Migrants will keep coming as long as we offer illegal jobs
THE number of illegal migrants crossing the Channel has already exceeded the record set in 2020 – and it’s only July.
But why do they come? And why are their numbers increasing?
Some will tell you that these are desperate refugees risking their lives to escape from persecution, poverty and war. What — in France?
Others will claim they come to take advantage of our generous welfare state.
But that doesn’t make sense either. Most of the benefits available to people in the UK — like Jobseekers Allowance and Housing Benefit — are simply not accessible to the undocumented illegal immigrant.
It is true that just being in the UK entitles you to access to healthcare, education and somewhere to live.
But asylum seekers only receive a weekly allowance of £39.63 on a payment card — not cash.
A pregnant mother gets an extra £3 a week.
You might say this suggests the UK is a humane country that tries its best to treat everyone with a semblance of human dignity even if they have just jumped off a dinghy on to a Kent beach — and I would agree with you.
But £39.63 a week is hardly worth drowning for, is it?
The truth is that many illegal migrants risk their lives to come here because they know they are certain to find work in our booming black economy. The underground economy goes by many names. Undeclared work. The informal sector.
The hidden, grey, shadow and underground economy. And it is massive.
According to the London School of Economics, over two million people earn their living in this parallel working world — a vast untaxed, unregulated job market where they are always hiring.
These millions of shadow workers pay no tax and National Insurance. They are paid cash.
They have no rights or recourse to the laws that protect the rest of us. They have no contracts, no benefits.
They are builders, cleaners, decorators, mechanics, gardeners, nannies, hairdressers and handymen. They work in sweat shops and on building sites, in massage parlours and garage forecourts, driving taxis and delivering takeaways.
They are an army of 21st century slaves, ripe for every kind of exploitation.
The shadow economy comprises approximately 12 per cent of GDP — the total value of our national wealth — worth anywhere between an estimated £75billion and £222billion a year.
Yes, there are other strong draws that keep the motorised ribs (rigid inflatable boats) coming to the UK — the English language, world-class healthcare that is free at point of use and the statistically slim chance of deportation.
TIDE OF HUMANITY
The Home Office reports that in 2019 there were just 7,360 enforced returns, the lowest number since records began.
But the greatest magnet of all for those ribs bobbing on the briny is Blighty’s booming shadow economy.
Get here and you will get work.
As British holidaymakers and wedding parties are being turfed out of hotels in Kent to make way for the latest arrivals from the English Channel, the Government has just desperately chucked £54 million at France, begging the French to boost the gendarmes who stroll along the beaches between Dieppe and Boulogne.
It will not even slow down the tide of humanity determined to come to the UK to find work.
And as long as the shadow economy keeps booming, illegal migrants will keep coming, no matter how many millions we give to France.
Brexit was meant to give us control of our borders.
How’s that working out?
New normal
CABARET is on the West End stage this autumn with Eddie Redmayne in the role of the leering host of the Kit Kat Club — an Oscar-winning turn by Joel Grey in the classic Liza Minnelli film.
Examining my tickets, I see I will be required to give proof of my Covid-19 status on the NHS app before being allowed in.
This is what the new normal is going to look like.
But it will be worth it to hear Eddie Redmayne croon: “Willkommen, bienvenu — welcome.”
Satisfaction as Stones keep Rolling
THE drummer just turned 80 and the lead guitarist just survived lung cancer.
The singer had surgery of a heart valve in 2019. The rhythm guitarist had brain surgery after falling out of a coconut tree in Fiji and landing on his head.
And the Rolling Stones go back on the road in September. And there’s why the Stones are the greatest rock and roll band of all time – stamina. The dates are all in America, but this is a resumption of the same No Filter tour that stormed through Europe in 2019.
I saw all three of the London dates and every one of them was a brilliant night out that I will recall to my dying day.
In a world where so much has been lost over the last 16 months, knowing that the Stones are playing live again is great news for humanity.
Prince or not, Harry?
“I’M writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become,” Prince Harry says of his forthcoming autobiography.
The jarring note is that apparently nobody – not the publishers, not Harry, not his missus – saw the laughable irony in Harry signing his pompously humble statement, “Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.”
He really can’t keep on having it both ways.
If he wants out of the Royal Family, then stop clinging to all the baubles and bangles of hereditary privilege.
Harry can stop calling himself Prince Harry any time he wants.
He can stop calling himself the Duke of Sussex any time he chooses.
If he is so keen to ditch all the vestiges of royal life, and if he is so eager to be just a man like any other man, then why oh why is he so pathetically keen to hold on to his precious royal titles?
Dom’s barmy coup
THE most remarkable revelation in Dominic Cummings’ latest outpouring of seething, bitter bile is that the former Number 10 aide seriously contemplated removing Boris Johnson from office shortly after he had won an 80-seat majority in the general election of December 2019.
“Before even mid-January we were having meetings in Number 10 saying, ‘It’s clear Carrie wants rid of all of us’,” Cummings haughtily reports.
“We were already saying by the summer we’ll all have gone from here or we’ll be in the process of trying to get rid of him and get someone else in as Prime Minister.”
That sounds like the kind of thing the British just don’t do – a coup.
It also sounds totally deranged. Cummings was going to depose a Prime Minister just after the people had given him a landslide victory in a general election?
You and whose army?
Tokyo home truths
WHATEVER sporting heroics come to pass, and however we dress it up, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics are taking place in a country that is in the middle of a health emergency.
And these games will do absolutely nothing but make the situation for Japan infinitely worse.
These could have been one of the great Olympics in the most exciting city on the planet.
When the Olympics were awarded to Tokyo, Japan was just two years past the national trauma of Fukushima – the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that left more than 15,000 dead.
Tokyo 2020 was meant to be part of the healing process – a rebuilt nation emerging from mourning, trauma and disaster.
The pandemic put paid to all that.
And a nation that wanted to welcome the world is now overwhelmingly against these Olympics taking place this year.
Who can blame them?
Japanese doctors and nurses will inevitably be diverted from their duties to care for infected foreign athletes and their hangers-on.
There will be no spectators but there will still be 11,000 foreign athletes and more than 40,000 coaches, media and support staff.
The world is flying to Tokyo.
The decent thing would have been for the world to stay home.
City of lions
THE sad news for Spurs fans is that Harry Kane looks likely to leave his beloved boyhood club for Manchester City.
The good news for England fans is that Kane’s move north would reunite him with many of the young lions who tore up the Euros for England – Raheem Sterling, Kyle Walker and John Stones. There is even talk that Jack Grealish may leave Aston Villa for Pep Guardiola’s City.
That would be half of England playing for Manchester City.
Those 55 years of hurt may soon be over.
Billy's Ray of light
“I DON’T know what @billyraycyrus is gonna be more p***ed about!” chortles his spirited daughter Miley Cyrus, tongue lolling, as she clambers all over her dad’s car.
“Me making a shirt that says ‘I love Dick’ or crawling all over his truck in my Gucci heels!’
As a father, let me hazard a guess.
A scratch on dad’s bonnet is probably the least of Billy Ray’s concerns right now.
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Cinders will not be going to the ball
OUR self-harming test and trace system is paralysing this country more than the actual pandemic.
Read More on The US Sun
The pingdemic closed Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical Cinderella before it even had a chance to open. The show will return – there’s a revised opening date of August 18.
But for now, Cinders will not be going to the ball after all . . . and neither will anyone else.