DC: We have benefited from legal immigration

Thank you. Well, the first thing to say to Bethlehem is that we have benefited from immigration. And people who come here legally and come and live here legally, we should be incredibly warm and welcoming and hospitable and build a strong and integrated country, where actually we build a strong society together. I think that's really important to say that, first up. I do believe that immigration in recent years has just simply been too high. We do need to bring the level down. That is the first bit of fairness that needs to be sorted out. People do want this addressed. The other two parties are not actually really addressing this issue. We believe you do need to have a cap on people coming from outside the European Union, for economic reasons. That would help to bring it down. Added to that, is new European countries, when they join 33 the EU, we say there should be transitional controls. We were told there would only be 13,000 people coming from Poland, in the end there were hundreds of thousands. That is absolutely vital, we are the only ones saying, let's grip this, let's have a cap, let's bring it down radically. Then it won't be a political issue. It wasn't in the past, and I'd dearly love it not to be an issue again.

Well, the truth is there's a big difference between the Conservative Party, that is gripping this problem, and the other two parties, that I think are just dancing around it. The Government's had 13 years to control immigration, yet we've had some of the highest levels of immigration in the last 50 years. And frankly, I think Nick's ideas would actually make the situation worse. There are two bad ideas. The idea of the amnesty... It's been shown all over Europe that what that leads to is a big increase in false asylum claims and more immigration. That's a bad idea. And I think this idea of somehow having regional immigration, saying it's OK to come and work in Bristol but you can't live in Birmingham, or you can live in Bradford but you can't live in... I mean, it sounds like they're going to put up border controls along the M5. It really doesn't make sense. It hasn't been thought through, it would make a bad situation worse, we need real change, genuine change that only the Conservatives are offering.

RELATED ARTICLESExplain
Visualizing the Prime Ministerial Debates
Domestic questions
H. How would you make immigration fairer?
DC: We have benefited from legal immigration
An amnesty for illegal immigrants encourages false asylum claims
Immigration too high in recent years and we need to bring it down
Regional immigration doesn't make sense
Should seek to build a strong, integrated society together
David Cameron (Domestic)
GB: Our policy is to control and manage immigration
NC: A smart, fair, effective way of dealing with immigration
Graph of this discussion
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