Illegal immigration is turning us into a lockdown society

Telegraph

12 hours ago

The mild weather has, we are told, exacerbated the problem of small boats crossing the English Channel. The pledge to 'smash the gangs' is no longer being repeated endlessly by Labour spokespeople (perhaps the recent sunny weather distracted Border Force?)
But fear not. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has a plan. She thinks a gigantic governmental IT project is what is now needed to get a grip on the explosion in immigration.
Whenever politicians run out of road in trying to solve a problem, it's never long before the introduction of ID cards rears its ugly head. One might say this is an exercise using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but that would be unfair. The issues at stake tend to be rather bigger than nuts – terrorism, mass uncontrolled immigration, widespread welfare fraud and the like. No, it's more like wildly swinging a sledgehammer in an idiotic attempt to repair a window.
The way ID schemes work is to split the population into two cohorts – one which is entitled to something and one which isn't. You want to visit your local GP? You'd better whip out your digital ID card to do so. A police officer doesn't like the cut of your jib and wonders if you should be in the UK at all? You'd be advised to have data on hand to prove your citizenship.
Three problems immediately emerge. First, the law-abiding majority are obliged to undertake an ever-increasing number of checks and tests to go about their ordinary lives.
Second, it assumes that the people you want to collar are not adept at melting into the black market economy. How many employers are hiring large numbers of illegal immigrants unknowingly and were genuinely just about to get round to making sure they all had the right to work here? None.
Third, it relies on the state actually operating a complex IT system successfully. We have surely learnt over recent years that in the vast number of ways the government is able to waste huge tranches of taxpayers' money, botched IT projects are probably top of the list. You can bank on a new digital ID system to break, be littered with errors or both.
Ronald Reagan's old dictum – 'there are no easy solutions, but there are simple solutions' – is typically honoured in the breach. The Home Secretary is overreaching for a solution which is difficult and complex but – she is hoping – avoids being especially controversial.
Instead, to tackle the immigration disaster, we need to get back to basics. The vast numbers of people coming to our shores are doing so because enforcement is weak, the legal system is soft and the incentives to come here are too great.
If you are unwilling or unable to deal with those root causes, there is no database – however magical you may imagine it to be – that will be of much assistance.
The reason we have failed to deport many undesirables is not because we are sitting across a desk from them and can't identify who they are or what they are entitled to. Rather it's because our asylum system works at a snail's pace, allows fatuous appeals under human rights legislation, and the package of goodies you receive while you are here is too good to resist.
We need to speed up the system so claims take eighteen days (or, ideally, eighteen hours) to process rather than eighteen months. We must ensure that your child's preference for British-made chicken nuggets is not an admissible basis for resisting deportation. We have to find a more robust way of policing the English Channel.
None of these are easy to achieve, but they are simple to grasp. Instead, the political elite – this time in the form of Yvette Cooper – prefers to rush down the rabbit hole of believing a flashy computerised system is the answer to our prayers. It probably won't happen. It certainly won't work.