Britain's Immigration Problem

If you polish your Polish, converse in Croatian, or can gabble in Gujurati there are jobs galore with the British police. As this tiny group of islands finds room for more and more migrants, so the language barriers are getting higher too.

Many of our criminals no longer speak English. Many of the victims can only complain in their mother tongues. The police are forced to hire interpreters by the busload - in London alone the bill shot up last year from 20 million dollars to almost 30million.

This country has a long record of welcoming newcomers. But never so many before. In the next twenty five years, according to the best statistical estimates, five million more people will arrive to swell our population. That's a city a year.

Right now in many areas of London, English-born schoolchildren are outnumbered by youngsters who hail from different parts of the globe. This has set enormous challenges for parents and teachers. And it's not a one-off. In our second biggest city, Birmingham, only 42 per cent of schoolchildren qualify as "white British".

If you've been over here, you will know we are a very tolerant race. But even the Government is now considering serious action to try to halt the tide. The problem is that we are only just admitting what a tide it has become. The people who count the heads have just owned up to the fact that their sums were wrong by 45,000 a year. And that doesn't include the extra thousands of illegal immigrants who are smuggled in from Europe without identity documents, hoping to be granted political asylum.

Perhaps the most telling example of this huge human traffic occurred when London police took delivery of a special BMW car with bullet-proof glass, and every security device in the business. It was destined for our recent ex-Prime Minister, Tony Blair. The car was transported from Europe inside a guarded lorry. But when officers opened the doors, out jumped four illegal immigrants.
by Ed Boyle