The Only Way to Control Immigration is to Leave the EU

Thursday’s astronomical migration figures show an abject failure by this Government to control immigration, despite countless promises to the public.  Once again the British pubic have been deceived by this Conservative-led government.

Cameron promised to cut immigration to ‘tens of thousands’, when in fact we’ve seen it rise to more than when he took power. This has proven once again that you cannot control immigration while being inside the European Union.

I knew from Mrs May’s round of interviews last Sunday that the ‎Conservative Party would try to get their excuses in early and often before the general election on broken promises on immigration. 

First, Mrs May reduced David Cameron’s ‘no ifs, no buts’ pledge to reduce immigration on behalf of the ‎Government to a mere ‘comment’. Now that these migration figures once again demonstrate their abject failure to deliver on this on that promise.

There is a simple way of controlling mass unskilled uncontrolled migration. First control our borders by making sure that we properly resource the UK Border Agency by hiring at least 2,500 more frontline staff.

Second, exit the EU and ensure we negotiate fair and ethical immigration criteria for all peoples of the world based on implementation of an Australian-like points based system, making it a fairer, more ethical and sensible policy.

Messing around with in-work and out-of-work benefits won’t deter people away, we’ll still see high levels on immigration. The only way we could control it is if we had major treaty changed and stopped the free movement of people, and our major European partners have repeatedly said that enshrined Treaty migration rules are not up for negotiation. For any UK government to ignore this objective aspect of reality is counterproductive and self-defeating.

We in UKIP have a plan on immigration, one where we will implement an Australian point’s style immigration policy with a cap of 50,000 per year, with an extra 2500 border staff, making our borders stronger and making our immigration policy fairer. These are real changes that can happen and are legal as we will leave the EU, unlike Mr Cameron’s plans.

Steven Woolfe is UKIP MEP for North West England