UK General Election 2010: Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants?

[mcgillianaire]

One of the Lib Dem policies being pounced upon by the opposition, particularly the Tories, is the supposed amnesty on illegal immigrants. The moment I read about it I thought hang on a second, isn't this something Boris Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London, supports as well? Lo and behold, there's an article about it in today's Guardian. Nicholas Blincoe, a former advisor to Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg writes: "Frankly, there are times when you thank God for Boris Johnson. During the mayoral campaign in April 2008, Johnson backed a campaign known as "Strangers into Citizens", an initiative that aims to offer a one-off route into citizenship for the half million-plus migrants currently trapped in the black economy." So there we go, it's not just some wacky Lib Dem policy. In fact, Blincoe describes not only how difficult it was to initially convince Clegg of the idea but how, to the disappointment of the Strangers into Citizens campaign, the Lib Dems opted only to regularise those migrants who'd been in the UK for ten years, rather than the four years suggested by the campaign and accepted by the London mayor! As Blincoe points out, "On this issue, Johnson is outflanking the liberals – and proving that the Tories are capable of seeing sense on immigration." Ah, but you ask what difference does Johnson's support make? Not much except that anywhere between 57% and 75% of the approximately 725,000 illegal immigrants in the UK live in London. That's a sizeable number of people whose decriminalised immigration status and subsequent re-integration could make a significant difference to British society as a whole. But is anybody listening?