Comment
TREVOR KAVANAGH
Under Starmer Britain risks becoming the rest of the world’s Rwanda, a safe haven for immigrant gangsters and criminals
IT is a sad but undeniable truth that among the thousands of mostly single young men who illegally cross the Channel and demand a home on UK soil are some who are the worst kind of migrants.
They are by definition law-breakers the moment they step ashore.
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They are shipped here by ruthless criminal gangs.
A worrying number are themselves gangsters who vanish instantly off the radar.
Others, in limbo while their mainly bogus asylum claims are processed, create an instant, rootless culture of uninvited guests with scant respect for the law of the land or its codes of civil conduct.
In short, queue-jumping mass immigration is bad for Britain — a view shared by millions who have built a new life here for themselves and their families after queuing patiently for legitimate visas.
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So it was refreshing to hear Deputy PM Oliver Dowden warning yesterday: “If you break into our country you won’t be afforded the same rights and privileges as those who follow the rules.”
In a joint attack on people smugglers and their human cargo, Home Secretary Suella Braverman threatened to lock up “racketeer” lawyers who fiddle fraudulent asylum claims.
Yes, but when?
How soon can we expect evidence that the tide has turned?
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Admittedly, ministers face ferocious opposition from the shroud-waving pro-immigration lobby, the Home Office “blob” . . . and Labour MPs led by human rights lawyer Sir Keir Starmer.
The Opposition has sunk every attempt by ministers to halt the flood — 14,732 so far this year — or deport sham refugees.
Starmer is incensed when PM Rishi Sunak brands him a “friend of the people-smugglers”, yet his only solution is to dish out more visas.
It is not enough, it seems, for the Tories to wave in a record 606,000 legal migrants last year — more than the entire populations of cities such as Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool or Bradford.
Never mind that we are already struggling to provide homes and health and social care for our existing population, let alone these large extra numbers.
Nor, in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, can we afford to be spending £6million a day putting them up in hotels.
Already struggling
The Tories, of course, profess to be concerned for the safety of people who are happy to pay “evil traffickers” £5k a time to put their lives at risk aboard leaky, overcrowded inflatables.
They were perfectly safe in France. They cannot be described as desperate. They don’t need to take the risk.
Labour, on the other hand, is quite happy to pass the risk on to us.
They’ve learned nothing from the explosion of shooting, bombing and violent crime in liberal Sweden and Denmark, where newcomers were welcomed with open arms.
While Germany, Italy, Spain and France are waking up to the impact of unbridled immigration on the fabric of society, Labour would open the floodgates in the name of compassion.
Starmer and his Shadow Cabinet have been silent over news that lying solicitors are charging asylum cheats thousands of pounds in return for concocted evidence of persecution.
So has the BBC, which is so sneering about Suella Braverman’s battle to stop the boats.
“These so-called immigration lawyers are criminals and conmen, coaching migrants on how to lie to get through our system. They are cheating the British people,” Braverman told The Mail on Sunday.
“We’ve got a racket, an industry of people who are purporting to be professional but actually, under the surface, are lying or cheating and breaking the law.”
Proven frauds
With a general election just over a year away, the Tories are running out of time to “stop the boats”.
Jam-packed dinghies continue to hit our beaches.
Nobody has yet been put on a plane to safe haven Rwanda.
The Bibby Stockholm floating hotel in Portland, Dorset, has yet to book in a single guest.
Other countries — France, Sweden, Denmark and Germany — are starting to kick out proven frauds, while our system is clogged for years at a stretch.
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Don’t expect matters to improve with Labour.
Under a Starmer-led government Britain risks becoming the rest of the world’s Rwanda, a safe haven for all-comers.
Armageddon
BBC Armageddon correspondent Justin Rowlatt simply loves a roaring forest fire as fresh evidence of global warming.
But statistically, most are man-made, either by criminals or by accident.
In Italy a firebug was caught by drone camera spreading petrol in woodland.
In Greece, arsonists are routinely treated like terrorists.
In Sicily, land-grabbing Mafia like to tie petrol-soaked rags to cats’ tails, set them alight and use them to spread fire through the scrub. It’s a tradition.
Climate change may be a fact.
But forest fires do not mean the end of the world.
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