Johnson rejects calls for cap on immigration

Published on Sunday 19 July 2009 14:51

Home Secretary Alan Johnson today rejected calls for a cap on immigration, insisting that the Government's points-based system was closing the door on unskilled migrants while admitting the highly-skilled workers needed to boost Britain's economic prospects.

Despite recent projections by thinktank MigrationWatch that the UK's population could soar above 70 million by 2028 as a result of immigration, Mr Johnson insisted it would be wrong to set an "arbitrary figure" on the number of incomers to be allowed into the country.

And he compared the British National Party's claims that immigrants are taking jobs and housing from indigenous Britons to the rhetoric of blackshirt leader Oswald Mosley.

Mr Johnson told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: "I don't think a cap is the answer, because the problem with a cap is it is an arbitrary figure.

"We need to make the case – and there is a very strong case – for the importance to our economy of migration. We have introduced a system where, rather than an open door policy, there is a closed door policy for the unskilled.

"The door can only be opened from the inside for those who are skilled if we determine we need those jobs and we advertise them first in JobCentre Plus to see if there are any local people who can take these jobs before we allow them through.

"For students and people on short-term permits, the door has all kinds of alarms."

The points-based system introduced last year has been "a really effective way of tackling these issues at the same time as ensuring we keep a strong economy in this country," said Mr Johnson.

But MigrationWatch chairman Sir Andrew Green said: "Yet again the Home Secretary is trying to fob us off by puffing up his new points-based system for foreign workers.

"Yet the Home Office themselves admit that last year it would only have reduced immigration by 8%.

"Alan Johnson has still not grasped the point that we need at least a 75% reduction in immigration to hold our population below 70 million.

"As for economic benefit, who is going to pay for all the facilities that another 10 million people will need when the Government is already broke?"

Mr Johnson recalled the 1959 election when Mosley stood as a candidate in North Kensington, near his childhood home.

"Mosley stood there with the same argument of hate and division and intolerance that we hear from the BNP now", he said.

"It's not new, it comes around in waves. I know we will hear the argument in times when jobs are hard to find. This argument that the racists use can be so destructive. I have absolute faith in the British people, who not only fought in the war against fascism but have seen this come in waves from Oswald Mosley, the National Front and now the BNP.

"Of course, politicians have to speak to people in the language they can understand about the problems they are facing, and successive mainstream politicians of all parties have done that in this country, which is why we don't have the same problem with the right-wing groups as they do in France or Italy."