Channel migrants; we will be a ‘soft touch’ if we don’t send them back – Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Bob Watson, Baildon.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought into Dover, Kent, following a number of small boat incidents in the English Channel.A group of people thought to be migrants are brought into Dover, Kent, following a number of small boat incidents in the English Channel.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought into Dover, Kent, following a number of small boat incidents in the English Channel.

THE Home Secretary, Priti 
Patel, is promising a “fairer, firmer” immigration system in 2021 (The Yorkshire Post, July 
13).

It is designed to cut the number of low-skilled migrants entering Britain, but aims to make it easier for higher-skilled workers to get UK visas. 
People who want to live and work in the UK will need to gain 70 points to be eligible to apply for a visa.

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Ms Patel said: “The British people voted to take back control of our borders and introduce a new points-based immigration system”.

Border Force officers escort men thought to be migrants to a waiting bus in Dover, Kent, after small boat incidents in The Channel earlier this morning. Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is set to unveil details of how the UK's points-based immigration system - which will come into effect on January 1 after freedom of movement ends - will operate.Border Force officers escort men thought to be migrants to a waiting bus in Dover, Kent, after small boat incidents in The Channel earlier this morning. Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is set to unveil details of how the UK's points-based immigration system - which will come into effect on January 1 after freedom of movement ends - will operate.
Border Force officers escort men thought to be migrants to a waiting bus in Dover, Kent, after small boat incidents in The Channel earlier this morning. Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is set to unveil details of how the UK's points-based immigration system - which will come into effect on January 1 after freedom of movement ends - will operate.

Indeed they did, and these new proposals will be much welcomed. However, what is to be done about the boatloads of illegal immigrants who bypass all this when they land on our shores and then try to claim asylum?

As I understand it, all such people should have claimed asylum in the first country that they reach.

Not having done so, and carried on until they reached the UK, they should virtually all be sent packing and not considered for asylum at all.

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You simply cannot pick your eventual destination as though it were a holiday choice.

We are still seen far too often as a soft touch.

This has to change.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

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Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor

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