UK Prime Minister David Cameron today unambiguously promised to cut non-European Union (non-EU) immigrants from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. Cameron said the coalition government that came to power a year ago, will support “good immigration instead of mass immigration.”
Cameron promised that a cap on immigration will be enforced without hurting businesses. Intra-company transfers have been kept out of the ambit of the new immigration controlling measures the Tory-Lib Dem government proposes to carry out.
He said good quality and genuine universities will not be affected by the restriction on student visas. Bogus universities, offering bogus courses and bogus visas, will be the ones that will come under the government’s new measures, according to him.
“If we take the steps set out today, and deal with all the different avenues of migration, legal and illegal, then levels of immigration can return to where they were in the 1980s and 90s, a time when immigration was not a front-rank political issue,” Cameron said in his speech at Hampshire, 70 miles south-west of London.
He said immigration was a ‘hugely emotive subject’ and needed to be handled in a sober and sensitive way.
However, his speech was criticised by at least one member of his cabinet. Business Secretary Vince Cable said the tone of Cameron’s speech was “unwise and risks fueling extremism over immigration.”
The present government also proposes to come down heavily on influx of immigrants who cannot speak English or come through forced marriages. The prime minister admitted the issue of rampant immigration into the country was partly fuelled by lack of control over benefit schemes under which the white local population was unwilling to do work (and live on government benefits) that was then taken by immigrants.
The number of non-EU immigrant workers coming to the UK has fallen from 28,000 to 21,700 between 2010 and 2011, according to Home Office statistics.