Asylum Seekers.

During the past ten years numbers of illegal immigrants entering the United Kingdom have increased dramatically. One of the most influential factors in this increase has been the building of the channel tunnel between England and France. As stated this has meant that increased numbers of illegal immigrants have been entering the country and security has had to be stepped up to try and combat this. The reality is that even though security has been increased there are still tides of people entering the country illegally every day and the situation is getting worse. Government policy states that asylum will be granted if the person can give good reason for their application and proof of who they are and where they come from. Unfortunately this system is not full proof and a huge black market has emerged for the trafficking of people across the channel. In some parts of our country native white people are becoming a minority and we are losing our sense of identity as a country.

There are many ways in which we can help combat this epidemic of illegal immigrants and actually help those who are truly seeking asylum for a good reason. The first is to help stop the people who act as the go-betweens, the ones that get people fake passports and identification. The government could help combat this by making passports harder to copy i.e. having electronic tags or watermarks like on bank notes. This would mean that when people go through customs or the terminal at the port the passport can be swiped and checked against the national database to see whether the person is who they say they are. I think this would help to cut down on one type of illegal entry as passports would be very hard to fake and there would be a higher risk of detection and apprehension for the carrier. Another way to help would be to have very large fines for if say a person is found hiding in your van or lorry. At the moment this fine is set at £2000 for each person. If this were increased more lorry drivers would be discouraged from carrying their illegal cargo of people. As in America there could be sniffer dogs at ports and at the channel tunnel that smell people hiding underneath lorries and inside them. As an added affect this may also help to combat drug trafficking as well. The final precaution that could be taken in ports is similar to what happens in airports all over the world. This is X-raying. Lorries and their cargo could be scanned before they go through the terminal to detect any secret compartments with people in or to see if people were hiding elsewhere. This may sound extreme but it would mean that a greater number of people were caught before they entered the channel tunnel or boarded ferries so the flow would be reduced and we would not have the problem of what to do with the immigrants once they crossed the channel and we cannot deport them back to France.

Coming away from the security side of illegal immigrants there are a number of policies that we could introduce to deter people from our country even before they set off from their own. The first of these would be compulsory labour for a set period of time when they arrived for which they would not get paid, i.e. working on public projects such as building hospitals and schools and maintaining roads. Many people would be put off by this as they would not want to complete this work and so would not attempt to come to our country but may perhaps choose another country to seek asylum in such as France or Germany. Another policy would be that they would have to find work when they came here, they would have to pay for their healthcare and housing etc. so that residents of our country would not have to pay for there being here. If they did not pay for their own privileges they would be deported back to where they came from.

Even though some of these measures seem a little unorthodox in the long run I feel that even if the government did not adopt all of these policies, but only took up one the number of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country would lessen or slow down. Ultimately we do not want to seem racist or prejudiced we only want to retain the country, which is rightfully ours and no-ones else's.