Mayor In Favour Of Immigrant Amnesty

A sign of our twisted political times, perhaps, that our Tory mayor endorses an amnesty for illegal immigrants while the Labour government opposes it. According to Boris Johnson, an amnesty for the estimated 725,000 illegals in the country would be “morally right”, but the government, concerned about growing xenophobia and an impassioned (if often incompetent) effort by the BNP to sow discord, claims it would represent a “pull factor”. According to an LSE study, amnesty based on five years continuous residency could add 450,000 to the legal workforce, a group which Boris rightly points out we’d be better off taxing than spending millions of pounds to deport. Yet with the economic crisis in full swing, and neither main party in support, it’s a hard idea to sell.

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