'Labour marking Illegal Immigration "irregular" is divisive. Re-branding is not the answer', writes Craig Whittaker

The problem with the Calder Valley, one of the most land locked constituencies in the country, is that the topic of ‘immigration’ is clearly on everyone’s lips because there are far too many hotels filled with young men who are illegal immigrants. Not ‘Irregular Immigrants,’ just straight forward illegal immigrants.

The real issue here is that Mrs. Smith, Peter, and Howard have put the whole subject of immigration – whether illegal or legal, as the reason for their decline in accessing services and infrastructure. If only successive governments had invested in infrastructure that matched their successive policies on immigration, they would not blame Immigration for all our societal woes.

The reality is that instead of re-branding we need an open and honest discussion on what immigration is, what illegal immigration is and what the economic benefits really are when you have a good, fair, and strict immigration policy and what this gives to communities and our economy.

The ‘hard heads’ who say ‘We want our Country back’ similarly are fueling the divisive emotions around immigrants, as is our own government, which thinks re-branding is the solution. Neither are coming anywhere close to having a grown-up discussion which would bring about genuine change of attitudes and acceptance of a genuine good and fair immigration policy that benefits everyone.

The facts are that Illegal immigration accounted for around 40,000 people last year whilst legal immigration accounted for about 1.2 million people. Why then have the government reclassified illegal immigrants? For a government who wanted to ‘get things done’ this is a diabolical start.

Illegal immigration is how people perceive immigration but surely when you have 1.2m people enter the country in one year, if this is your policy as a government, then you need to increase infrastructure to match? And that is just to stand still.

Until this government produces a solution to this conundrum, this problem will not go away because Mrs. Smith still cannot get to see her doctor when she wants to.

The man on the street believes an Australian points-based system is the answer, even the new Labour government talks about amending the points-based system. A word of caution here about being completely honest with people. The Australian points-based system is about increasing the population and will not reduce it.

When we emigrated to Australia in the 1960s as Ten Pound Poms, the population was just over ten million. It is now at almost triple that figure in just over 50 years. The only benefit to a points-based system is that you must design one to grow the economy, one that gives businesses the skill set they need when our home-grown skill set is lacking.

When I sat on the Education Select Committee back in 2012, I recall taking evidence for one of our enquiries from Microsoft. Microsoft stated in that meeting that there were, at that time, over 100,000 job vacancies in the UK in the IT industry. One of my colleagues said this was ridiculous when 13 per cent of our university graduates could not find a job in the IT industry. Microsoft said, “Ah, that’s because you teach the wrong type of IT.”

Basically, ICT used to focus purely on computer literacy - teaching pupils, repeatedly, how to word process, how to work a spreadsheet, and how to use programs already creaking into obsolescence is about as much use as teaching children to send a telex or travel in a zeppelin.

Credit where credit is due and Michael Gove who was the Secretary of State for Education at that time, grasped the problem totally and a brand new computing curriculum was published in September 2013 - drawn up not by bureaucrats but by teachers and other sector experts, led by the British Computer Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, with input from industry leaders like Microsoft, Google and leaders in the computer games industry.

Sadly, that was the only time I recall a government minister grasping a real-time employment issue and taking steps to fix the home-grown problem. The benefits of this change did not happen overnight but, in the meantime, this is how you use a points-based system to attract the economic shortfall in the short term.

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A two-pronged attack is needed. Government to act quickly to fix the home-grown shortage with a points-based system to fill the short-term gaps. It is the only way you fix and make an immigration policy purely for the benefit and interests of an economy. I will finish by going back to illegal immigration.

During the pandemic, it became clear that returning illegal immigrants was not possible because of lockdown. Similarly, because of lockdown, illegal immigrants were not processed either. Instead, we ‘racked and stacked’ them into hotels. Hotels which are still being used and at a higher level than ever.

To make matters even worse, the Home Office and the Government did not step up after lockdown, in fact, resources were poured into the passport crisis and then whatever crisis came next with fewer and fewer resources allocated to processing illegal immigration.

The only way you are going to change the minds of people in the Calder Valley like Mrs. Smith, Peter and Howard is to clear the backlog. Quite simply, the sooner they are not reminded of ‘Immigration’ via the hundreds of illegal immigrants in our local hotels, the sooner you will change their minds.

The sooner we also clear the backlog and illegal immigrants realize they will be processed quickly and deported, guess what? There is a deterrent for them coming in the first place. The honeymoon period of our new Government will be short-lived unless they cut the gimmicks and stop trying to pull the wool over the eyes of Mrs. Smith, Peter, and Howard.

Re-branding is not the answer.