BRITAIN: Mr Tony Blair declared Britain's traditional tolerance "under threat" yesterday as the Labour Party joined the battle for electoral advantage with the Conservatives by announcing a fresh clampdown on immigration and asylum controls.
The Prime Minister and his Home Secretary, Mr Charles Clarke, moved to close down the one area of Conservative advantage in Britain's pre-election period with a package of measures which will require migrant workers to show they have the skills to bring economic benefit before they are allowed to settle in the UK.
The package, involving an Australian-style points system, fingerprinting, fixed fines for employers hiring illegal workers and English and "Britishness" tests, will hit low-skilled migrants and also end the right of successful asylum-seekers to stay in Britain permanently.
In an introduction to his government's five-year asylum and immigration plan, Mr Blair said Britain would be "poorer in every way" without centuries of immigration. But he added: "This traditional tolerance is under threat . . . from those who come and live here illegally by breaking our rules and abusing our hospitality. Unless we act to tackle abuses, it could be increasingly exploited by extremists to promote their perverted view of race."
However, the idea that migrants coming into the UK were in receipt of "hospitality" was attacked by Mr Trevor Philips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality. "Tell that to the 44,000 doctors in the NHS and the 70,000 nurses, without whom we would really see what pressure on the health service means," he declared. And the Liberal Democrat spokesman, Mr Mark Oaten, echoed the concern of Sir Bill Morris, the former leader of the Transport and General Workers' Union. While saying the Blair government had been right to reject last month's Conservative proposal for a quota system for asylum-seekers, Mr Oaten warned of the danger of "a bidding war" opening between the two main parties.
Meanwhile, the Refugee Council said Mr Clarke's proposal to end the indefinite permission to remain would leave successful asylum-seekers "in limbo." Unveiling his proposals yesterday, Mr Clarke said it was right to tighten conditions for settlement in the UK and to bring these "much closer to citizenship" requirements. And he insisted it was appropriate to offer successful asylum-seekers temporary rights to remain for five years, citing Kosovo as an example of a conflict-torn area which had generated large numbers of asylum-seekers but later returned to normality.
However, Ms Maeve Sherlock, chief executive of the Refugee Council said: "We would be very concerned if someone who has been accepted as a refugee has to live through five years of uncertainty until the UK government confirms they can remain here permanently. It seems particularly unfair on refugees who may have lost their whole families or suffered torture or, at worst, ethnic cleansing. It is reasonable and fair to expect traumatised refugees to be able to get on with their new lives and not be left in limbo, unable to rebuild their lives for fear of having their refugee status withdrawn."
Mr Habib Rahman, for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, added: "Restricting asylum-seekers' initial leave to remain is a retrograde step which leads us to question the government's commitment to its refugee integration strategy. "
However TUC deputy general secretary Ms Frances O'Grady said the proposed points system for migrant workers could be "a progressive" step. "A work permit ties an employee to a particular employer, and means that in practice the employee is powerless to protest about exploitation, as if they lose their job they risk deportation," she said. "A points system could give workers an effective right to switch employer."
Under the new four-tier system, only highly skilled migrants, including doctors, engineers, IT specialists and finance experts, will be able to enter Britain without a job offer.