Over the course of the last couple of weeks, immigration has started to play a bigger role in the Brexit debate – and rightly so. The issue of migration is an asset for the leave campaign because the remainers don’t want to talk about it.
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In fact, only last week, we saw another glimpse into the snobbery and out-of-touch DNA of the Labour Party when Pat Glass called a member of the public concerned about migration a “racist”.
It’s okay for Pat Glass and all the other self-righteous metropolitan elitists to try to shut down the migration debate by using the r-word because they themselves are not affected by the impact mass migration has on wages, cost of living and housing.
I have been UKIP’s migration spokesman for nearly two years. I am mixed-race. My grandfather was a black American and my grandmother was Irish, from County Kildare, and migrated to the UK some time ago.
Over the past two years I’ve studied the numbers, spoken to various stakeholders and written UKIP’s migration policy for the 2015 general election.
One thing is clear in my mind: immigration is not an insular issue. Immigration affects absolutely every aspect of domestic policy. For this reason alone it has to be a central issue in this referendum debate.
I believe that the freedom to control its own borders is a fundamental right for any nation. We have conceded this right and handed it over to the European Union, leaving the UK with an open border to over 500 million people.
By voting to remain, you are voting for a continuation of this policy and heeding our ability to control who comes in this country for years to come.
Yet the remain campaigners fail to recognise that the EU is an expansionist bloc. As a new member state joins, this will result in millions more people having the right to work and settle in the UK.
Do we really want an open border to Turkey, a country with an awful human rights record and a population of over 70 million?
The only way to prevent this is by voting leave, especially when our Prime Minister is hell-bent on being the number one champion of Turkish accession to the EU.
The EU free movement policy is unfair, unethical and discriminates against migrants from non-EU countries.
If we were members of the EU when my grandparents migrated to Britain decades ago, my Irish grandmother would have come here with ease, regardless of whether she was coming to work or settle.
My American grandfather, on the other hand, would have had to apply for a visa and meet certain strict requirements set by the UK government.
There is clear discrimination in the way we treat migrants, which many would argue is racist and hostile to citizens of non-EU countries.
The reality is that mass migration from the EU has done more harm than good.
It has caused wage compression for the lowest paid workers and has put an ever-expanding weight on public services.
In towns which have been witnessed a higher-than-average influx of EU migrants, it has caused disharmony and discontent in communities. Mass migration of an uncontrolled kind prevents social cohesion and divides our society.
There is also no indication that EU migration will decrease if we vote to remain. To the contrary, a £9 national living wage to be introduced by 2020 will act as a bigger pull factor for over 500 million EU passport holders with the right to come here.
Leaving the EU will enable us to tackle the problems mass migration has created.
It will give our elected government of the day the power to control who comes and who goes at our ports. These decisions will all be accountable at the ballot box – a far cry from the situation we currently find ourselves in.
