Pro-border control think tank Migration Watch has warned that the illegal alien amnesty in Ireland will open a “back door to the UK” for migrants via the Common Travel Area.
Ireland, which shares an uncontrolled land border with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, opened a scheme to “regularise” illegal aliens and allow them to acquire Irish and, by extension, European Union citizenship in time on Monday.
The scheme will supposedly only be open to migrants of “good character” — but the definition of this seems to be fairly loose, with the Irish government having confirmed that criminal convictions do not necessarily stop someone from being eligible for the scheme and illegal migrants by definition have already disregarded the nation’s own rules on immigration.
“This is a very serious mistake. Amnesties have been tried before by most of the major countries in Europe and, on every occasion, have made a bad situation worse,” said Migration Watch UK chairman Alp Mehmet in comments received by Breitbart London — further warning that “Given the present free movement [migration regime] with Ireland, it will open an eventual back door to the UK for those who have lived illegally in Ireland for years.”
The Common Travel Area, established in 1923 shortly after the then-Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland — renamed to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1927 — and covers the island of Ireland, Great Britain, and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man.
Border controls on air and sea crossings from Ireland to the United Kingdom and minimal to non-existent, despite the former’s status as an EU member-state, and the long land border along Northern Ireland is essentially fully open.
Ireland is therefore already used as a “back door” for illegal migrants seeking to enter the United Kingdom, with Dave Wood, a former Director-General of Immigration Enforcement in the United Kingdom, warning in 2018 that there is “nothing stopping people once [they’re] in Ireland travelling north to Northern Ireland and then to the wider UK.”
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