Restoring Public Consent for Migration Should Matter to Everyone

For a topic off limits for mainstream political discussion for decades immigration is now the defining issue of our times. Indeed, the next election will probably be claimed by the party or parties which can demonstrate they are both serious about slashing immigration and capable of delivering it. 

Controlling immigration is tough, we are told repeatedly by certain politicians and sections the media.  It’s almost as if we are dealing with a natural phenomenon rather than a policy in the hands of the British state.  Legal immigration is entirely in the control of policy makers.  Illegal immigration is somewhat different as we don’t choose who comes, but our response to it is a policy choice.  How we set our approach to asylum, the benefits illegal migrants receive and other pull factors are all for us to determine as a nation.

There is now an irresistible consensus that the UK’s approach to immigration is broken. Something has got to change. Labour will try to get away with tinkering, Reform will make bold sensible statements, the Conservatives will be equally bold but provide more detail and the Lib Dems will try to ignore it in the hope more affluent voters haven’t felt the negative impacts. All are likely to be pulled in the direction of more fundamental reform of our approach to both legal and illegal immigration.

Rip it up and start again as the saying goes.

When approaching this once in a lifetime opportunity for a historic re-write of our approach to immigration, the starting point must be public consent. Our current challenges around immigration and the negative effect it’s having on our broader social order, come from the imposition of immigration without public consent. 

The Government has to deal with illegal immigration, but who consented to them dealing with it within our communities?  Whether in hotels, HMOs or other dispersed accommodation, who said yes to having large numbers of unvetted men placed in their local areas? 

Mass migration under the last Conservative Government is a millstone the party will struggle to overcome, but it certainly wasn’t in the 2019 manifesto. Consent matters and huge changes have happened to our country, without public support.  Indeed not only did people not give their permission for this, but now actively oppose what is happening.

Public consent for immigration has been lost and no politician can or indeed should ignore it.

For decades, it can be credibly argued that there was an unspoken acceptance for an ongoing level of immigration and asylum. For most voters, it was just something that went on it the background.  Immigration has always had a more negative impact on working class communities through lost jobs, depressed wages or displacement from areas with cheaper housing stock, so concern about migration is more established, but working class voices are easier to ignore.

It is this implied consent which has now gone. It has been shifting for some time, but it is now obvious to all.  Our leaders must acknowledge it or risk breaking the social contract that binds us.

Despite the smears of the left to shut down discussion, the loss of consent for immigration has NOTHING to do with race.  It’s about jobs, services, housing, our communities and the ties that bind our already comfortably multi-ethnic society.

Losing Consent - Legal Migration

Mass migration with no economic rationale shifted how people this issue. We all now see that mass migration brings zero economic benefit. It might deliver junk growth, but it makes us poorer, it suppresses wages and displaces young people and those with lower skills out of the work force and onto benefits. By the time you add in dependents and access to welfare it ends up costing us.

In recent years immigration has become a state subsidy for low wages.

Mass migration has also changed entire communities and done so rapidly. Just go to Carlisle and ask a local how much the place has changed in the last five years. No one voted for this change, no one was ever asked and if you don’t like it, keep quiet or someone might call you a racist.

We can’t continue legal migration at current levels without public backing. We need to pause, reset and start not with the question of numbers of migrants but with our labour requirements.  Training our young people and reforming welfare to get economic benefit from those already here need to be dealt with before we even get to the number of migrants we need to come to our country.  Robert Jenrick’s suggestion of a period of emigration seems entirely in line with such an approach. Then we can identify migration that adds genuine value. This is how we restore consent to legal immigration.

Losing Consent - Asylum

Public support asylum was lost in a similar way, driven by scale and numbers and the massive impact on our communities. But in the case of asylum it is a more obvious of abuse of our society.  Kemi Badenoch was not wrong when she said this is our home not a hotel. 

All but a fool or an immigration judge can see the overwhelming majority coming to seek asylum bear no resemblance to an actual refugee. They are mostly young men coming for a free ride. Yet they are forced on our communities without consent and we pay for them from the minute they arrive. Our pensioners can lose their winter fuel allowance, but these young men do very well from the taxpayer. They then hang around our communities making people feel less safe.

No community in the country said yes to having illegals forced upon it and now many are actively showing they definitely do not.  But as we saw with Epping even when a community says no, Labour will go to Court to force illegal migrants on them. 

We are told that we have an obligation to help refugees and Ukrainians coming here during an actual war proved we as a people get this. But the majority coming are not refugees and only a warped legal system would accept them as such. Additionally, the system is open ended so we are obligated to keep on accepting people no matter the damage to our communities. On no level does this make any sense.

We need to start from scratch on our asylum system. Remove all who came here illegally and make them ineligible. Dismantle the legal structures which are abused and only serve to make leftie lawyers rich and then set criteria on those we will give refuge to. Only by doing this can not only consent, but trust be restored.

In a democracy consent matters. Without it our social contract will be damaged beyond repair.  We have one chance to get this right.