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DEAR Editor I enjoyed reading Heather McNeilliss letter (Country remains a beacon of hope, November 23) in which she castigates Alan Amos for his views on the immigration system.

However, from accusing him of over-emphasising the responsibilities of government, she then progresses into a diatribe of failings, which she attributes to the capitalist policies of the ruling Conservative party.

In doing this she is as guilty as Mr Amos of exaggeration.

She paints a picture of a country in dire straits, where poverty, sickness and corruption feed a violent society. Where pollution threatens every aspect of life.

The country is a failure and by implication the Green Party is the only solution.

How dare Mr Amos express his views or point a finger!

Immigration is a complex issue, which is exacerbated by the very limited size of the UK.

A look at the statistics gives an indication of the magnitude of the problem; fifty years ago there were an estimated 3 million immigrants in this country, representing a little over six per cent of the population, today there are some 10 million immigrants comprising more than 14 per cent of the population.

Such increases are simply unsustainable and therefore it is essential that some effective system of control is exercised.

There is a trend of opinion rife in this country, sadly led by the liberal left and encouraged by the media, which would have us believe that our nation is about to implode.

According to them we are the pariahs of Europe and mocked by the world.

Yet, every day, thousands of illegal immigrants (many of them risking their lives crossing the Channel) pour into this awful place.

Is it simply because the social welfare benefits are so generous? Surely not.

Heather McNeillis is right to conclude that the UK remains a beacon of hope, but neglects to say that its historic success in a troubled world stems from free enterprise, stable government and pragmatism.

Democracy holds sway and anarchistic demonstrators of any persuasion (of which recently we have seen far too many) must not be permitted to overrule the rights of the majority, which overwhelmingly demands a halt to illegal immigration.

Mick Richards

Worcester

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'We need to stop illegal immigration' | Worcester News - Worcester News

Deputy Head of the Libyan Presidential Council Musa al-Koni - AFP

CAIRO - 23 November 2021: Mussa al-Koni, the vice-president of the Libyan Presidential Council, discussed mechanisms to combat illegal immigration, corss-border crimes, and terrorism with European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Olivr Vrhelyi on Tuesday.

Koni is holding multiple meetings with EU officials during his visit to Brussels, according to a statement by the Libyan Presidential Council.

The undersecretary of the Libyan Ministry of Political Affairs, Mohamed Issa, and other officials attended the meeting.

The meetings also tackled spatial development programs in the south, the Libyan strategy to address the issue of mercenaries and foreign forces on Libyan soil, and the EU's support for the elections and ensuring the acceptance of their results.

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Deputy head of Libyan Presidential Council discusses elections, illegal immigration with EU Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement - Egypttoday

"Taking back control" of Britains borders was a key rallying cry for Vote Leave during the Brexit referendum - but the UKs departure from the EU may have made the country a more attractive destination for illegal migration.

In August, the home secretary promised to make the route across the Channel unviable, but the number of people crossing in small boats has reached record highs.

On Wednesday, 27 people died in the waters near Calais in the worst incident of its kind in the Channel since the current migrant crisis began.

France begins grim task of identifying the victims - live updates

So far in 2021 more than 25,700 people have completed the perilous journey across the Dover Strait, the busiest shipping lane in the world - three times the total for 2020.

Of these people who have made it to UK shores, the governments immigration minister revealed last week just five people had been returned to Europe.

Thomas Pursglove, a minister for the Home Office and Ministry of Justice said there had been difficulties securing returns.

But these difficulties evicting people from the UK could be attributed, in part, to Brexit.

When party to the EUs Dublin arrangements, the UK could ask other countries to take back people they could prove had passed through safe European countries on their journey to Britain.

But since Brexit, the UK has no return arrangements with any EU country and so will have to negotiate with each one individually.

Although Priti Patel said she is actively pursuing an agreement with France, this has not yet materialised.

The government proposed a post-Brexit replacement for the Dublin arrangement, but the EU turned it down.

However, it is worth noting that even before the UK left the EU, the total number of Dublin transfers that took place was a small fraction of the total asylum seekers.

According to the Migration Observatory, in the five-year period, 2016 to 2020, around 194,000 people applied for asylum in the UK - while there were only around 1,250 Dublin transfers out of the country.

Story continues

Following Brexit, the UK also lost a seat on the management board for Europol - the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation - and British officers can no longer interrogate the Europol database. This will impact the UKs efforts to dismantle immigrant smuggling networks.

Emmanuel Comte, Senior Research Fellow at The Barcelona Centre for International affairs wrote: It is dubious that Brexit has offered back control of immigration to the UK.

"The British government has achieved, at an excessive cost, more control of declining inflows from EU countries, but it has lost access to useful EU instruments to control rising inflows from third countries.

He added: It is not just a missed opportunity, but a dangerous situation. In the next months and years, the EU and the UK will face the challenge of managing their migratory interdependence without a framework."

In July, Priti Patel brought forward a new Nationality and Borders Bill which, if passed, will increase prison sentences for people entering the UK illegally and - for the first time - consider whether someone arrived legally or illegally when looking to grant asylum.

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Specifically, on small boats, Ms Patel has reportedly asked the Border Force to use pushback tactics to turn away vessels trying to enter UK waters.

The Home Office is understood to have taken legal advice that such tactics are in accordance with international maritime law.

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Has Brexit made the UK more attractive for illegal migration? - Yahoo News UK

HAVANA, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Cuban authorities said on Wednesday that neighboring countries had deported more than 1,200 migrants thus far in 2021, returning them to Havana in bilateral operations coordinated with the United States, Mexico, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas.

