Were anyone still in doubt about the wholesale abuse of our asylum system by would-be economic migrants then the ever-changing make-up of the Channel boat arrivals should seal the argument.
Last year Albanians were among the leading nationalities of those suddenly finding themselves in fear for their lives in war-torn France. Many of them also claimed to have been subjected to ‘modern slavery’ as defined by the do-gooding legislation of one Theresa May. Belatedly, the UK government appears to be getting to grips with the Albanian racket.
The right-wing economist Milton Friedman observed that a country could have open borders or a welfare state, but not both
Yet a new racket is already underway. So far this year, it is Indian nationals who are dominating the dinghies, with the Times reporting that 250 have crossed the Channel to claim asylum in the UK already in 2023, more than came via the route in the first nine months of 2022. As was the case in respect of Albania, it should be noted that India is not at war with anyone and is a reasonably functional democracy.
But plans by the UK government to limit student admissions from India to those winning places at top universities and to reduce entitlements to bring in family members alongside them mean the exploitation of the student visa route for wider migration purposes could be coming to an end. Arriving on a dinghy and lodging an asylum claim also means getting to the UK without having to pay international student tuition fees averaging around £15,000 a year to an accredited higher education establishment.
It was the right-wing economist Milton Friedman who observed that a country could have open borders or a welfare state, but not both. While he favoured the former, the British electorate has tended to vote for the latter. In reality, the UK governing class has been presiding over both, thereby facilitating a ruinous level of free-riding.
A major part of the attraction of Britain to people from countries where pay is low and without much in the way of welfare guarantees is undoubtedly the extensive and fairly open-access social safety net funded by UK taxpayers. So is the ability to secure paid employment in the informal, cash-in-hand economy and the existence in our major cities of diaspora communities from almost every country on earth.
People from poorer countries will use any available method to get to live in richer ones. In the age of affordable mass travel, the potential numbers of international immigrants wishing to live in a country such as the UK is almost limitless.
And far from the most persecuted people arriving on our shores via the dinghy service run by people traffickers, it often appears to be young men from relatively monied backgrounds who win out in this contest run under the current Hunger Games set-up involving arduous journeys across Europe and the payment of back-handers along the way.
The embryonic Indian surge merely underlines how crucial it is that the UK should exempt itself in short order from its present obligation to consider asylum claims from an unlimited number of foreign nationals who may arrive on its shores and wish to lodge an application.
When people from vast countries such as India, population 1.3 billion, start latching on to the asylum route as the obvious way round a clampdown on a student bulge which itself saw a doubling of admissions between 2019 and 2022, it is clear a tipping point has been reached.
The unveiling by Rishi Sunak, possibly as soon as the end of this month, of proposed new legislation to forbid asylum claims by illegal arrivals and guarantee their swift removal will initiate the mother of all ideological battles all the way to the next election and beyond.
Those who believe in communal obligation mediated by the nation state, with institutions such as a National Health Service paid for out of something called National Insurance and reserved primarily for compatriots will be pitched against ‘no borders’ leftist ideologues believing in the fuzzy notion of global citizenship – people for whom the utopian sentiments of John Lennon’s schmaltzy song Imagine form an actual political wish-list.
‘Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do,’ sang Lennon. But for tens of millions of us it is in fact unthinkable.
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