Let’s sort out the migration mess

Austen Ivereigh says that illegal immigration is both a symptom and a cause — of British economic success. The dead hand of the state is getting it wrong, as usual: time for a total rethink

So, the government gets tough on illegal immigrants. The UK Borders Bill currently before Parliament plasters the cracks in our borders, imposes zero-tolerance for unscrupulous employers and gangmasters, and restores discipline to the nation’s frontiers by text-messaging Johnny Foreigner to remind him his visa is about to expire. Britain is no longer going to be taken for a ride — and about time too. But there is one issue on which the Bill is eerily silent: the fate of the thousands of illegal immigrants who have made new lives among us.

A few Kurds still enter the UK gasping in the back of lorries, no doubt. But most of the 500,000-odd undocumented migrants — that’s a semi-official Home Office guesstimate — are rather more like Guillermo, a 25-year-old Latin-American who works as a deputy manager in a restaurant chain.