Global immigration Crisis
By Brian McGavin, April 2014
Immigration policy in Britain continues to reveal depths of incompetence, as Europe
is under increasing pressure from illegal immigration. Government claims that they
are tackling the issues will do little to reassure a worried public.
Migration has enriched many societies, but immigration and the growing cost to
communities of accommodating large-scale inflows of people, in a now crowded
world, raises many challenging questions. This is not a left or right issue or racist. It is
about social and environmental sustainability.
Over 22,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in southern Italy alone in the first three
months of 2014. Many more have entered Greece and Spain. Well over 100,000
African immigrants landed in the Spanish Canary Islands trying to gain access to
the EU in the last few years. The EU and the media attempt to cloud the picture
by calling them ‘irregular’ migrants and ‘undocumented workers’, but the growing
consequences of these pressures will have profound impacts.
In 2010 the European Union’s population topped half a billion. Of the 1.4 million
growth from the previous year, 900,000 resulted from legal immigration alone into the
EU. according to Eurostat in July 2010.
The number of foreign nationals given UK passports has soared. By 2050 the
Government Actuary’s Department estimates the UK’s population could rise to 90
million, 70 per cent of this due to inward migration – enough to fill a major conurbation
the size of Birmingham every five years in what is already the most densely
populated country in Europe. Add to this, illegal immigration.
We now face a massive increase in population as our economy is struggling. Is this
a sustainable policy supported by the environmental lobby? Is this a future we would
vote for? We need to know but are still not being asked.
Displaying a mixture of complacency and incompetence the UK Government first
lost control of the immigration and asylum system and then tried to spin the idea that
large-scale immigration was vital to our economic interests. Growing evidence has
shown this to be profoundly misleading.
What matters, not least to those in already vulnerable communities, is how
immigration increases the number of people who are entitled to claim on the
economy and the huge impact on infrastructure, schools, health, housing and the
environment. The fact that the extra population cancels out any real benefit to
the resident population was repeatedly denied until exposed by an investigation
published in April 2008 by the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords.
In the last five years, with high unemployment in some member countries, net
migration from the whole of the EU rose to about 36 per cent of total net migration
into the UK, says MigrationWatch, so nearly two-thirds is still from outside the EU.
The eurosceptic press ignores this. But there is much Europe could do.
Illegal immigration pressure builds in Europe
Instability in North African countries has seen a big jump in illegals trying to get into
Europe. National authorities in the EU apprehend more than 500,000 illegal migrants
annually. In addition, there were 335,895 asylum claims in 2012, according to the EU
Home Affairs Directorate.