Boris Remarks Backing Amnesty for Illegals Branded ’Deeply Irresponsible’

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Victoria Friedman

Boris Johnson has again raised his support for amnesty for illegals in remarks branded “deeply irresponsible” by Migration Watch UK.

This week, the prime minister did not deny reports that the Home Office was considering sending asylum seekers offshore while their claims are processed in order to deter illegal migration.

However, Prime Minister Johnson added that he was behind granting amnesty to migrants who illegally entered the county some time ago and if they are, otherwise, law-abiding.

Mr Johnson said, according to The Sun: “I think when people have been here for a very long time, and haven’t fallen foul of the law, then it makes sense to try to regularise their status which actually is pretty much what really happens under the existing rules.”

Alp Mehmet, chairman of the mass migration-sceptic think tank Migration Watch UK, said of the remarks in comments seen by Breitbart London: “The Home Office itself has said that recurrent amnesties only encourage more illegal migrants to try and come.

“Wherever amnesties have been tried they have failed. Boris Johnson wanted one when Mayor of London. He was wrong then and is still wrong.

“It would send out the wrong message and, not surprisingly, the majority of the public are against.”

Boris Johnson had, on at least two occasions, called for an “earned amnesty” of some 400,000 illegals living in London during his time as mayor of the capital.

Even on the campaign trail for Vote Leave in 2016 ahead of the EU referendum, Johnson had said — in the same breath that Britons should vote to leave the bloc to “take back of control of our borders” — that “I am in favour of an amnesty for illegal immigrants who have been here more than 12 years”.

Two years later, as foreign secretary, Johnson called for a “broader” amnesty of illegals from Commonwealth countries such as Pakistan and Kenya.

Even as candidate for Conservative Party leader and prime minister in 2019, he backed amnesty for aliens who had been in the country illegally for 15 years.

Migration Watch UK added in its condemnation of the prime minister’s stance: “Granting an illegal immigration amnesty would be a grave insult to the huge number of legal migrants who play by the rules, fill in forms, pay exorbitant fees and wait patiently in line as well to tens of millions of law-abiding citizens in the UK.

“An amnesty would also be hugely divisive and very expensive. Proposing an amnesty for illegal immigration is deeply irresponsible. The Prime Minister should reconsider.”

Speaking to Breitbart London on Saturday, chairman of the Bow Group, the UK’s oldest conservative think tank, Ben Harris-Quinney said that in the past decade that the Conservatives have been in power, the UK has seen “record immigration” which “no one voted for” and “there is no one left to blame but them”.

“What we have seen from the Conservative Party over the past ten years are headlines that suggest tough action on immigration, but detail that suggests continued promotion of mass immigration,” Mr Harris-Quinney told this publication.

“The government has created four million new settled status citizens over the past few years, as well as allowing 700,000 people a year to migrate to Britain, to say nothing of illegal immigration. Nothing like these numbers have ever been seen in human history, it will change our country in very extreme ways, and no one voted for it.”

Reiterating criticism of the prime minister’s post-Brexit ‘Australia-style’ immigration system — which has no cap on numbers — that has already come from Brexit leader Nigel Farage and Migration Watch UK, Harris-Quinney said: “The points-based immigration system makes it easier, not harder, for immigrants to come to Britain.”

The Bow Group chairman added: “We call on the Government to stop conning the public, to use gross figures rather than net figures when counting immigration, and to cut gross figures to under 50,000 a year.”

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