Illegal Migrants ‘Cannibalise’ Communities by Importing ‘Different Lifestyles’, Says Minister

Migrants housed at Napier Barracks in Folkestone, Kent. Picture date: Monday March 6, 2023
Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

In surprisingly candid comments from a Tory politician, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick admitted that illegal and legal migration from foreign cultures “cannibalises” the values and way of life of the British communities they are dumped into, however, Brexit leader Nigel Farage questioned if such strong language will finally result in border enforcement from the Conservative government.

Appearing before the Policy Exchange think-tank in Westminster this week, Robert Jenrick said that illegal migrants “tend to have completely different lifestyles and values to those in the UK” and often settle in already “hyper-diverse areas” of the country, which only serves to further undermine the “cultural cohesiveness” necessary to keep the country together.

Mr Jenrick said that he had personally met with residents of Dover — the main landing location for illegal boat migrants — and relayed that their lives had been wrecked by the influx of mostly young military-age men into their communities, with migrants even “knocking on their doors, entering their homes being found in their kitchens.”

The immigration minister said that the native population has “felt abandoned by the authorities” and that as a result there has been a breakdown in trust in such communities, saying: “Put simply, excessive, uncontrolled migration threatens to cannibalise that compassion that marks out the British people.”

In response to the speech from Jenrick, Brexit leader Nigel Farage said: “Very strong words here from Robert Jenrick, but will the actions measure up?”

The speech from Jenrick came ahead of the third reading of the long-awaited Illegal Immigration Bill in the House of Commons on Wednesday, which saw MPs back the measure by 289 to 230 votes.

The legislation in its current form would allow the government to send illegal migrants to a third country, such as Rwanda, to have their asylum claims processed offshore rather than allowing them to stay in the UK during the interim. The legislation will now head to the House of Lords for further consideration where it faces the potential of being amended.

With post-Brexit governments so far failing in coming to an agreement with France or the EU as a whole on the issue of migrant returns, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hopes that immediately sending illegals to Rwanda will act as a deterrent for migrants paying exorbitant prices to people smugglers to ferry them across the English Channel.

Yet, even if the bill passes, sending illegals to asylum centres in Rwanda still faces legal challenges both at the UK level and in Europe, given that Britain is still bound by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which is technically a separate institution from the European Union and therefore was unaffected by Brexit.

Should the scheme clear all such hurdles and effectively act as a deterrent for illegal migration, the governing Conservative Party still faces widespread public resentment over its inability, or more likely unwillingness to cut legal mass migration, with the country seeing a net of over a half a million foreigners come to the country last year, alone.

During his speech, Mr Jenrick in his speech cited “an extensive body of research that demonstrates the damaging effects on social trust and cohesion from uncontrolled migration”.

For example, a 2021 report from the Migration Watch think tank warned that in light of the monumental task of integrating millions of foreigners into British culture, the government would need to stem the flow of both legal and illegal migration or face the prospect of societal breakdown.

Mr Jenrick acknowledged that some of the negative impacts of illegal migration also “obviously apply in the same way” to legal immigrants, however, there does not currently seem to be any intention of the government to fulfil the longstanding Tory promise of bringing net migration to the “tens of thousands”.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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