TOO DIFFICULT TO TALK ABOUT?

An extraordinarily sensitive subject was broached in the Queen’s Speech: illegal immigration and the people smugglers who facilitate it. As a political issue, it is likely to come to the fore this summer.

Why will it become more pressing? Illegal immigration is always a touch-button, almost visceral, issue in public debate. Added to that, the most marginal seats in the South East also tend to be the most directly affected (voters in Kent’s coastal villages see new arrivals walking through their gardens, for example). Over the coming months, the improving weather and the French Government’s desire to sate domestic political demands by ushering people from Calais to Britain will raise the issue further up the agenda.

There are strong arguments for open borders – if someone is willing to hold onto the bottom of a lorry for 3,000 miles to work here, surely they are exactly the sort of person we should welcome in? But in practice the Channel’s waters are muddier than that. The passage offered by people smugglers has created a route that is at least as available to the most violent criminals escaping justice as it is to the most vulnerable seeking refuge. Given the prices charged, it might even be more affordable for the former than the latter.

Border authorities privately report the growing use of decoy boats of genuine migrants being used to distract attention and resource from faster boats taking easier routes and carrying fugitives – who are shaving off their own fingerprints before landing here, ostensibly to avoid persecution at home, possibly to avoid prosecution in the EU. As smugglers shift their focus from penniless migrants to the more lucrative trade in transporting those evading the law, the nature of the problem is changing fast.

The combination of moral concerns, marginal seats and post-Brexit relations with the EU means HMG is poking a hornet’s nest. But it doesn’t really have much choice.

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