Perhaps that should be the Burnhamwave, or the BurnhamBulge, as our chairman has called it. Whatever moniker it ends up with, we have no doubt that the ‘safe and legal routes’ for asylum seekers announced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood this week, will not stop the boats. Nor will it have much impact on bogus claims for asylum. Or restore control to the shambolic asylum system.
From October, charities and non-profit organisations will be able to apply to sponsor refugees through a new community route, while universities will be able to sponsor refugee students. Businesses will also be eligible for the scheme, beginning next year.
Ms Mahmood has said numbers will initially be in the hundreds, eventually rising into the “low thousands”. We recall such assurance in the past. In 2004 we were told EU enlargement would lead to an annual 5-13,000 coming from new member states. 1.5 to 2 million came in succeeding years. Similarly, when Romania and Bulgaria could claim free movement rights in 2014, we were told only a handful of Romanians andBulgarians would come. In both cases, we said official and academic forecasts were way-off and that hundreds of thousands would come. In the event, millions did. We were right, officials and academics were wrong.
Ms Mahmood’s vague promises of a cap are not worth the paper they are written on. Once the door is opened, the pressure to bring as many as possible of the 118 million displaced people (a United Nations figure) from around the world will be relentless. Remember, those admitted will be on a path to permanent settlement, and therefore full access to housing, medical attention, schooling for children and to the UK’s generous welfare system.
All that the government is doing is outsourcing a huge chunk of immigration and asylum responsibilities to communities, charities, universities and eventually employers. The Home Office says it will retain control over who can act as a sponsor and that arrivals will undergo biometric, criminality and health checks. But given the many problems implementing immigration and asylum policy entails – the inability to deport those who enter illegally, the perverse judicial rulings preventing the deportation of people who pose a genuine threat to the public, the experience of countries that have tried similar sponsorship schemes – only to regret it – makes us wonder why the government is doing this. Why it is putting in place what will surely become a de facto chain migration route?
We haven’t heard anything about the potential cost to the taxpayer of the scheme and what access those arriving will have to benefits and public services, should sponsors prove unable to meet their obligations. What family reunion rights will accompany their status? And what happens when the sponsorship support period ends after two years?
However, what this scheme won’t do is stop illegal immigration across the Channel.
Meanwhile, bodies we would regard as inclining towards open borders, such as the Refugee Council, having now pressed the government into submission on “safe and legal routes”, have already begun demanding their expansion. Its chief policy analyst, Jon Featonby, responded to Ms Mahmood’s announcement by saying the Government must provide “thousands of places, not hundreds” and reopen refugee family reunion. It’s just an opening salvo. Just wait until they really get going.
That illustrates the problem with presenting this policy as an answer to illegal immigration. Once a legal route exists, ideological activists and those who directly benefit financially from increased asylum claims will call for expansion of the scheme with ever-louder voices.
Meanwhile, the underlying asylum challenge remains immense. Since Labour entered office in July 2024, Migration Watch calculates over 73,000 small boat migrants have illegally crossed the English Channel. Over 70% were Young military aged men. This compares to just 70,000 full time fully trained personnel currently serving in the British Army.
Shabana Mahmood now risks her own “Shabanawave” (we call it a Shabbywave) of immigration dressed up as a scheme to bring countless numbers of people from countries like Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea and of course Palestinians as well as umpteen other trouble spots around the world. But we can’t allow our new PM to escape blame for the calamity ahead of us. Without his approval, this hair-brained scheme would not be happening. It will be as much a BurnhamWave as it will a ShabanaWave.
