The Big Taboo

by Lord Immaculate

As the campaign against UKIP has shown, it is still impossible to raise questions about immigration without being accused of racism. ‘Capping immigration’ is willingly misheard as ‘banning immigration’. Open border enthusiasts start spreading wicked rumours about repatriation plots.

So perhaps the only fair way to temper the argument is to link the amount of immigration to the building of homes, hospitals, schools and surgeries. You get the number you are prepared to pay for. Surely no party leader could argue against that and retain any credibility?

If you want net immigration of 300,000 (last year’s figures) annually, get the appropriate infrastructure in place annually, don’t put it off until never. If you haven’t built the homes, hospitals, schools and surgeries you don’t get your target. You receive exactly the scale that you can accommodate. What mechanism could be more sensible? If the Ed Miliband’s of this country had to wait as long as us riff raff to see their GPs the system would soon shape up.

I suspect the burden of practicality would eventually change the stance of those who want to keep our population rising exponentially. Reality would assert itself. The Tories and Labour won’t want to spend billions on new hospitals. The Green Party will lose credibility if they advocate concreting over the countryside to balance their open door policy.

However many people come here – and long may they keep coming, in reasonably-sized waves – precedence must be given to those fleeing from danger and starvation, and skilled workers, and creative talents. Sadly we can’t take everybody. Some worthy hopefuls will lose out (thankfully for them there are roughly 200 countries in the world, and many of them are not in such great demand), but we can damn well make sure their places aren’t taken instead by bad candidates. It should be obvious, but we have yet to start refusing entry to those with violent criminal records; even sex offenders are allowed in. Nobody is screening for extreme religious views. A few undercover workers in the reception halls could weed out some dangerous individuals. But I guess that kind of attention to detail would upset the same factions who won’t even tolerate the debate.