Former Liberal Democrat Party leader Tim Farron had decided to make a comment on the ongoing migrant invasion crisis. This is a crisis that is driven in part by Britain’s reputation as a soft touch when it comes to giving migrants leave to remain in the UK and Britain’s reputation for being relatively generous with easy to access, for some, welfare and public housing.
There is a pull factor involved in drawing migrants both legal and illegal to Britain’s shores and one part of that pull factor is Britain’s welfare system. If you can get to Britain as an illegal then there is a fair chance that our failing government and failing systems would grant you either asylum status or leave to remain. Once in the country an illegal migrant given leave to remain or a legal migrant coming in on the correct, but possibly false paperwork, will be able to access the welfare system as well as the black economy. Also the migrant, whether legal or illegal, has played the ‘needs’ card correctly can, as the commentator Patrick O’Flynn said recently, end up being housed in public housing at the same or greater percentage rate than those who are British subjects. Of course not every legal immigrant is a welfare hunter, some legal migrants genuinely want to work and contribute to the United Kingdom, but to deny that the pull factors do not exist is naivety in the extreme.
Tim Farron’s comment denied the existence of any pull factor and what’s worse is that he took on trust claims by potential invaders living in Calais that ‘they’d never heard of’ Britain’s welfare system or the National Health Service. Mr Farron’s decision to accept at face value the words of those who are about to commit the crime of entering the UK illegally, is mindbogglingly naive.
Tim Farron said:
When I visited Calais and spoke to refugees, none of them had ever heard of the NHS or our benefits system. But they had heard of a Britain which is safe – where you can work hard, raise a family and be who you want to be without fear. Shouldn’t we be proud of that reputation?
Yeah right. Of course. Oh and by the way I’ve got a nice bridge crossing the River Thames I’d like to offer for sale.
These migrants are basically telling Mr Farron what he wants to hear and Mr Nice-But-Dim here has believed what he has been told without question and without the necessary cynicism about whether what he has been told is true. If you wanted another reason to show why the Lib Dems are unfit for government then Mr Farron’s comments are another one to add to a pretty lengthy list.
