So this is it, next week we face the biggest vote in a generation. We have a clear choice.
We can choose to take back control over our borders or we can keep the current system of Brussels dictating to us who can come into our country, with no way of saying enough is enough. If we remain, we won’t just have an open border to 500m people but also the 80m people of Turkey who are being lined up to join next.
EU law currently demands that the UK has an open door to all EU member states. This has resulted in millions of people from across Europe coming to our country. We have little to no power to stop people entering who we think can’t contribute to our economy or have a criminal record. We are not in control of our borders.
The pressure that this large inward-migration has put on our schools and hospitals means that we are now forced to block people from non-European countries who could contribute to the UK from coming here. This is an immoral and expensive failed policy.
Rising demand for NHS services is one of the principal reasons identified by regulators for the NHS’s forecast £2.4 billion deficit in 2015-2016. If we remain in the EU, the NHS will be put under more and more pressure and the A&E crisis will get even worse.
If we Vote Leave on 23 June, we will be able to not just reduce the pressure on the NHS, but we will be able to stop sending a net £10 billion to the EU every year and instead spend it on our priorities. That’s £34 million every day. It’s not just the NHS that uncontrolled migration puts under pressure – we see schools, housing and other vital infrastructure feeling the strain.
Currently, while we’re in the EU, we see a discriminatory system that forces to Britain to accept unskilled immigrants from all across Europe. We say it’s time to take back control and implement a fair Australian style points based system that would allow us to still have highly skilled workers come into the country if we need them, but cut out the excessive unskilled migration we’ve seen over the past decade. The only way we can achieve this system is by voting to leave on the 23rd.
It’s time we stopped discriminating against doctors from India and engineers from Australia and introduced a new fair and ethical policy that works best for Britain, not the EU.
We cannot change anything about immigration if we remain, as Cameron’s so called renegotiation failed. Even one of the top figures at the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, Sir Stephen Nickell CBE, said the Government’s proposals would make ‘not much’ difference to immigration from the EU – and that ‘any changes to benefit rules are unlikely to have a huge impact on migration flows.’
Even if the Government succeeds in its aim of cutting in-work benefits for migrants, research has shown that the Government’s ‘living wage’ will off-set any loss of income that EU migrants face – the UK will remain an attractive destination.
Let’s not forget that EU law forbids the collective expulsion of British citizens living in the EU after we Vote Leave. Even the former legal adviser to EU’s Council of Ministers has said that ‘those with permanent residency in EU states could stay’. So the remain argument about all British expats having to return home if we vote leave is quite simply not true at all. It just means a leave vote would secure our borders and not get expats sent home.
So next week we decided whether we want to control immigration and implement a fair and ethical system or remain and watch Turkey join the EU. If Turkey joins, according to Migration Watch, an extra 100,000 immigrants will come to the UK per year, can the UK really cope with this?
We will only have one chance to leave, there won’t be another. If we vote to remain Brussels will see this as a green light to fast track Britain into ever closer union and fulfil their dreams of one country – the United States of Europe, with the UK merely being a state with little to no power and no borders.
Steven Woolfe is a Member of the European Parliament
