Adam Holloway
Main Page: Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)Department Debates - View all Adam Holloway's debates with the Home Office
Amnesty for Undocumented Migrants
Adam Holloway Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con) [V]
It is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. My speech will be quite short.
Most migrants to the UK have taken the trouble to apply properly through our immigration system. Here in Gravesend we live with highly successful immigration— notably, the Sikh community. But a blanket amnesty is not sensible if it applies to every undocumented migrant. Potentially, this proposal would allow tens of thousands of people—more perhaps—who are in the UK illegally to regularise their status. I entirely sympathise with their desire to build a better life, and I might do exactly the same thing myself if I were in their circumstances, but an amnesty like this would do nothing to reduce illegal immigration, which is what we are trying to do, and it would act as an additional pull factor to those wishing to come to the UK.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) points out, an amnesty like this is akin to having open borders. It means our immigration system would no longer be rules based. He raises the interesting point that if the Labour party put this in an election manifesto, it might not be a vote winner.
Finally, I entirely support any effort to attract undocumented people to vaccination centres without fear.