Deadly Cost of Open Borders

Editorial comment  in the Daily Mail, 1 August 2005

THE more we learn, the worse it gets.

One of the July 21 failed suicide bombers Hussain Osman was an Ethiopian posing as a Somali who used fake documents to gain asylum in this country (even though he’d been living for years in Italy) and later a British passport.

He fled Britain last Tuesday – five days after failing to blow up himself and others at Shepherd’s Bush Tube station.

Despite a national anti-terrorist alert at an unprecedented level neither he nor his passport were checked by British officials at Waterloo’s Eurostar terminal because such checks were scrapped last year as a cost-cutting measure. (With breathtaking insouciance the Leader of the Commons Geoff Hoon said yesterday the Home Office ‘will be looking at that’.)

Oh yes – and he and the rest of the terrorist cell have milked the benefits system of more than £300,000.

There, in a nutshell, is the scandal of our asylum and immigration system.

The noble desire to offer sanctuary to those in genuine fear has been corrupted by the neglect of successive governments and an insidious human rights culture that is laughably easy to exploit.

Meanwhile the Migrationwatch thinktank estimated yesterday that the number of people in this country illegally is 300,000 higher than the Government’s own estimate of up to 570,000.

It means that close to one million people are now here who should not be here. How many more terrorist cells are spawning in this murky pool?

Dealing with our self-inflicted problems requires one thing above all others – political will. Take a look across the Channel to see how a start could be made.

France has ordered a purge on imams who preach hatred and violence, with a dozen facing summary deportation by the end of this month.

Here, the police have done a magnificent job in finding and arresting the plotters so quickly.

But while our borders remain beyond our control, while those who preach hate remain free to pollute young minds, and the ‘rights culture’ prevents action against those who would destroy our society, who can say with any conviction that July 7 and 21 will not happen again?