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The immigration minister claims that asylum seekers who arrive in the UK across the Channel in small boats are “cannibalizing” communities by importing “different lifestyles and values”.
Robert Jenrick said the “excessive” numbers arriving by small boats “undermined cultural cohesion” and put “huge pressure” on public services.
Protests against asylum seekers being held in hotels like Liverpool’s Knowsley, where far-right demonstrators clashed with police, he said, were “a cautionary tale” by ministers.
Jenrik couldn’t say exactly how the asylum-seekers’ lifestyle affected them, or if he was talking about people from a particular country. Year.
Home Office sources also said the minister has “zero tolerance” to the kind of violence seen in Knowsley in February.
Speaking at the Policy Exchange think tank in Westminster, Jenrick prepared to see the government’s controversial illegal immigration bill designed to crack down on waterway crossings pass its final stages in the House of Commons on Wednesday. was doing.
In defending the bill’s radical and contested approach, which imposes an obligation on the government to detain and deport nearly all channel asylum seekers, he argues that “uncontrolled migration confers social trust and cohesion.” Extensive research showing adverse effects”. .
“I saw this firsthand when I met residents of the Dover estate of Aycliffe in the early days of my tenure. Knocking on their door, being found in the kitchen and entering the house,” Jenric said.
“They feel abandoned by the authorities, which is strange for their neighborhood.
“Individuals are less likely to trust their neighbors or make sacrifices to keep their communities alive if they are not confident that the people who live in our communities live legally.
“Simply put, excessive and uncontrolled migration threatens to cannibalize the compassion that sets the British people apart.
“And those who cross borders tend to have very different lifestyles and values than those in the UK, and tend to settle in areas that are already very diverse, bringing together diverse groups and making us proud It undermines the cultural cohesion that makes multiethnic democracies so successful.”
Asked about lifestyle, Jenric said it was important to ensure that public services were not overwhelmed.
“As a government, we believe our resources are finite and we need to limit the number of people entering the country,” he said.
“If we do not act, the immense pressure our public services will be under is a concern over illegal and irregular migration on the scale we have already seen and will likely see in the years to come. There’s a lot of pressure on public housing and it’s going to be hard to get public buy-in.”
Jenric said some of these concerns “clearly apply equally” to legal immigrants, but net legal immigration hit a record high of 504,000 in the year to June. , the official economic watchdog says this is the engine of economic growth.
Meanwhile, the Minister suggested that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has urged international partners to support reform of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Mr Jenrick said the post-war agreement was “from another era” and needed “renewal” and “renewal”.
“We are not the only ones with such a view in conversations that I, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister have had with our international partners,” he said.