GB: Our policy is to control and manage immigration

When we talked about it last week, Nick didn't tell us he wants an amnesty for illegal immigrants. I think that would be a wrong policy for this reason. It would encourage people to come to this country, thinking that at some point we would legalise their presence. I think that would be not a deterrent on people coming to our country illegally, it would mean that more and more people would come into our country. Our policy is to control and manage immigration. We have a points system to do so. No unskilled worker from outside Europe can now come into our country. If you have a skill, then we will get a British person to do that job advertised in a Jobcentre if the skill is available in Britain. We are gradually reducing the number of skills we need to come from abroad. So cooks and care assistants in future, they will come from abroad, they're trained up in Britain. Gradually, we'll go through the skills list and make sure those people who get jobs in Britain are skilled in Britain to do the jobs here.

I think in the last two years we have seen the introduction, since I became Prime Minister, of foreign national ID cards. So anybody who comes into the country now will have to have an identity card. We're also introducing, from the end of the year, a control so that everybody is counted in and everybody is counted out. It was got rid of in the past, it should not have been got rid of. We are bringing that back. Biometric visas mean that we can stop people at airports even before they come into the country if they've not got the right identification. So we're tightening up on that. But the big key to the future is the points system. If you don't have the points to come into this country, in other words if you don't have a skill we need, don't come to the country. But I must say, I'm very worried about Nick's policy, because it sends a message to people all around the world, if you come to Britain there'll be some sort of amnesty that will allow you to come here freely in the end, without having to be thrown out of the country.

RELATED ARTICLESExplain
Visualizing the Prime Ministerial Debates
Domestic questions
H. How would you make immigration fairer?
GB: Our policy is to control and manage immigration
An amnesty would incentivise illegal immigration
Biometric visas let us stop people at airports
Control to be introduced so that everyone is counted in and out
Introduction of a foreign national identity card
We have a points system
We will remove the illegal immigrants
Gordon Brown (Domestic)
DC: We have benefited from legal immigration
NC: A smart, fair, effective way of dealing with immigration
Graph of this discussion
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