Britain’s Braverman promises ‘whatever it takes’ to stop illegal immigration

UK Home Secretary Suera Braverman vowed on Tuesday to do “whatever is necessary” to stop illegal immigration across the English Channel.

In his first major speech as Home Secretary, Braverman said at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham: [the] It added that Britain should not be “totally dependent on low-skilled foreign workers”.

Citing her own legacy as a second-generation immigrant, Braverman said her parents “embraced British values” and “didn’t mean abandoning their heritage” in the community. said to have been integrated into

The British Home Secretary said that the British people had “lost sight of their core values ​​and the cultures that produced them” and that “the unexamined drive to multiculturalism, an end in itself”, and “the corruption of culture” He said that the combination of “personal aspects” makes him “get lost”. identity politics. “

strait crossing

“We have to stop the boats crossing the channel,” Mr Braver told the conference, referring to small boats carrying illegal immigrants secretly crossing the English Channel from France into the UK.

The number of people smuggled into the UK by small boat has risen sharply in recent years, with 28,526 in 2021 compared to 8,466 in 2020, 1,843 in 2019 and 299 in 2018, according to Home Office figures. has been discovered.

By the end of September, about 32,807 people had made dangerous journeys this year.

A group of illegal immigrants brought to Dover, England by the RNLI on 25 August 2022. (Gareth Fuller/PA Media)

Braverman said there was “no quick fix” to this “chronic” problem, and that there was “a complete, undeniable, free and unconditional commitment to do whatever is necessary” to tackle the problem. promised a commitment.

The interior secretary said he would work with France to step up its actions on the French coastline and counter human smuggling gangs. He finds a way to make the Rwandan scheme work. Evicting asylum seekers from hotels. This, she said, would cost her £5 million per day. “Taking back control” of UK immigration policy from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

She said those who “deliberately entered the UK illegally from safe countries” should be returned to their home countries “promptly” or relocated to Rwanda.

Braverman’s predecessor, Priti Patel, signed a deal with Rwanda in April to allow the UK to send illegal immigrants, including asylum seekers, on one-way flights to African countries.

But her first attempt to move people to Rwanda was foiled by ECHR in Strasbourg. ECHR has issued a last minute injunction to stop the flight. Patel said the decision was made in an opaque manner and was “politically motivated.”

Braverman praised Patel and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson for making a “groundbreaking” deal, saying Britain needed to “take back control” from the Strasbourg courts.

She also said there has been a 450% increase in allegations of modern slavery since 2014, many of which are “lies,” she said, adding that the UK’s Modern Slavery Act is “a are being exploited by people,” citing anecdotes about foreign sex offenders hindering their removal. By advocating modern slavery.

Braverman said “British policy on illegal immigration must not be derailed by modern slavery laws, labor rights laws or the abuse of Strasbourg court orders”, pledging to seek the introduction of new legislation, He promised to double the execution.

legal immigration

Mr Braverman also said he wanted the UK to “reduce the overall number” of immigrants, in a clear departure from the previous government’s policies.

Speculation is rife that the government may loosen immigration rules for skilled migrant workers to make up for the shortage in the labor market.

“There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t adequately train your own HGV drivers, butchers, or fruit pickers,” Braverman said, adding, “How to build a highly skilled, high-wage economy will give business the following: Investing in capital and domestic labour, rather than relying entirely on low-skilled foreign workers.”

Freight trucks line up in the port of Dover, Kent, UK, 18 December 2021. (Gareth Fuller/PA)

Earlier on Tuesday, Braverman delivered on a pledge by the Conservative government under former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron to bring the number of net immigrants to the “dozens” at a Conservative conference fringe event. She said it was her “ultimate desire” to reduce…thousands. “

“I’m not going to commit to numbers. I think we definitely need to drastically cut the number of students, the number of work visas, especially the number of dependents on those kinds of visas,” she said. .

In 2019, Mr Johnson pushed for an “Australian-style” points-based immigration system, breaking promises made by the previous Conservative government to reduce immigration from “hundreds of thousands” to “tens of thousands”.

Under policies introduced by his government, EU citizens can no longer travel to the UK visa-free from 1 January 2021, but immigration policies for skilled non-EU workers have been liberalized.

A record number of visas were granted for the fiscal year ending June 2022, despite interruptions in survey data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing changes to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimation methods. process.

of Latest ONS Quote Net immigration for the year ending June 2021 was approximately 239,000, a slight decrease from the year ending June 2020 (260,000), but these estimates are based on empirical methods and are subject to uncertainty. There is certainty.

In her main speech, which ended with a standing ovation, Braverman said it was “the highest duty. [the] To protect the safety of the British public and the security of our borders.

She pledged to stand up to violent crime and voiced her support for the police, while telling them to “return to common sense policing” rather than “calm down with identity politics.”