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TREVOR KAVANAGH

Why are we letting in record numbers of migrants – instead of training up the 5.3m Brits on benefits?

THE world is on the move. And Britain is the destination of choice for a record-breaking 1.1million migrants heading our way this year, next year and every year.

That’s just for starters, warns the woke-ish Social Market Foundation think tank. Get used to it.

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Rishi Sunak needs to train the 5.3MILLION Brits now languishing at taxpayers’ expense on job-related benefits to stop the immigration crisis
The PM may have declared war on illegal immigration but that is dwarfed by the number arriving with permissionCredit: Reuters

“Britain must prepare for a new era of high immigration caused by domestic need and changes in global economic and politics,” says its alarming report published today.

“The post-pandemic levels of 1.1million arrivals a year could be the start of a trend.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may have declared war on illegal immigration, with an unprecedented 40,000 a year illegally crossing the Channel, but that is dwarfed by the number arriving with permission to stay.

We need them, it seems, to do jobs millions of out-of-work Brits cannot, or will not, do.

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Most are from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria, among the world’s most populous nations.

“Britain’s ageing population and skills shortages means ongoing demand for migrant workers,” says the SMF.

But what does that mean for Britain, already the most densely populated country in Europe? The answer is that, in the next couple of decades, the UK will be a different country to the one even today’s millen- nials were born in.

And since this is inevitable, the report suggests, it is futile — or dangerous — to resist. Otherwise, says the SMF’s Jonathan Thomas, we risk the rise of such populist troublemakers as Nigel Farage.

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Mr Thomas admits a “significant number of voters remain concerned about immigration”.

He’s dead right. It is the biggest single worry apart from heating and eating.

Mind-boggling

“The political consensus is extremely fragile,” he says. “That creates an opportunity for political disruptors, an opportunity seized by Nigel Farage and Ukip in the early 2010s. To avoid that risk, there must be compromise on all sides.”

There is no suggestion in this report that Mr Farage might have a point shared by millions of ordinary Brits.

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Or that no other government — Labour nor Tory — has presided over such a sustained rate of high-level immigration.

Britain is the destination of choice for a record-breaking 1.1million migrants heading our way this yearCredit: PA

Or, indeed, that the UK might train some of the 5.3MILLION Brits — the population of Scotland — now languishing at taxpayers’ expense on job-related benefits.

I am grateful to number-crunchers on The Spectator newspaper for unearthing these mind-boggling figures.

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Hundreds of thousands of unemployed idlers in their teens and twenties say they have no intention of ever working at all.

So, with the NHS on the verge of collapse, overcrowded schools and a desperate shortage of housing and community services, we must fling open the door to ever more migrants.

“Britain should explore ‘skills partnerships’ with migrants’ home countries, supporting the training of workers who could then bring those skills to Britain,” urges Mr Thomas.

The rate of legal immigration — the size of Birmingham each year — has already been soaring almost unnoticed while the public’s attention is focused on boat crossings.

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The true figure is already 1,064,000 for 2022, a stunning number magically halved in an official press release by substracting the 500,000 who left the country for whatever reason.

Mr Sunak responded to public fury with tough new measures to curb illegal boat migrants, the overwhelming majority from corrupt-but-safe countries such as Albania.

Britain, he says, will slap a limit even on genuine asylum seekers, closing what is now effectively an open door.

Under Rishi’s new laws, nobody who arrives illegally will be allowed to remain or claim asylum.

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Wish him luck. Even this looks doomed unless we cave in to the French.

Game on

“To be able to return migrants to France will require the UK to take in more refugees,” says the SMF.

“The UK should accept that France has no obligation and little incentive to help Britain on asylum, particularly during times when France has received asylum applications at roughly three times the UK rate and accepts a greater number of refugees than the UK does.”

Game on, Rishi,

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The tragedy is that all this is probably too late. Even Tory optimists are preparing for Opposition in 2024.

And whatever Sir Keir Starmer and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper say to win power, we might as well scrap the Border Force al- together . . . and join the exodus to sunny Australia.

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