A Dedicated Border Police Force

The Conservative Party, which for some reason The Telegraph now refers to as ‘David Cameron’s Conservatives’, have announced possible plans for a new dedicated Border Police Force.

The new unit will apparently help combat illegal immigration, people and drugs trafficking along with a whole host of other niceties that cross our borders on a day to day basis. However, as is unfortunately the case with so many new Conservative proposals, this mooted Border Force will avoid the true issue and instead tackle an irrelevant one.

The immigration problems that we now face as a country have little to do with the illegal variety which constitutes only a very minor part of our total immigration burden. In fact our real problems (and they are many) lie with what is entirely legal immigration over which we no longer have any say or control.

When we became members of the European Economic Community and later the European Union we accepted the text of the Treaty of Rome which grants the ‘fundamental right’ of free movement to Citizens of the Union across member state borders.

This supposed ‘right’ to free movement was later strengthened by our old friend Directive 2004/38/EC and more recently the Lisbon Treaty (aka. The Constitution) which has now completed its rubberstamping journey through our increasingly irrelevant provincial council (aka. The Houses of Parliament) and will soon come into force once the will of the Irish people has been circumnavigated (aka. basically told to shove it).

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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?

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Reverting To Type

After the Wednesday Newsnight interview with David Cameron, the BBC and the papers have made much of his comments on immigration.

The Daily Mail and Telegraph believe that the Conservatives are reasserting their authority on issues which they have currently avoided such as immigration and crime, while the left-wingers at the BBC and Guardian have used David Cameron’s comments as an opportunity to present the Conservative party as returning to the core vote and ‘lurching to the Right’.

The reactions from Nick Assinder at the BBC and the neo-Marxist Seumas Milne in the Guardian were typical of the overall vein of the attacks launched on Mr Cameron. Yet, both miss the mark completely (and probably purposefully too) because in reality Mr Cameron has not said anything new than he hasn’t said before and thus cannot have moved to the Right.

Wednesday’s BBC Newsnight really was a first class example of how the news corporations (in this case the BBC) actually make the news and then report upon it – and in doing so, how they can both dictate and manipulate the political agenda.

Gavin Esler tried his hand at manipulation while questioning Cameron on immigration. He noticeably made great efforts to put the word ‘swamped’ into Mr Cameron’s mouth by constantly repeating it at least half a dozen times. This was most likely done so the BBC could have a headline report the next day saying that David Cameron had said ‘immigrants are swamping Britain’. As it was the Conservative leader didn’t fall into that trap.

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Controlling Immigration

David Cameron has been interviewed by BBC Newsnight on a variety of issues including green taxes, immigration and Shadow Cabinet outside interests.

However, his comments on immigration were of particular interest because, for the most part, Mr Cameron has avoided focusing on this topic in his quest to re-brand the Conservative party by approaching issues with which it is not normally associated.

Immigration to Britain is far too high as David Cameron pointed out in the interview, and has reached completely unsustainable levels during Labour’s ten year tenure, causing both widespread social friction, housing problems, and increased pressure on public services.

Opinion polls reveal that immigration is consistently among the top three most important issues that concern voters, and also show that Mr Cameron’s views reflect the majority of British opinion. Therefore it’s welcome news that Mr Cameron is at least tentatively discussing the issue, even if he is also discussing possible ‘green taxes’ too.

I think it’s also useful to contrast Mr Cameron’s Newsnight comments with an announcement on Sunday by Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman who said the problems of immigration and the ‘twilight world of illegality’ needed to be tackled by allowing the legalisation of illegal immigrants that ‘proved’ themselves.