Immigration

After a string of broken promises, policy disappointments and sinking poll numbers, the populist wing of the Republican party knows who is to blame. It’s the President’s son-in-law, the prince of the administration, Jared Kushner. ‘Trump has a Jared problem,’ is how one conservative activist who works with the White House on immigration puts it. ‘Jared is a total fuck-up. Everything he touches turns to lead.’ Others groan about ‘four more years of Jared’ should the President be re-elected in November. Various sources in, or connected to, the administration are stunned by the amount of power Kushner wields.

Ola Hawatmeh, the apparent Republican nominee for New York’s 19th congressional district, doesn't bring many surprises to the table policy-wise. She’s an adamant supporter of the President, wants to build a wall on the southern border, opposes Obamacare, and is endorsed by the National Rifle Association. Her personal story, however, is unlike that of any candidate in history.Hawatmeh, 43, is the daughter of Catholic Jordanian immigrants, a domestic abuse survivor, and she's beaten cancer twice. Oh, and her job? A fashion designer.‘I’m a people’s person,’ she told The Spectator. ‘And I’ve always been a philanthropist.

The Prime Minister has asked the Home Office to remove NHS workers and social care workers from the immigration health surcharge as soon as possible. As Katy Balls reported earlier today, frustrations were growing within the Tory party that healthcare workers could be clobbered with this fee as they work tirelessly to help British patients get through the Covid crisis. It seems Boris Johnson has listened to his backbenchers and u-turned. The fee will be waived for a range of health staff, from doctors and nurses to technicians and cleaners. This exemption is good news for workers in the healthcare sector, but it shouldn’t be the end of the policy review. This update for health workers creates an opportunity to assess the fairness of the surcharge overall.

The idea of a flotilla of little ships crossing the English Channel from France to deposit their beleaguered human cargo safely on our shores was born in this country’s darkest hour during the second world war. To say that the method behind the success of the Dunkirk evacuation 80 years ago has been repurposed for the modern age is something of an understatement. These days the little ships are usually inflatable dinghies packed with desperate young men from Asia and Africa who seek to evade this country’s immigration laws. They land at various points between Dover and Hastings and – if undetected – many head for rendezvous points pre-arranged with people traffickers for onward transit to London and other major cities.

The White House is currently facing an internal battle over President Trump’s announcement Monday night that he will sign an executive order temporarily halting immigration amid the coronavirus outbreak. The details of the order had not been finalized as of Tuesday morning, causing frantic debate over which groups of immigrants will be exempt from the ban. Immigration restrictionists have been trying to sell the president on the idea of a ban for at least a week, pointing to various polling that shows it is popular among voters due to fears of the spread of COVID-19 and the high unemployment numbers in the US. Twenty-two million people thus far have filed for unemployment as the economy has practically shut down because of social distancing measures.

Once you accept that Brexit is happening - because, like it or not, the British people demanded it - it is not so very hard to accept that Brexit must come with consequences. In the absence of free movement from the European Union to the United Kingdom, new immigration arrangements must be put in place. As a political matter - which should not be confused with the policy design or practical application of new immigration controls - these must be seen to be tougher than the regime which preceded it. That is the meaning of 'Take Back Control'. So it is no great surprise that the measures announced today represent, on the surface, a toughening of immigration rules. A low moment, you may feel, and I am inclined to agree.

Jeremy Corbyn - 'I want a close relationship' with the EU The Labour leader was Andrew Marr's chief guest of the day. Marr began by asking for Corbyn's personal stance on Brexit, something which has proved highly elusive since the referendum result in 2016. Corbyn happily gave the Labour party's position, but once again refused to be drawn on the issue:   [embed]https://youtu.be/blSSOZYAQA0[/embed] AM: Do you want this country to leave the EU or not? JC: We're going to put that choice to the British people, and they will make that decision... I want a close relationship with the EU in the future. 'You don't know' who I'm going to negotiate with If Labour wins the upcoming election, the party plans on re-negotiating a Brexit deal with the EU.

When Boris Johnson edited this magazine, it proposed an amnesty for illegal immigrants — a controversial notion, but an idea he has stuck to. As London Mayor he suggested an ‘earned amnesty’: if bureaucracy had failed over many years to catch up with the 400,000 undocumented migrants in the capital, he reasoned, why not regularise their status so that they could start paying taxes and contributing to the country in other ways? When this magazine reprised the issue last week, the usual objections were recycled: why reward criminality? But the actual cases are more complicated. Trevor Rene is one such case. He was born in Dominica in 1969 when it was still a British colony, so as a child he had a British passport.

This afternoon's law and order theme to Tory conference did take a bit of a knock when police were called to an altercation involving one of the party's MPs, resulting in the backbencher, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, being sent home. Not long after this incident, which sent parts of the conference centre into lockdown, Priti Patel walked onto the stage and announced that 'today, here in Manchester, the Conservative party takes its rightful place as the Party of Law and Order in Britain once again'.