Britain urged to legalise illegal immigrants
Afp, London
Half a million illegal immigrants should be given the right to stay in Britain, a leading centre-left think-tank said yesterday, arguing that to do so would benefit the country's economy. The Institute for Public Policy Research, favoured by former prime minister Tony Blair, said that regularisation could swell Britain's coffers by about one billion pounds (1.47 billion euros, two billion dollars) per year. Forcible deportation, on the other hand, would cost the country 4.7 billion pounds and was not feasible, it added, citing government estimates that it could take up to 30 years to complete at current rates of removal. The IPPR's head of migration and equalities, Danny Sriskandarajah accepted that illegal immigration was a thorny political issue but such a plan had been backed by two senior government ministers. "The simple truth is that we are not going to deport hundreds of thousands of people from the UK," he said in a statement. "Our economy would shrink and we would notice it straightaway in uncleaned offices, dirty streets and unstaffed pubs and clubs.
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