Migration Watch UK has warned that Boris Johnson’s so-called Australian-style point-based immigration system leaves Britain open to around 660 million migrant workers, as it has no cap on overall numbers.
Migration Watch has calculated the number of people beyond the European Union who would be eligible to apply for visas under the new system “to be at least 590 million”, according to an analysis sent to Breitbart London.
The think tank estimates that, on top of this, “the likely pool of EU nationals will be 77 million” — leaving employers “able to draw on a worldwide pool of more than 667 million.”
Migration Watch UK has long warned that the fabled “Australian-style points-based immigration system” long advocated by Nigel Farage, first as UKIP leader and then as Brexit Party leader, before it was taken up by Boris Johnson during his time as frontman for the Vote Leave campaign during the 2016 EU referendum, could actually increase net immigration if points are too easy to come by and there is no fixed annual cap on incomers.
Johnson, despite being by turns hailed and vilified by many Conservative voters as a migration hawk at the head of a “hard right” Cabinet, has never displayed any serious opposition to mass migration, and even campaigned for potentially millions of illegal aliens to be given an amnesty as Mayor of London and Foreign Secretary — and one of his first acts as Prime Minister was to scrap the Conservatives’ long-standing (if empty) pledge to reduce annual net immigration “from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands”.
Migration Watch UK is particularly concerned that the Government has “just ploughed on” with its new immigration system despite the fact it was drawn up before the onset of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, which has put many local people out work — “As they have done before, employers will go for cheaper, non-unionised overseas labour,” the think tank warned.
“This [points-based system] was drawn up long before the Covid crisis. Now, with unemployment heading for several million, we cannot simply blunder on with unlimited immigration from all over the world,” pleaded Migration Watch chairman Alp Mehmet.
“Immigration could easily spin out of control as it did under Labour. The only way to avoid a crisis is to put a cap on the numbers and then adjust as necessary. What is the point of taking back control over immigration only to hand it over to business?”