With Australia and Canada tightening their immigration policies to let in fewer aliens and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump promising to deport illegal migrants when he takes office next year, Great Britain, if it falls into the hands of the rising Kemi Badenoch—the new Leader of the opposition Conservatives—may tow the same line.
In her first major speech after being elected leader of the Conservatives, she suggested migrants already in should be stripped of access to benefits and public services and vowed to introduce an annual cap on the number of new visas if she became prime minister.
Kemi Badenoch asserted that her party “got it wrong” and accepted “responsibility” for the previous government’s failure to reduce net migration.
“We promised to bring numbers down but did not deliver that promise.” She acknowledged that the last election’s public anger over migration hurt the Conservatives.
The Conservatives led the previous government under Rishi Sunak.
UK Not An International Welfare State
Mrs Badenoch also said she would consider withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights and pursuing a new Rwanda-style deportation plan. However, she cautioned that leaving the convention is not a “silver bullet” solution.
She warned that the net migration rate in recent years had made integrating new arrivals impossible and that this could mean “the ties that bind us start to fray.”
“We have to look after British citizens first,” she said. “Our welfare system is not an international welfare system.” She also wants to make it harder for migrants to obtain British passports and adopt a zero-tolerance approach to foreign criminals.
Badenoch pledged to “rebuild trust” with voters. But her speech has drawn a red line with the vast number of immigrant voters in the UK, many of whom are from her native country, Nigeria.
Whether her hardline position will pay off or cost her and her party in the election will take another five years unless an extraordinary circumstance warrants a snap election before then.
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