As many as 165,000 asylum seekers are to be granted an "amnesty" to live in Britain, it was revealed.
The vast bulk of the migrants are failed refugees whose files were left lying in boxes by bungling Home Office staff.
They have now been living here so long that officials have ruled that it would be a breach of their human rights to kick them out.
Ministers admitted that the first 19,000 have already been granted leave to remain under what the Tories described as a "stealth amnesty".
All will now be free to bring their relatives to Britain - and claim the full range of benefits.
As I have written at least three times already (in relation to calls for an amnesty for illegal immigrants, which is basically what we have here) these people are illegal immigrants: their very presence in our country is in violation of our laws. As such, it is simply ridiculous to say that because they have succeeded in breaking the law, and getting away with it, for an unusually long time, they should be rewarded (in this case, by being allowed to live here legally). As I wrote in July, it's rather like saying that if you kill someone and then avoid capture for ten years, then you should have all charges against you dropped, and be given a knighthood.
Furthermore, the fact that these illegal immigrants are being rewarded for breaking the law is likely to encourage more people to seek to enter Britain illegally. Thanks to the government's complete inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to do anything to limit either legal or illegal immigration, this country is already seen as a soft touch, as the number one destination for the discerning phoney refugee - as one Iranian would-be illegal immigrant, waiting at Cherbourg to nip across the channel, put it, "Britain has been our destination from the day we left our home countries". Now, because of yet more government incompetence, coupled with the excesses of the "human rights" culture, there is a further incentive to come here: stick around long enough, and you can stay forever.
2 comments:
La Toynbee describes it as the "Right decision, wrong reason":
Does the government deserve praise for doing the right and bold thing, finally bowing with good grace to the utterly inevitable? No, yet again the government has cleverly manoeuvred itself into a position where gets it in the neck from all sides. The Daily Mail plasters it across the front page today as a shock horror story. Those who have urged an amnesty as the only humane solution to an impossibly situation find no change of policy - just another administrative blunder over lost files.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/polly_toynbee/2007/12/eternal_limbo.html
She's humane, you see. She cares'n'shares. She also has her children privately educated, according to Boris Johnson.
She joins the usual Labour snarling against fee-paying education, and selective education of all kinds. In reality, of course, she is the beneficiary of a highly selective education and also sent her own offspring to one of the most expensive and competitive public schools in the country, an establishment way beyond the means of most people.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/11/23/do2301.xml
"All will now be free to bring their relatives to Britain - and claim the full range of benefits."
See that's part of the problem. Not only do these folk get to stay here, they get the "right" to bring in hundreds of their relatives as well.
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