Mercy Muroki: It's time to have a proper integration policy

As we’ve been telling you this morning, the Prime Minister has announced that Britain will take in 20,000 Afghan refugees over the next few years as Afghanistan is left to the mercy of the barbarism of the Taliban.

In a new scheme being set up by the Home Secretary, 5000 refugees will be resettled over the next year – at a cost to the taxpayer of £200 million, the Prime Minister says – with the rest being settled over the next few years.

Now, I’m in favour of offering people in desperate need refuge in this country…

BUT ONLY – and ONLY if – everything can be done to make sure that British people will not be put at risk – that those who might want to do us harm don’t take advantage of the new route to smuggle in dodgy ideologies, or even worse – literal terrorists.

And do I trust that the screening processes that need to be in place will be in place – that, I can’t be sure of.

But I am sure of this, with immigrants and refugees being so high up on the government’s list of priorities right now, it’s time for us to have a proper integration policy.

There currently is no single UK-wide policy on integration – government departments and local authorities are left to do their own thing with fluffy initiatives on community cohesion, diversity and inclusion.

Net migration into the UK runs at hundreds of thousands a year, we let in people from all over the world – and with the idea of post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ being pushed we could, the numbers from outside the EU will only continue to rise.

I don’t think it’s unfair to expect that people who come to this country to commit to learning the English language…

I don’t think it’s unfair to expect that people coming into this country integrate into our ways of life, to respect and adopt the values we hold dear as a nation.

I don’t want people to see communities of immigrants living in closed off communities excluded from the rest of us… I don’t want to see so-called ‘no-go areas’… I don’t want to see dodgy attitudes towards women being imported, and left alone to thrive because we’re too scared to call them out.

I’m not saying immigrants should be held at gunpoint and forced to recite every word of Rule Britannia or to have a union jack forcibly draped round their necks at all times.

I’m just saying, since we seem to be so keen on opening our borders, we should be equally as keen on making sure that those coming here integrate.