The Battle of Brexit, which began as a pushback against EU bureaucracy, degenerated somewhat into an anti-immigration campaign. Faceless Brussels bureaucrats were replaced in the minds of those who, whilst they realised the world was changing but couldn’t quite understand why, with immigrants. It didn’t matter where they were from.
Nigel Farage, and indeed the Conservatives, rode that wave like professional surfers. Britain was going to take back control of its borders, the foreigners would go home, Bobby Moore would come back to life and lead England to World Cup victory, and maybe England might even win the Ashes. What could possibly go wrong?
To dredge up quotes from successive Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries promising to put an end to cross-channel migration both before and after Brexit would be a lengthy task, there were so many of them. Priti Patel was rather adept at this, (and getting more police on the beat, which has never happened either). It was never really quite clear what she actually did do for a living.
The reality is that neither the Conservatives, Labour, nor the third one that nobody can remember, had any intention of halting mass immigration. With the Tories it was about bringing in cheap labour and pushing up property demand – and therefore value – with Labour its all about diversity, and undermining the established order of society. As any good socialist would know, you cannot create the new without first destroying the old.
And so, to no great surprise, I found this in the text of a government press release (dated May 12th). It comes from the Department of Work and Pensions.
From Monday next week those arriving from Sudan, including UK nationals and those with a valid UK immigration status, will be exempt from residency tests to ensure they can access benefits, social housing, and homelessness assistance on arrival in the UK.
The release adds that “urgent legislation” will be enacted to ensure these entitlements. Note that this legislation is not “for” UK nationals, it “includes” UK nationals, who of course are already entitled (although not as yet for priority treatment). It is unclear from the release who else it includes, but if no proof of residency is required, it suggests pretty much anybody, as long as they arrive from Sudan.
Social housing?
Government figures released in January of this year reveal that:
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21,600 social homes were either sold or demolished in 2021/22, while only 7,500 new homes were built leading to a net loss of 14,100 homes.
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In the last decade, there has been a total net loss of 165,000 social homes (between 2012/13 and 2021/22).
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1.2 million households in England are currently stuck on waiting lists for social housing in England alone, a rise of 5% in the last two years.
1.2 million households stuck on waiting lists in England and yet the above mentioned press release states that Sudanese arrivals will be ensured access to social housing.
Where will all this social housing come from? The quantity of social housing is falling. The UK hotel trade has already restructured its business model to cater for the many thousands of young men entering the country illegally, the government is running out of options due to the sheer numbers, and is now turning to housing migrants in disused or mothballed military bases. Will UK householders be forced to take in “lodgers”?
Or perhaps the government hasn’t actually planned that far ahead. Whatever, as generally seems the case, the government’s figures don’t appear to add up.
Health care.
As we know, the NHS is on its knees. It needs more doctors. Migration Watch recently published the following statistics:
- In 2022, 12,148 doctors with a foreign nationality joined the NHS in England compared with 13,516 British doctors. This is 73 per cent more than the number of British students who enrolled to train as doctors in English medical schools in the 2022-23 academic year.
- In the same year, over 10,000 applicants were turned away from studying medicine at university, often irrespective of their grades, due to a stringent funding cap. This despite a need for between 5,000 and 11,000 more trainees to be taken on per year.
46 per cent of doctors joining the NHS in England in 2022 came from overseas, and this percentage is rising fast. The number of foreign doctors joining the NHS in England has almost doubled since 2018, from 6,222 to 12,148.
Outsourcing the training of Britain’s future doctors whilst there is a glut of would be applicants at home and the country has 1.29 million unemployed – a number which is now increasing slightly – is sheer madness.
