Nigel Farage reckons we spend £12billion per year on universal credit for migrants, and the statistics back this up. That, of course, is in addition to all we are spending on hotels etc, for unlawful immigrants.
Reform, therefore, proposes to ban migrants from routinely claiming benefits. It should be a very simple requirement, when it comes to lawful migration through the visa system, that applicants have to demonstrate that they can keep themselves on the wages which will be on offer and to prevent, except in very rare circumstances, dependents from entering with them.
It is not for the state to subsidise low wages. Refugees are different, but I do not mean asylum seekers, rather those who have actual refugee status under the tightened-up criteria which Reform will apply.
For example, nobody coming in on a small boat will be eligible for asylum for the simple reason that he or she will have come from a safe country ie France. Therefore, such a person will never have refugee status.
Genuine refugees, as determined by the strict application of the 1951 convention, will be treated in exactly the same way as they always have been, which is as a UK citizen.
Britain has one flourishing economy left — it's underground and migrants use it to disappear — Ann Widdecombe
|Getty Images
As for unlawful migrants and other unsuccessful applicants for refugee status, they should not be eligible for benefits at all, resulting in a mighty saving of taxpayers’ cash.
The combination of automatic asylum refusal, replacing hotels with secure reception centres and fast deportation should obviate the need for any claims for benefits. In short, the only migrants who should be able to claim benefits are those who are permanently and lawfully settled here.
The theory is easier than the practice, for such is the current degree of chaos and lack of control that we do not know who is here, who has gone and who has overstayed.
We need to sort that out as an early priority. Other countries have exit checks, but we do not. Why not? This is, after all, the day and age of the computer, is it not?
Crucially, we need to stop the small boats by turning them back as they try to enter our waters and to deter future crossings by making it clear that those who do get through will be housed in secure reception centres and automatically refused asylum before being returned to their own countries.
At the moment, the message that goes out is that Britain is a very easy country in which to disappear. Unlike other countries, we do not have national identity cards, and we do not routinely practice detention, but we do have a flourishing underground economy.
Thus, when the time comes to issue a refusal, it is all too frequently the case that the individual has disappeared into that underground economy and several years down the line may emerge as a supposedly regular citizen claiming benefit.
We have to reverse that message so that in future it reads: if you come to Britain with a fake claim for asylum, then you will be detained, you will be dealt with quickly, and you will be sent home.
You will not get a benefit, and you will not be able to work. Nobody is going to pay thousands of pounds to a human trafficking agent for that.