The Boriswave
The post-2021 surge in low-skilled visas issued under Boris Johnson's government - the so-called 'Boriswave' - was unprecedented in British history in its scale and nature. British voters did not consent to it. To continue granting the Boriswave migrants indefinite leave to remain after 5 years in the country - as the Home Secretary is reportedly considering doing at the behest of some Labour backbenchers - would be to add insult to injury and would cost the British taxpayer enormously.
British citizenship
MPs - and civil servants - must remember that their job is to represent British citizens - not everyone in the world. On that note, I would also end the right to vote in British elections for Commonwealth citizens, and also end the right to dual citizenship for British citizens. Commonwealth citizens would, of course, be able to apply for British citizenship in the normal way, if they wished to continue to be able to vote in this country. But we must never again see news stories whereby some councillors simultaneously sit in London and stand for office in another country, like Bangladesh.
Small boats
I share everyone’s frustration with the small boats crisis, and I would vote for any reasonable measures which will help reduce their numbers. The small boat crossings are not wanted by the people of this country, and they are not safe for the migrants themselves.
Highly-skilled immigration
We do need some high-skilled immigration for high-tech industries like AI, but there should be a salary- and points-based system that includes points for cultural similarity - and, frankly, liking the UK. This should also be a consideration in the citizenship test.
The more low-skilled and illegal immigration there is, the harder it will be politically to let in all the highly-skilled immigrants we will need to grow our economy - so we need to clamp down hard on low-skilled and illegal immigration.
Citizenship and age fraud
British Citizenship fraud - where people pay other people to take their English test for them - must be detected and, with proper evidential safeguards, punished. We have the requirement that naturalised British citizens must be able to speak English for a very good reason - and I would vote to extend this requirement further, to migrant workers in customer-facing roles. We should not have people working in fast-food restaurants or shops that do not have a good level of English in matters that pertain to their jobs.
Asylum seekers falsely representing themselves as under 18 create child protection issues. They may be doing this to obtain free British school education, a more sympathetic asylum process, and/or a respite from the social expectation to work when their asylum claims are approved - but it is never acceptable to do this.
It is absurd that the government is implicitly claiming that Big Tech can reliably verify the age of everyone, but that they themselves cannot do so when it comes to small boat migrants. What is even more bizarre is that the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 created powers for scientific age assessment (X-rays, MRI) which have barely been used. The tools exist in statute, but the government won’t routinely use them!
Migrant crime
The government has failed to publish comprehensive data on crimes committed by foreign criminals by nationality as it promised to do, which is suspicious. I would push it to do so without further delay, albeit subject to the necessity for proper statistical quality controls. It is essential that immigration policy - including the points-based system that I advocate - be based on data. In the absence of reliable and thorough published data from this country, inaccurate speculation may occur based on data from other countries, which does not necessarily translate across to the UK and its immigration profile.
As recently agreed by consensus of the 46 states party to the European Convention on Human Rights, governments have a strong public safety interest in deporting dangerous foreign criminals - including convicted paedophiles, rapists and murderers. It is the duty of all immigration judges to balance this against human rights concerns appropriately - not simply let the human rights concerns, however minor or questionable, override the public safety concerns.
The whole basis for imprisoning people for crimes in the first place is that we can legitimately take away some (but not all) of people’s rights and freedoms if they have committed crimes! If immigration judges do not understand this basic point, perhaps they are in the wrong job!