Warning As UK Considers Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants
By Kevin McCandless
CNSNews.com Correspondent
June 30, 2006
London (CNSNews.com) – With the British government exploring a plan to give amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants, a senior military officer has warned that unchecked migration could threaten Western civilization.
Speaking earlier this month at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank, Rear Admiral Chris Parry warned that the countries of Western Europe could be subject to “reverse colonization” by waves of immigrants within the next 12 years.
With the rise of the Internet and cheap international phone calls, he said that assimilation by these groups into British society would be a thing of the past. Immigrants from the Third World, many of them from predominantly Islamic countries, would remain locked into their old cultures and ways.
Europe could face a permanent class of disaffected, unemployed young men.
“When you combine the lower prospects for communal life with macho youth and economic deprivation you tend to get trouble, typified by gangs and organized criminal activity,” he said.
“When one thinks of 20,000 so-called jihadists currently fly-papered in Iraq, one shudders to think where they might go next.”
Parry, who heads a Ministry of Defense research unit charged with identifying future threats, said such a development was not a certainty, but could well come to pass unless Western governments take steps to prevent it.
Mark Wallace, a spokesman for The Freedom Association, a civil-liberties group, said Thursday that Europe needed to put a stop to unregulated immigration.
“There's nothing wrong with immigration,” he said. “What we have in Europe, though, is large-scale communities who not encouraged to learn English or not take part in society around them. That's demonstrably dangerous.”
Immigration Minister Liam Byrne recently raised the possibility of granting amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants living in Britain.
Although a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair later declared that there were “no plans” for an amnesty, Byrne said he had directed his department to prepare a report on the issue.
“The position I'm in, is really needing to understand in more detail the precise segmentation of people whose positions have not been regularized,” he told the House of Commons.
Currently, the government estimates that there are between 310,000 and 570,000 illegal immigrants in the United Kingdom, a country with a total population of some 60 million.
A Home Office official touched off controversy last month when he admitted that he had “no idea” how many illegal immigrants there actually were.
Wallace said Thursday he expected the government would back off on the amnesty idea and then revisit it again in three to four years.
But he wasn't reassured by promises that there were no plans for an amnesty.
“I and the rest of the British electorate have grown cynical about what the government and the prime minister say on this issue.”
Danny Sriskandarajah, associate director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank, said Thursday the economic benefits of an amnesty outweighed the costs of deporting an untold number of immigrants.
According to a recent government study, it costs an average of $19,930 to forcibly deport one illegal immigrant.
If a general amnesty was declared, the institute estimated the government would see more than $1 billion in new tax revenues from immigrants already working in low-paid, mainly service jobs.
