Families of British military servicemen living on a historic air base in Essex have reportedly been told that they will need to vacate their homes to make way for asylum seekers, many of whom will have entered the country as illegal migrants.
A military wife and mother has revealed that her household has been informed that military families living on the MDP Wethersfield former Royal Air Force (RAF) base in Braintree, Essex will need to leave their homes to so far undisclosed locations. This is so the government can house migrants at the facility as it tries to shift away from the controversial hotel migrant housing scheme.
Speaking to The Express, the military mother said: “There are a lot of concerns about the impacts that it would have on their children because, you know, their children struggle a lot more with those things. So it’s quite hard for them, you know, having to uproot their children.”
While they have been told that they must leave their homes, the government has yet to come up with alternative housing for approximately 24 military families. They will therefore be forced to temporarily live alongside the often unvetted migrants when they are shipped onto the base on April 1st.
The base has erected a fence “about 100 metres” from the military family homes which will supposedly separate them from the incoming migrants, however the mother said that the fence is not sufficient to keep anyone from crossing, saying.
“I don’t think it would keep my dog in,” she said.
She also accused the Home Office — the Suella Braverman-led government department with broad responsibility for immigration and national security — of pushing forward with the plans without consulting local residents.
“So, from the Home Office, we’ve had nothing, and the Home Office have been on-site multiple times and we’ve seen them on the site. They’ve had tours of the site, but we’ve had no correspondence whatsoever with the Home Office,” she said.
Commenting on the move, Brexit leader Nigel Farage said: “If this is correct then it’s outrageous. British people being relegated again.”
The local council (municipal government) in Braintree has also expressed their opposition to the government’s plans: “The council has provided the Home Office with our strong view that we believe Wethersfield airfield to be an unsuitable site, given the lack of capacity in local services, its isolated location, the size of the site, and the fact that the scale of the development proposed could have a significant adverse impact upon the local community.”
The council went on to warn that it would consider launching legal challenges against the Home Office to stop the migrants from being dumped in their community “including…seek[ing] an injunction if it becomes necessary and appropriate to do so.”
The move comes as the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is trying to end the controversial programme of housing illegal migrants in hotels across the country while their asylum claims are processed, costing the taxpayer a staggering £6 million per day.
As the government’s main plan of relocating illegals to the African nation of Rwanda is currently mired in legal challenges, the government has said that it will look to relocate migrants from hotels to former military bases and holiday camp grounds, among other locations.
The government is also reportedly looking to pay off landlords to house migrants in local communities as hotels have reached capacity.
A report this week from the Refugee Council warned that in light of the likely difficulties for the government to actually deport illegals, the British taxpayer will be on the hook for £9 billion over the next three years alone to provide support and assistance to migrants.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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