Sajid Javid’s post-Brexit immigration plan branded the ‘longest suicide note’ in Tory history
Lord Green of Migration Watch said the Home Secretary’s proposals to let any migrant come here for five years would send figures sky high
SAJID Javid faced fresh humiliation as a think tank branded his post-Brexit immigration strategy the “longest suicide note” in the history of the Tory Party.
Migration Watch said the incendiary proposals to allow any migrant from around the world to come to Britain for at least five years to look for a job - regardless of their ability - was bound to send sky-high migration levels even higher.
Lord Green - the think tank’s founder - added there were no measures to reduce the sheer scale of immigration into the UK and little means of ensuring those coming to take up a job in post-Brexit Britain actually leave when their visa expires.
He branded it “worse than useless”, and said the Government was smashing its Manifesto promises to “pander” to the business community desperate for access to cheap foreign labour.
Net migration is currently running at 270,000 a year.
Yet Migration Watch - in one of the first formal reports on the White Paper - said the Home Secretary’s plans were likely to send “numbers spinning even further out of control”.
Aping the famous demolition of Michael Foot’s 1983 Labour election manifesto, Lord Green said: “At 160 pages, for the Conservatives, the longest suicide note in their history.”
The scathing attack that will pile pressure on a Home Secretary already reeling from the Channel crisis.
The controversial Immigration White Paper vows to end free movement, and demand that in the coming years semi-skilled workers meet a yet-to-be decided salary threshold before they can come.
But in a huge sop to the business lobby, anyone from around the world will be able to come to the UK for at least five years from the end of 2020 even if they don’t have a job.
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Firms won’t have to first advertise a job in the U.K. when they recruit.
There is also no cap on the number high skilled workers who want to come and no changes to family visas - of which 148,000 were granted in the year to September 2018.
And Migration Watch add that immigration enforcement is “barely mentioned” despite the enormous strains highlighted by the numbers trying to cross from France.
Lord Green stormed: “These measures are worse than useless. “They are so extensive as to be unenforceable by a Home Office that cannot even enforce the present system and is evading its responsibility to fulfil manifesto promises. At 160 pages this must be, for the Conservatives, the longest suicide note in their history.”
A Home Office spokesman said: "As the Home Secretary emphasised when announcing the future immigration White Paper, we are delivering on the referendum result by ending free movement and remain committed to reducing net migration to sustainable levels.
“For the first time in a generation, we will have control of our immigration system. The new skills-based immigration system will allow us to attract the talented workers we need but everyone coming to the UK for work or study will need to get permission before doing so.”
The Sun Says
SAJID Javid’s loss of bottle over the Government’s post-Brexit immigration strategy is truly disheartening.
How can he pretend to be “taking back control” when anyone, from anywhere, would still be able to come to the UK until at least 2025 even with no job offer? No one is fooled, Home Secretary.
You cannot talk tough while buckling to the pressure from big business for yet more cheap foreign labour. The Brexit vote, among its other motivations, was plainly a demand to end that.
The think tank Migration Watch says immigration is sure to rise under Mr Javid’s 160-page blueprint, making it “the longest suicide note” in Tory history.
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