Immigration Hits Record High

This year 220,000 migrants will be issued with British passports if current trends continue.

Approved applications for citizenship in the first quarter of 2009 are up 57% on the same period last year.

The top five native countries of those gaining citizenship in the past two years have been India, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and Zimbabwe.

From the Mail:

The number of British passports given to migrants is set to hit a record 220,000 this year.

In the first three months of 2009, 54,615 citizenship applications were approved - up 57 per cent on the same period in 2008.

At that rate, the number receiving passports - and with them the right to full benefits - this year will smash the record of 164,540 set in 2007.

Last year the total was 129,310, and when Labour came to power in 1997, just 37,010 people were given citizenship.

It means approvals have rocketed by almost 500 per cent under the current Government.

Officials blame the massive increase on the fact that ministers are introducing a 'tough' new system of earned citizenship next year.

They say migrants are rushing to obtain their passports before they have to undergo an extra probationary period.

Under the new system, obtaining a passport will take six to eight years from a migrant's arrival in most cases, rather than the current five.

Critics said the rush shows just how lax the current system is.

They also point out that, by handing out so many passports, the Government is changing the make-up of Britain without any public debate.

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: 'This is yet another example of the Government's incompetence in managing our immigration system.

'They openly admit they are introducing a new system and that everyone is rushing to get in before it. It just smacks of ministers having no idea what they are doing.'

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said: 'At this rate, grants of settlement will have trebled under Labour.

'We are on course for a massive increase in the population which nobody wants and on which nobody has been consulted.

'No wonder people are so angry with the political class. It is not just fingers in the till, it is fingers in their ears when the public have a serious concern.'

As if this news wasn't bad enough, the same newspaper reported yesterday that the cost of keeping failed asylum seekers has gone up from £4m to £73m - in just four years:

Taxpayers are paying £73million to house and feed failed asylum seekers who should have been deported - a huge leap from the £4million spent just four years ago.

Ministers have admitted the increase is due to the huge backlog of failed claimants, who cannot be removed despite judges ruling they have no right to stay here.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas has now blamed lawyers for the rise, saying they were 'frustrating' the Government's efforts to deport failed asylum seekers.

He said many were 'paralysing' the asylum process by arguing that their clients cannot be returned to their homelands because of conflict or because they are unwell.

But the Refugee Council, which provides advice to asylum seekers, has hit back, saying the Home Office was running a system that is 'under-resourced' and plagued with 'administrative problems'.

The shocking Government figures were revealed by Mr Woolas in a parliamentary answer to Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather.

They show that, in the financial year 2007/08, about 9,365 failed asylum seekers received £73million in accommodation and food allowances - about £8,000 a year or £150 a week for each claimant.

A spokesman for the Home Office admitted that the number of failed asylum seekers claiming assistance had more than doubled from 5,180 in 2004/05 to 10,850 by the first quarter of this year.

This what we are dealing with. Migration from every source is soaring, and the government has no answers.

It seems to me that Britain has enough problems without granting citizenship to vast numbers of unassimilable aliens. In some areas the integration of Pakistanis hasn't been helped by the passing of forty years - so why are huge numbers of new immigrants from that country allowed to come, let alone naturalise?

As Sir Andrew Green points out, Britain is being stolen from us with no consultation at all. Mass immigration from the Third World has been one of the worst mistakes this country has ever made - yet instead of admitting those mistakes and trying to make things right, we seem destined to repeat them over and over again as the helpless majority look on.

But, if we can't even deport those who the authorities admit should not be here, but instead have to keep them in the lap of luxury, what hope is there?