by Hugo Timms, spiked
Our broken asylum system is putting the public at an extraordinary risk of violence and sexual assault.
For at least the past 20 years, Britain’s political and cultural elites have claimed that immigration has been nothing but a blessing for the nation. They claim it grows the economy. That it makes Britain as a society less insular and more diverse. That it has moral as well as economic benefits.
Among vast swathes of the British public, however, a very different view has taken hold. They have experienced the reality of our increasingly porous borders. They have seen how the importation of cheap labour, far from growing the economy in real (per capita) terms, has merely suppressed wages. They have seen how immigration-fuelled population growth has put even more pressure on struggling public services. And they have witnessed what ‘diversity’ means in practice – the creation of religious and ethnic enclaves, riven with anti-Semitism and intolerance.
There is another reason for people’s concerns and anger over our immigration and asylum system, and it’s one that has come to the fore over the past two or three years. Many increasingly feel that some of those illegally entering Britain, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, pose a distinct threat to the safety of British citizens. It is a view that gains substance with every news report detailing a horrific violent incident or sex attack carried out by someone who shouldn’t have been here in the first place.