Islam versus Europe

Remember when the Conservatives came in, they were trumpeting their migrant worker cap as the solution to Britain's immigration problems? Now immigration minister, Damien Green, has admitted it hasn't stopped a single person coming here.

Damian Green, the Immigration Minister, said that the current cap would remain the same until 2014 in an effort to allow certainty for businesses.

...The decision to keep the current 20,700 immigration cap follows figures showing the limit has been undersubscribed in the first year of its operation.

Mr Green said: “The limit, which is undersubscribed, has not stopped a single skilled worker from coming to the UK.”

Source: The Times (£)

Green wasn't saying this regretfully, as an admission of failure, however. He was actually boasting about it.

“We believe there is no incompatibility between economic growth and controlling migration - our reformed, more selective immigration system can achieve both.”

From the beginning, it was obvious to anyone who was paying attention (in other words almost no one) that the worker cap was simply a PR stunt. In each of the years before it had been introduced, the number of workers entering Britain in the categories concerned had been between 9000 and 10,000. Yet they set the cap at 20,000. And therefore it's hardly surprising that the cap has been dramatically undersubscribed. All the indications are that immigrant workers in these categories are continuing to come in at exactly the same level as before, namely around 10,000 per year.

So the whole thing was a complete and utter joke. It served no practical purpose whatsoever, other than gulling the British people into believing that something was being done about the immigrant invasion.