We Have No Control Over Immigration

David Cameron has been talking about immigration quite a lot recently. He says he believes, as do I, that Britain should be accepting far less migrants than it already does.

However, one of the problems with the current debate over immigration is that the Government has absolutely no idea how many migrants are actually entering Britain each year. Similarly the Conservatives don’t have a clue either. Therefore both sides have to rely and argue over completely unreliable estimates.

Furthermore, this past week the Government has already had to readjust those unreliable estimates several times, now claiming that maybe as many as one and a half million immigrants (including British citizens born overseas) have entered this country in the past decade. I suspect in fact it is even more.

So, why is this? How can the Government have almost no accurate record of the number of people entering this country, and why does it refuse so blatantly to admit the reasons why this is the case?

Well, as Dr Richard North points out, when our Government lost control of British borders after transferring those powers to the European Union through successive EU treaties, that meant:

Immigration officials are not permitted under EU law to interrogate entrants from the EU as to their intentions on entering this country, nor quiz them as to their activities or plans should they decide to leave. Any such move would be ‘discrimination’ on the grounds of nationality and thus, again, contrary to EU law.

It is therefore actually both impossible and illegal for British immigration officers to obtain hard facts on why people are entering Britain, because an EU passport gives someone from Poland or France as much right to enter this country as I do – no questions asked.

Yet, if our politicians really do care about dealing with our current mass immigration problems (which many of them do not,) and also know the European Union is the main stumbling block to controlling immigration (as undoubtedly some of them do – the others being too stupid to realise or care) why is it not mentioned?

As always the ever perceptive Peter Hitchens comes very close to the mark when he observes in his latest online column that:

Our entire political elite, in all parties, love the EU, not because it is good for the country, but because it is good for them.

They love its regular service of gravy trains, carrying failed Ministers off to a life of high salaries, big expenses and huge pensions, plus an almost total absence of responsibility.

They don’t mind at all that it deprives them of the power to do very much. They are, for the most part, short of ideas and lazy, and happy to be able to pass the buck to Brussels while enjoying their pay and perks.

For politicians to admit that the European Union is very much at fault and thus preventing any real change to the current immigration status quo would be to risk derailing the everlasting gravy train and endanger many of their careers by actually forcing them to confront the reality of life outside the Westminster metropolitan bubble.

This general attitude was summed up in a speech given by the Shadow Immigration Minister, Damian Green that I attended at the University of Bristol on Wednesday evening. One member of the audience asked whether it would be a good idea for Britain to leave the EU because we could not control immigration otherwise. Damian Green unsurprisingly disagreed and was also very careful to never actually answer the question, instead choosing to focus on the apparent lost of three million jobs leaving the EU would bring and how food prices in supermarkets would supposedly rocket (neither of which I expect would actually happen.)

While David Cameron may be talking about limiting immigration should he become Prime Minister, his ability to actually follow through on this pledge is practically non-existent. Another massive problem with controlling immigrants entering Britain, that David Cameron and Damian Green fail to publicly acknowledge, is the EU Commission Directive 2004/38/EC that instructs that Britain must permit entry to immigrants from third countries if they have entered the European Union elsewhere and have gained freedom of movement. Therefore if another EU nation such as, for example, Germany does not have restrictions upon external EU immigration, then an immigrant from say Canada may enter Germany and then eventually move on to Britain without a problem.

This supposedly ‘fundamental right’ to free movement is actually going to be further re-enforced in the Lisbon ‘Reform’ Treaty which will be making its rubberstamping journey through our Parliament very soon.

As you can imagine, this would make a complete mockery of implementing any form of quota or ban on immigrants coming from outside of the European Union and would effectively mean that anyone who desperately wishes to come to Britain from outside the EU should have little trouble in doing so – it’s just that it might take them a little longer. This would have the effect of nothing more than offsetting immigration for a few years, or as long as it takes for a person to gain freedom of movement once inside another EU country.

So, not only can we not control immigration coming from inside the European Union, we cannot control immigrates coming from outside either. Additionally, the political and media classes will always seek to close down the debate and silence thoughtful opinion on both immigration and the EU – two very closely linked issues as we have seen. Only today was Conservative candidate Nigel Hastilow smacked down by the party leadership and the liberal media for having the audacity to publicly voice his opinions (and those of many others in his constituency) on immigration.

Only by repatriating the powers to control our borders and stopping absolute freedom of movement across our national borders can we have a hope of controlling immigration – illegal or otherwise. But since the European Union will never allow such a renegotiation and has only one direction - that being irreversibly forwards towards ever closer union - then we have no option but to leave.

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