The Caribbean island nation has suffered this year from both the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and tough U.S. sanctions, reducing its hard currency earnings over the past two years by around 40% and shrinking the economy 13%.

Illegal migration from Cuba, particularly through Mexico, has increased in 2021 over previous years, according to a report broadcast on Cuba's state-run TV.

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The report said that "to date 1,255 undocumented Cubans have been returned in 60 bilateral operations." Of those, 856 were deported from the United States, 214 from Mexico, 184 from the Bahamas and one from the Cayman Islands.

On Tuesday, 61 Cuban migrants headed to the United States but intercepted at sea off the Bahamas were returned to Havana by plane.

That group included four women and 57 men, all of whom received medical attention and were tested for COVID-19 upon arrival in Havana, state-run media said.

"I am a single mother, I have two children and I do not work," said Adriana Lpez Vera, a Holgun resident who was deported from the Bahamas on the flight. She told the news broadcast she had left "to seek a better future."

Cuba says it advocates for legal, orderly and safe migration, and has blamed the United States for the uptick in illegal migration, saying the country's policies, including the Cold War-era embargo, encourage Cubans to risk their lives to leave the island.

U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in July following unprecedented protests in Cuba that Cubans leaving the island "will not come to the United States."

The number of Cubans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border nonetheless hit its highest level in a decade between October 2020 and May 2021, according to U.S. immigration statistics. read more

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Reporting by Nelson Acosta and Reuters TV, editing by Dave Sherwood and Marguerita Choy

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Cuba says 1255 migrants returned to Havana in 2021 - Reuters

The troubling scene along Poland's border with Belarus turned the problem of illegal migrants into political ammunition. It changed attitudes with likely long-term implications for immigration to Europe.

Immigration has become an ever-growing, impassioned issue that divides Europeans. Broadly speaking, the Establishment (what I call the 6Ps: the police, politicians, press, priests, professors and prosecutors) welcome immigration, legal or not, as a source of vitality for an increasingly aging continent, an engine of multicultural diversity and a way for former imperialists to assuage their consciences. In contrast, a growing body of dissidents sees immigration as a source of crime and disease, a challenge to traditions and a civilizational threat.

This debate peaked in 2015-16, when Angela Merkel, the powerful chancellor of Germany, unilaterally opened her country's borders to migrants, dragging much of Europe with her. As illegals became legals, the split in attitudes among Europeans became more intense, with a Willkommenskulturor welcoming cultureemerging in Germany even as fences went up around Hungary.

And in mid-2021, the dictator of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, perhaps with Turkish assistance, came up with a clever idea. To reverse European Union (EU) economic sanctions imposed on him in retaliation for a cooked election, he jacked up visa charges, invited one and all from around the world to fly legally to his country and be bussed to the border with his EU member neighbors: Poland, Lithuania, or Latvia. Once there, the estimated 7,000 migrantsprimarily but not exclusively Muslims from the Middle Eastrushed the razor-wire fence, sometimes wielding Belarus-supplied wire cutters, sometimes pushed into it by Belarus forces, and hurled debris, stones and stun grenades at Polish police.

But the many security personnel on the other side stopped them with tear gas and water cannons, backed by fervent resolve. "This border is sacred," Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said. "The border of the Polish state is not just a line on the map. Generations of Poles shed their blood for this border." Warsaw also passed a law enabling it not only to ignore the asylum claims of illegal migrants, but even to push them forcibly out of the country.

Lukashenko exploited the illegals as pawns in a tactical game versus the EU. He also used them to make money, as Belarus' state-owned tourism agency charged between $1,800 and $12,000 per migrant and local merchants over-charged ($1,000 for a hotel room, anyone?); perhaps Lukashenko also hoped for a bribe, such as EU members have paid to Turkey and Libya. Meanwhile, the migrants languished, cold and hungry, adults and children, in the fetid forest, about a dozen of them dying.

The lasting importance of his bellicose move will be further to sour Europeans on immigration by Muslims. Now weaponized by Belarus, more Europeans see Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans as hostile elements intent on doing harm. However inaccurate this generalization, it fits an existing set of biases. Shouts on the streets of Poland have called for border guards to shoot the would-be intruders.

Unequivocal EU support for Poland shows how much this shift has already taken place. Despite severe ongoing strains with Warsaw, Brussels came quickly and wholeheartedly to Poland's side in its dispute with Belarus. The border problem shunted EU-Polish tensionsand $41 billion in suspended aidto the margins.

Fortunately, Polish and EU resolve led to Lukashenko backing down. The illegals have abandoned the immediate border area and are either being crowded into a giant Belarus warehouse (a fitting symbolism) or flown to Iraq. Ironically, Lukashenko's gambit to create a migrant crisis in the EU backfired; Belarus, which until this drama had almost no Muslim migrants, now hosts a substantial body of those refusing to return home. "I would rather die here in the cold than go back to Iraq," declared a 32-year-old Iraqi Kurd.

I predict that the Belarus provocation will significantly affect European attitudes toward migrants, especially illegal ones, for the worse. Willkommenskultur is now defunct, with little possibility of resurrection. Guilt over racism, imperialism and fascism have somewhat faded in the face of a resolve not to be shown up as idiots by a tin-hat dictator.

Thus might a tragic incident lead to a new resolve and to positive long-term results. Europeans are more aware of the need to protect their borders and democratically to decide their population makeup. That it takes a European dictator to drive this point home yet again confirms history's caprice.

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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Poland's Border and the Future of Migration | Opinion - Newsweek