The Boriswave is here to stay

The BorisWave is going to be given Indefinite Leave to Remain. That much is now certain and there is little point in hoping that the latest round of Labour Party psychodrama will somehow result in the national interest getting a look in.

The still-Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood’s plans were insufficient when first announced last November, but would have bought the country time. Since then they have been subjected to a public consultation that was hijacked by community interest groups, and a thorough tongue-lashing by Guardian columnists that has clearly cut through.

The latest position is that the BorisWave will get settlement on the current timeframe of five years, but that they will not get access to welfare until several years later. Putting to one side that this would still allow migrants to bring over family members, the seeds of future damaging chain migration flows, it is fanciful to think that this tweak will have any meaningful impact on the impending welfare bill.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has been very vocal in his desire to “abolish” the No Recourse to Public Funds policy that restricts migrants’ access to welfare; he simply is not going to extend its scope to include ILR. Besides, settlement puts migrants within touching distance of a British passport that they are able to grab after just 12 months. By the time of the next general election, many of the BorisWave will be as administratively British as you or I and treated as such by the welfare state.

The ILR debate will no doubt performatively continue, but the outcome is inevitable

The ILR debate will no doubt performatively continue, but the outcome is inevitable. And did we really expect anything else? Was there really any prospect of a Labour-run Home Office, more concerned with Islamic Staff Networks and diversity schemes, faring any differently against the BorisWave? Did they even try?

The Home Office has recently been forced to admit that the bill to the taxpayer of BorisWave settlement will be in the billions, but the social and cultural costs of this hyper-mass migration wave were clear immediately.

People were released from their houses post-lockdown to find their community transformed. The world turned upside down; Ambridge-on-Indus. The new butcher only serves non-stunned meat, the old bakery is an overstaffed vape or Kurdish barber shop, the candlestick maker a ropey-looking chicken shop.

Memorial benches in town squares are now pit stops for the boxes of Deliveroo and Just Eats; modest terraced houses, once family homes, are now HMOs; primary school PTAs now resemble the interpreters’ booth of the UN General Assembly, and good look trying to get a same-day GP appointment

Octogenarians are required to ask their carers for a cup of tea in Pidgin English, pub-goers are tasked with explaining to our new hospitality staff that it is not customary to serve Guinness in a gin balloon. No need to invest in the one million NEETs when there is the skilled worker visa.

None of this is normal, and whilst many of these themes were already in train, they have entered warp speed since 2020.

The country can now confidently say that it has tried the BorisWave and that it is not to our liking, thank you very much. It is probably best we do not continue down this track.

Over half of voters support extending the waiting period before a migrant can claim ILR. It is hard to see what democratic measure exists to deliver this message to the political class. The Labour Party’s internal debate on the issue shows that, despite the hundreds of millions being spent on translation services, they simply do not understand what they are being told by the British public.

BorisWave cultists, Labour backbenchers for whom national destruction is a career-defining mission, are telling us it is “unfair” and “unBritish”(read; anti-Paddington) to change the rules, that we’d somehow be “breaking a promise” to those who arrived on a temporary visa.

There is a level of sophistry in this that was last seen during the concoction of the Windrush myth; the intended message is the BorisWave was nothing but a selfless brigade of volunteers who munificently, out of nothing more than a sense of duty, left their own country to rescue Britain and keep afloat the NHS.

The reality is that third-world migrants decided to come to Britain because we were a relatively wealthy European nation that decided to offer a firesale on visas.

Visa application fees were discounted to bargain bucket prices, and the Immigration Health Surcharge was waived for no discernible reason. Migrants had no need to demonstrate competence in English, or that they held any qualification whatsoever. Sponsorships were available from off-licences, kebab ships, and non-existent care homes, and migrants could bring with them a megabus of dependants — 297,069 health and care visa main applicants brought with them 440,663 dependants. This flow, along with those predating it, was the antithesis of the Mayflower; driven by ease and convenience, rather than drive and entrepreneurism.

Backbenchers in the Labour Party tell us that ILR must be granted to these individuals, not because they are economic dynamite, but because they will suffer hardship otherwise and thus need access to our welfare state. This is nothing but a call for Britain’s foreign aid programme to be extended to those who have worked their way into our country; it is the abandonment of responsible politics dressed up in humanist clothing.

To end this nonsense, it is incumbent on centre-right parties to send a very clear message to those presently on temporary visas and considering an ILR application that leads to citizenship: you will not be allowed to stay.

The Reform Party estimates the BorisWave will cost the country hundreds of billions of pounds, the Conservative Party is making similar noises. Serious politics now requires these centre-right parties to come out and say what the country is thinking; that settlement and, crucially, naturalisation, grants awarded during this Labour government will be rescinded. These individuals will never stay. Thank you very much, but no thank you.