Stopping the boats Part 2: Detain on arrival and end the use of hotels

In part 1 of our series on how this Labour government can stop the multitude of migrant small boat crossings in the channel, we discussed the removal of the pull factors that our weak and overly generous Home Office offers to those arriving here illegally.

In part 2, we will talk about what should happen when illegal migrants arrive on our shores.

We have already stated that the use of hotels to house migrants must end immediately. It is costing the taxpayer £billions per year, and some of the hotels being used would be beyond the reach of many everyday Brits in terms of affordability. The concept of fairness in our asylum system is being made a mockery of.

But what good is it to criticize a policy, without offering a workable alternative? It’s a fair question, and we will present the alternative here.

Detention Centres

Sanitary. Clean. Dry and comfortable. But basic, cheap, and no-frills. We should be providing illegal immigrants with the facilities to meet the basic standards of human need. I don’t approve of the tent cities that we see in Calais, where hundreds of migrants crowd together in often unsafe and unsanitary conditions, where disease can be rife and where basis sanitation is absent. They are left unsupervised to fend for themselves until they make the short trip to the beach to commence their journey across the channel.

At the same time, putting them in 3* and 4* hotels when they arrive here is taking the piss out of the British taxpayer, providing them with the kind of luxury that goes beyond the necessary, provided at huge expense to the public.

A fault with both of these options also appears to be that illegal migrants are allowed to roam freely amongst the streets of our towns and cities. The security at the migrant hotels is predominantly employed to keep the public out, not to keep the migrants in. Once they have got themselves comfortable in their new cushy accommodation, they are given a phone and some cash and allowed to wander the streets and do whatever they like.

This does not sit well with me, and it brings considerable uneasiness to local residents, who see scores of foreign undocumented men bussed into their communities to roam the streets, many of whom could have a background in criminality, violent tendencies or sexual deviance. The reality is, we have no way of knowing in many cases.

So, whilst we do not necessarily wish to see anyone living in the squalor of unsupervised tent cities, it is also not acceptable to maintain a policy of housing them in unsupervised luxury hotels. There must be a sensible and humane middle ground, and I believe “nightingale-style” coastal detention centres would provide precisely that.

There must be a load of abandoned or disused shipping warehouses along the British South-East coast that could quite easily and cheaply be converted into basic accommodation. Where the availability of such units is lacking, or overall capacity is insufficient to satisfy, then we have in the past utilized converted shipping containers to house our own, when the demand for social housing in certain areas has outstripped supply.

In either case, kitting out such structures with basic toilet and kitchen facilities, in a barracks or cubicle style layout, would provide a much cheaper and more palatable accommodation option for migrants, as far as the British public are concerned. Basic and a bit boring, yes. But safe, clean and dry, and offering good sanitation… what more should someone entering our country illegally realistically expect from us?

I believe this would be more than sufficient to satisfy the demands of the leftie human rights courts that Keir Starmer and Lord Hermer seem so determined to appease at all costs. But delivered at a fraction of the cost of busing scores of migrants to 4* hotels, where the taxpayer faces funding an indefinite stay at a cost of £billions per year.

No doubt the leftie human rights activists will oppose such a solution. They protested at the use of the Bibby Stockholm barge to house migrants, a vessel that had previously been used to accommodate our own military personnel, despite the fact that it was clean and sanitary, and even contained a bar, games room, television and WiFi. Yet somehow these leftie loonies deemed it insufficient to satisfy the needs of a load of illegal migrants whose first act in this country was to break our entry laws.

But these idiot activists do not represent the views of the wider public… the majority of the British citizens were of the opinion that if the barge was good enough for our soldiers then it should be more than good enough to house illegal immigrants.

SUPERVISION

Key within this whole issue is the security of the residents of the towns and villages within which illegal immigrants are being housed. The concerns for the safety of women and girls are central to the protests that have taken place over the past year against this problem. As such, many rightly believe that it is not acceptable for illegal undocumented male migrants to be allowed to roam the streets unescorted.

The French are happy for them to do so, because they know that ultimately they are only heading in one direction… to the northern coast, to board a boat to England. But when they arrive here, we put them in hotels and then leave them to disappear into society without a trace.

By setting up a series of detention centres along our coast, containing multiple converted shipping containers for accommodation, we are much better able to restrict the movements of undocumented migrants and ensure that they do not pose a threat to our citizens. This would also restrict their ability to obtain black market employment, or integrate themselves with criminal gangs on this side of the channel.

Crucially however, the appeal of being housed in a walled and gated detention centre, with 24 hour security and the prospect of having to wear an ankle tag if and when being permitted to leave the walls of the compound, is an entirely different prospect to the appeal of a nice cushy 4* central London hotel, with zero restrictions on movement and from which you can conduct illegal black market activities with impunity.

So not only does this solution improve our ability to track and control the movements of illegal undocumented migrants, it also removes the pull factor of hotel accommodation, eliminates their opportunity to contribute to the black market, and ensures the safety of local residents.

Up Next: Part 3 - Incarcerate anyone arriving here illegally