The argument is numbingly familiar. Small boats bursting with “irregular” migrants must be stopped from crossing the Channel because a busy shipping lane and overcrowded, unseaworthy vessels put migrants at risk. We must stifle the people-smuggling trade because helpless customers suffer at the hands of unscrupulous criminals, who sometimes subject them to modern slavery on arrival. By inference, the accelerating crisis on the southern coast is mostly a humanitarian one.
While this reasoning is sound enough, I dismiss this standard political defence of stricter immigration controls as disingenuous hooey. Seemingly altruistic and caring, the claim that immigration reform is solely for the protection of the “vulnerable” is a sentimental fig leaf for what we can only hope is brass-tacks calculation of British self-interest. But promoting
