'Our non-contributory systems add to the UK’s attractiveness as do our liberal interpretation of asylum laws,' says Alastair Mellon
Alastair Mellon, SDP Member, Adviser and former candidate in Coventry, speaks on leaving the ECHR
Britain’s immigration and asylum policies are broken. With no popular mandate for mass immigration and faced with a tsunami of desperate people who are prepared to game both systems to circumvent what little controls remain, we face the breakdown of community cohesion, the collapse of our non-contributory socialised benefit, health and housing systems, and the draining of support for our democratic processes and ultimately civil unrest.
Our non-contributory systems add to the UK’s attractiveness as do our liberal interpretation of asylum laws which grants an order of magnitude more claims than Germany or France.
The SDP is committed to a policy of muscular civic nationalism with an unapologetic commitment to favour, in legislation, the citizens of the United Kingdom.
Given the choice of regaining democratic control over immigration or our commitment to International obligations entered into before the era of mass migration we choose to side with the overwhelming majority of the British people who support limited but controlled immigration and reject the chaotic untrammelled mass immigration of the last 30 years.
In practice this means that we will legislate to overturn domestic laws and withdraw from those international treaties which hinder our ability to control our borders and to decide who can settle in Britain.
We cannot sacrifice community cohesion in Britain on the nebulous altar of the ‘International Community’. A cohesive Britain is a force for good in the world in a way that one wracked with division and discontent can never be.
We can only regain the consent of the governed by deliberately and methodically rebuilding social solidarity and trust amongst the people of Britain; our liberties and our way of life depend on this.
The legitimacy of our system of democracy is built on the assumption that the people elect their government to do the things the majority want whilst protecting minority rights and the lack of democratic control over immigration policy undermines the health of our democratic systems.
We cannot allow unelected and unaccountable home office officials to dictate immigration policy or worse, have our border policy dictated by remote foreign judges without risking a larger breakdown of consent and ultimately law and order.
Many commentators have observed that mass immigration undermines the foundations of solidarity on which Europe’s post war social market economy was built.
The evidence from the Nordic Journal of Migration Research suggests that in Scandinavia, support for social democracy, with its high levels of transfer payments and social support network is built on mutual trust and if this breaks down due to mass immigration the model is at risk. It seems the progressive left can’t have it both ways - either you have a strong social safety net or you have mass immigration.
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In April 2023 a University of Amsterdam report entitled, ‘Borderless Welfare State’ examining the costs and benefits of immigration for the Dutch Treasury concluded that: “The net cost of asylum migration averages €475,000 per immigrant”.
Immigration from non-Western regions imposed variable costs with those coming from the Horn of Africa and Sudan costing a net €600,000 per immigrant and those from Morocco €550,000.
The Dutch are now clear that immigration from certain parts of the world imposes very high net costs in aggregate. We too should be clear that some immigration - whilst great for the immigrant - is simply not viable for the British Exchequer in the long term.
States don’t have feelings, they only have interests. The interests of the state represent the vector of the average wishes and desires of the population of the country and ignoring those interests only builds up problems for the future.
As a state we cannot afford the luxury of magical thinking or at least not for long. It is not only desirable to act in our own self interest; it is essential.
