Sir Andrew Green said that "The Prime Minister is still in deep denial about the population crisis which we now face. His government have brought 3 million immigrants to Britain and they will add another 7 million to our population in the next 25 years. In this context the measures, largely re-announced, in his speech are trivial. This is totally unacceptable." "At his press conference on 10 November, the Prime Minister claimed that the Goverment's Points Based System "has made a huge difference" to immigration. However, our study of the system reveals very serious weaknesses. We think that it has eliminated the professional judgement of Immigration Officers in favour of a complex box ticking process which is wide open to fraud. (see Briefing Paper 3.9) Furthermore, the Government's own assessment is that it would only have reduced immigration by 20,000 if it had been operating throughout 2008. A reduction of at least 100,000 a year is needed if the population of the UK is to be kept below 70million." "At last he has woken up. In July, after his remark that he did not lose any sleep over the prospect of a population of 70 million, we conducted an opinion poll in his own constituency of Hull. 80% thought he was out of touch with people like them. 85% were concerned about a population of 70 million. 83% wanted immigration cut from its 2007 level of 237,000 to less than 50,000. What do you have to do to get the attention of the political class?" In Parliament today the Immigration Minister denied that there had been any change in immigration policy in 2001 nor, therefore, any political motive. However, there is clear evidence of a Labour shift in immigration policy in 2001-2 which was concealed from the public at the time, according to the attached Briefing Paper by think tank Migrationwatch. Commenting, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman, MigrationwatchUK, said " The government went to great lengths to keep secret documents dealing with immigration policy. Now we know why. Looking back we can see clear evidence that recent revelations about a political motive in promoting mass immigration were indeed correct." An amnesty for illegal immigrants would be bound to encourage further illegal immigration, their present number has been seriously underestimated and the lifetime cost would be in the order of £130 billion even on that low estimate of numbers, says a report out today from think-tank Migrationwatch. The report is in reply to a paper published by the London School of Economics on 16 June in response to a request from London's Mayor. Introducing the document, Boris Johnson claimed it proved that immigrants were "far from a financial burden". He added: "This new Report has introduced some long overdue facts, hard evidence and academic rigour into a debate which has far too often been dominated by myth, anecdote and hearsay". Clearly the Mayor had not read the Report which makes it clear that "It has to be emphasised that these are ball park estimates at best" (page 110) and that"many of the numbers that had been generated for this Report have required heroic assumptions" (page 113). The Mayor also claimed that: "So far from a financial burden, as some suggest, this new research has found an amnesty could be worth up to £3 billion a year to the country's economy". What the Report actually says is: "Neither the literature nor currently available UK data provides a quantitative basis from which one could at all reliably start to estimate the scale of effects on UK output which would be likely to follow from regularisation"(page 73). The Report is, in fact, astonishingly thin on its claim of economic benefit - just two paragraphs in 125 pages. It goes on to take what is described as "an example". This gives, on the basis of four hypotheses, an expected increase in GDP of some £3 billion (page 73). Migrationwatch have now examined this Report in detail and have found that:….Comments
Migrationwatch Reaction to Prime Minister's Speech on Immigration
November, 12 2008The Points Based System: Why it will not stop our population hitting 70 million
November, 11 2009Migrationwatch Chairman, Sir Andrew Green's comment on Home Secretary, Alan Johnson's interview with the Independent
November 9, 2009Press Release
Labour Concealed a shift in immigration policy
November 9, 2009Huge Cost of Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants Quantified
November 4, 2009
Friday, 13 November 2009
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