Katie Lam, Shadow Home Office Minister, says that Labour has opened the door for a surge in migrants.
Migrants swim through the waters close to the border with Morocco to enter Ceuta (Image: Getty)
The footage of tens of thousands of illegal migrants, the vast majority of them young men, pouring across the Spanish border at Ceuta is truly horrifying.
But this latest influx didn’t appear out of thin air. Spain is perhaps the starkest example of how a soft touch on illegal migration only invites more of the same. In April, the Spanish Government announced plans to grant an amnesty to almost all of the country’s illegal migrants. They predicted that half a million people would apply for legal settlement; in fact, more than a million have applied for the scheme thus far.
And earlier this month, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that migrants arriving in Ceuta by sea could not be automatically removed to Morocco. Instead, they have to be processed through Spain’s ordinary immigration system – a decision which sent a clear signal to migrant smuggling networks that they’d face no real consequences for helping people into Spain.
Once in Spain, illegal migrants will be able to seek asylum en masse and, thanks to the EU’s new ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’, will spread out across the continent, with all EU states obliged to host a share of them, or otherwise assist in (and pay for) their resettlement. So what possible deterrent is there for crossing illegally into Spain?
This should be a wake-up call for our own Government who are, disgracefully, making essentially the same mistakes as the Spanish Government.
As soon as they came to power, Labour scrapped rules introduced by the last Government which banned illegal migrants from seeking asylum. Fewer than one in six rejected asylum seekers are removed from this country.
And now, the Home Secretary is talking about opening up more ‘safe and legal routes’, with ‘community organisations’ allowed to sponsor asylum seekers.
As Spain’s sorry example shows, if national governments won’t take their borders seriously, illegal migrants won’t either. A soft touch on mass migration today always means more mass migration tomorrow.
If we want to prevent Europe’s immigration crisis from adding to our own crisis at the border, we must make clear that those who come to this country illegally will never be allowed to stay here. That means leaving the ECHR, and swiftly removing everybody who arrives here illegally. If we don’t act now, Spain’s self-imposed immigration crisis could soon filter through to our shores.