Open letter to Ed Milliburn
Ian Turner | 10.01.2012 14:54
Dear Mr. Milliband
Your call for a more “rational” debate on immigration is mendacious, as well as being too little, too late. The majority of the electorate oppose your government’s immigration policy not because we are ill informed or are so gullible that we have been hoodwinked by the BNP. On the contrary, we oppose it precisely because we can see what the consequences will be if the policy is not overturned as quickly as possible.
Your call for a more “rational” debate on immigration is mendacious, as well as being too little, too late. The majority of the electorate oppose your government’s immigration policy not because we are ill informed or are so gullible that we have been hoodwinked by the BNP. On the contrary, we oppose it precisely because we can see what the consequences will be if the policy is not overturned as quickly as possible.
I understand that you will be well acquainted with the facts, but for the purpose of illustration I refer you to the following:
UK population will hit 70m by 2031. Though the Office of National Statistics has now revised this to 70 million by 2029. And it will keep on rising if immigration is not checked.
White people will be a minority in Britain by the turn of the next century, if not sooner.
80 percent of jobs created between 1997 and 2007 were filled by immigrants.
Almost a quarter of all newborn children are now born to immigrant mothers.
You’ll notice that none of these stories come from dubious or extremist sources, they are all from the national press – including left-leaning publications such as The Guardian and The Independent.
I voted New Labour in 1997 because I wanted the country to be fairer than it had been under the Tories. I wanted wealth to be more evenly distributed, public services to be better funded and the tone of politics to be less strident and jingoistic than it had been under the Thatcher and, to some extent, the Major administrations. I voted for you again in 2001. In 2005 I did not vote. I did not vote, because at no point in either of the preceding manifestos had you mentioned a policy of unrestricted mass immigration that was intended to transform the country: yet by voting for the Labour Party that was clearly what I was endorsing. I do not hate anyone and am not completely opposed to either immigration or multi-culturalism. But nor do I wish my country which, for all its faults, I love, to be completely and irreversibly transformed around me.
Until your party adopts a policy of balanced immigration, such as that advocated by the Cross-Party Group on Balanced Migration, I will not vote for you again. If I can find a credible and non-extremist political pressure group that opposes the current immigration policy then I will campaign against your party at the next election. I understand that, because of our EU obligations, we cannot limit the number of immigrants from EU countries (at least not now that the government has abandoned its opt-out). However, based on 2007 figures which are the latest I can find, simply by reducing the number of non-EU immigrants by 80% annual net immigration would fall to -23,000. So it is possible to achieve balanced migration for the UK if the political will is there.
Ian Turner