Britain to limit immigration

[LRE]

Britain to limit immigration

Published Date: October 19, 2008
LONDON: Britain will impose tougher restrictions on immigration as the global financial crisis lifts unemployment to the highest rate in nearly a decade, the country's new immigration minister said yesterday. "If people are being made unemployed, the question of immigration becomes extremely thorny," Phil Woolas told The Times newspaper.

It's been too easy to get into this country in the past and it's going to get harder," he added in an interview. In a dramatic change of policy, the Labor government intends placing a limit on immigration, according to the daily. "There has to be a balance between the number of people coming in and the number of people leaving," said Woolas. The minister said his government would not allow Britain's population to grow to 70 million people.

Britain's population grew by about 3.4 percent to almost 61 million people between 2001 and 2007 fuelled by expansion of the European Union, according to latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. Reacting to the comments made by Woolas, the opposition Conservative Party's spokesman on immigration, Dominic Grieve, said:

We have been calling for immigration limits for years now but the government have repeatedly poured scorn on this. "But tough talk is simply not enough; they must now explain how they intend to deliver. Will they implement our plans for an annual limit on non-EU immigration, transitional controls on future EU immigration, and establish a dedicated UK border force to secure our borders?

Britain's unemployment rate jumped to an eight-year high of 5.7 percent in the three months to August, official data showed on Wednesday. Under the International Labour Organization measure of unemployment, the rate had stood at 5.2 percent for the three months to May. The 5.7-percent unemployment rate was the highest since the three months to March, 2000. - AFP