Disappointing new figures have revealed that net migration rose 94,000 last year, to an all-time high of 330,000. The highest-ever number of EU citizens came to Britain this year. For the first time research indicates the UK is home to 8 million people who are foreign-born.
However, this is not be confused with the complexity and misery of the situation as we look across the channel. Just 26 miles away by the French port of Calais, a scattered sea of makeshift shelters and tents, now known as “the jungle”, is ‘home’ to an estimated 5000 people. Some with their families and children, others entirely on their own, all in pursuit of a better life.
The consequences of a lack of control are that people suffer. That is both the individual misery of those living in appalling squalor and risking all to get here, as well as the challenge to our commercial sector, who cannot carry out their business due to the problems of both the chaos and the increased border controls, notwithstanding French Industrial action.
Operation Stack has cost the UK economy £250m so far and I have received many letters from companies in the constituency who have had their businesses negatively impacted by what is happening. I have sympathy for those businesses and particularly for the individual hauliers.
However, as migration figures and the scenes across Europe collude to reinforce what has become a national obsession with immigration, we need to be careful about how we frame and discuss what we are concerned about.
Syrians, Afghans, Eritreans and Sudanese to name but a few, have made the perilous journey to Calais. Since the beginning of the year, 340,000 migrants are known to have reached Europe’s external borders.
Assertions that we must “close the gates” or “send them all back” dangerously obscures the distinction that must be made between economic migrants and people fleeing for their lives. In doing so it ignores our responsibility to help those in need.
Please don’t mistake me. I’m not for opening the gates to all and sundry either. Those arguments are just as lazy. I believe in knowing who is here, for accountability, for planning the provision of services and for being able to send back those who fail to add to our society, by their poor behaviour.
However just this week those at both the Institute of Directors and within the Health Service have warned a lack of coherency around immigration policies could thwart our economic growth and will likely bring our health service to its knees. But I digress, those discussions are for another day.
So while we need to reduce migration perhaps more pertinent is our need to control who is coming here and why, whilst being mindful that we should not hold back our helping hand out of fear. Those concerns must be put into perspective.
Fear is knowing that your child might get shot by a sniper in Aleppo. I challenge anybody to look the Syrian father in the eye, wife and child in one hand, worldly belongings in the other, and tell him “you did the wrong thing coming to Calais”.
As the second largest bilateral donor to the Syrian crisis, we have committed £900m to helping. A staggering 40% of population have been displaced by the Civil War. That is just one of the crises forcing refugees to Europe. To sort it we have to seek a European solution, one that tackles trafficking, amongst other things, if we are to save hundreds from drowning or dying in the back of lorries. I for one am proud we are helping at the source, whilst not being shy about discussing how to tackle these broader issues.