The case for zero immigration
November 4th, 2007
A letter to the Sunday Times which was published on 4th November 2007.
In your editorial ‘Right not to remain silent’ (Comment, last week) you state that “one of the unspoken truths is that there is little the government can do to control immigration” because as Britain is a “member of the European Union, many of these people can come and go as they please”. However, one may ask what scale of national catastrophe will we have to endure before the really unmentionable subject of leaving the EU is contemplated.
While the latest of a sequence of projections and corrections (for 2005) gives a net flow of 190,000 people coming each year, what has not been so clearly broadcast is that this figure derives from about 550,000 coming in (including about 90,000 returning British citizens) minus about 360,000 leaving (about 170,000 British). Thus there was estimated a net inflow of foreign nationals of 270,000 and a net outflow of 80,000 British, an increase of 350,000 in the relative size of the foreign population. This is projected for each year to 2050.
This would mean that in the lifetimes of almost everyone under 40 the foreign-born population will have grown relative to the native population by more than 15 million, twice the population of Greater London – about the same change proportionately as has been inflicted on the Tibetan people by the enforced immigration of ethnic Chinese.
Britain’s catastrophe can be averted by stopping immigration completely, for say five years, until the British people have had a chance to pronounce on whom and how many they want to settle here.