Russia. And so, it is right to question the appropriateness today of conventions established in a different world culture and reality. What is happening though is not just questioning but political abuse of a problem which needs cool headed debate and factual bases to prevent division and the stirring of racist tendencies. Is it not unarguable that the laws of asylum need revision?
IMMIGRATION
First, let’s distinguish legal immigration from illegal immigration. But remembering that genuine asylum seekers can rarely enter a country legally with a visa for that very reason and so they decide to find illegal, often dangerous, means of entry to a country to give themselves a chance. In most countries it is not possible to apply for asylum unless you are in the relevant country. And in the UK, legal migrants each year are a multiple of the illegal.
Second, some thoughts about patriotism. Is it not fair for a nation to have pride in itself and its history and a wish to preserve its tribe and its culture? Is it perhaps in fact generous of a country to welcome others who have different beliefs and ways of living but expecting them to join the local society and respect its ways? If a tribe of say 5 million had to welcome another tribe or tribes of say 1 million, would it be reasonable to expect the arrivals to adapt rather than the welcomers to subsidise the arrivals come what may? The proper integration of immigrants into society requires them to accept local norms and the local people to respect differences. Today, a narrative is growing as to whose are the more important rights – those of migrants or those of the indigenous population, an inappropriate comparison but a dangerous comparison if it takes hold.
Illegal immigrants aside, the UK needs people from abroad to fill shortages in skills. In the year to March 2025, the UK granted nearly 875,000 non-visit visas, nearly half for study purposes and 304,000 for work. Net migration is down 50% and so progress to stem the flood is being made. The UK is unable over the next 5 years to home grow, for example, enough doctors, other health care workers, construction workers and engineers. The Long term 10-year plans of the NHS adopted in 2023 show this in spades in healthcare, and by just 2025 they are well behind their target of indigenous hiring. Government housebuilding targets have no chance of being met with home grown workers, and huge imports of skilled and unskilled builders are needed. In technology the problem is a massive shortage, and the UK must compete with Europe and the USA for foreign talent as they have their own shortages.
And reports demonstrate that while over a million young people in the UK under 25 are workless, the number of non-European under 25s employed by British companies rose by some 258,000 from 2020 to 2024. Immigration, training UK people, getting the young to work, and UK economic needs are all bound together. However, debate today is not holistic. The UK needs to break its dependence on immigrants for a lot of lower paid work and a lot of skilled labour and that will take time and a lot of training of British people who may be reluctant. We need control over immigration which should be targeted to meet needs. In fact, this last year the number of those entering on a work visa has reduced by some 200,000, but that according to news broadcasters such as SKY is due to visa regulation tightening introduced by the last Conservative Government.
STOPPING THE BOATS
There is no plan to stop illegal immigration via boats across the channel, organised by criminal people smugglers. Starmer’s pre-election strategy was to smash the smuggling gangs, citing his criminal prosecution experience. This has proven non-existent as a strategy. He promised to end asylum seekers being housed in hotels at taxpayers’ expense: more people are in the hotels than ever before. He scrapped the only real deterrent before it got of the ground, deportation for illegal migrants to Rwanda, on dogma or human rights grounds. But he has no alternative. A deterrent is needed as shown by European countries adopting Rwandan type solutions. The UK depends on the French stopping boats launching from their shores: experience shows they have no interest in doing so. Without them controlling their beaches, boats will keep coming. A new one in one out swap arrangement with France is paraded as innovative answer but it looks a weak plan. France’s Macron says the UK should make itself less attractive to migrants, reducing benefits availability and introducing identity card requirements: apparently UK Government is examining digital IDs: this would have some value.
This lack of credible strategy makes the absolutism of Reform’s deportation strategy seem a game changer as it says what some want to hear, which in reality is unlikely. But it can be made to appeal.Farage for Reform demonises asylum seekers and has sworn to deport all illegals. This is to rabble rouse emotion among his target audience. Farage has a clear message easy to understand if difficult to action. He is certainly fomenting division and enmity towards illegal immigrants. Starmer obsesses with human rights, even when they work against the British people he is sworn to protect. The asylum application system is cumbersome and slow with a huge waiting list for appeals to be heard. UK courts seem to be overprotective of immigrants but perhaps that is because they are required to follow the ECHR, and to enforce rights such as the right to family which is set down in the European conventions.
Sanity dictates perhaps that a rethink of which refugees can seek asylum and on what basis is needed; the UK courts should be given guidance which ensures that criminals cannot appeal to human rights too easily to stay here; if the European conventions cannot be changed, perhaps they should be suspended in the UK and tougher versions adopted nationally. And the UK must be made at least as unattractive for illegal migrants as European countries through which they travel to reach French beaches. And perhaps failed asylum seekers, young men who are really economic migrants, need to be deterred by tough deportation possibly to a lot less friendly countries than the UK. However it is achieved, politicians must ensure the UK has control over who can remain in the UK without being answerable to non-UK authorities. That is being an independent State.
THE FUTURE
A long-term migrant strategy is needed. No subject should be taboo. Labelling people as racist simply for wishing to control migration or not wishing their local area to become overpopulated with migrants is both wrong and abusive. Is it unreasonable to want to maintain a balance of diversity without swamping or destroying British culture? Also, balanced immigration is a necessity.
The fact is the migration to the North is inevitable from countries which are not prospering and are simply heating up to become uninhabitable as climate changes. Also, non-democratic autocracies, using violence and curtailing freedoms to keep power, are driving people away, perhaps to the likes of Putin a huge potential weapon to destabilise the West. The EU and the UK need a coherent and consistent approach, but even within the EU it is very much each nation for itself as local politics take over. Perhaps human rights conventions need a rethink. They are not a religion. Perhaps the only real human right is that of a child to be looked after by its parents. The rest are dynamic, and moral obligations are an open discussion. Whatever one’s view, politicians need to be responsible and open, rather than using the subject for their own ends.
