- 2 years ago
Watch as Crawley's parliamentary candidates faced a question about immigration from St Wilfrid's student Isha Garrett-Ceesay ahead of the General Election 2024.
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00As you walk through our school entrance, you are seeing the flags of nearly 60 different nations flying.
00:08They represent the different backgrounds of our students, which just shows how cultural diversity in our school contributes to a happily successful community.
00:18So please tell me, immigration, is it a good thing or is it a bad thing?
00:24So you mentioned that you're a multicultural group, that's fine.
00:28But when you're talking about values, you want to get atomic, right?
00:33So an example I give to people is, imagine you're married, you have a daughter, something like this, and you're a neighbour.
00:42And a new neighbour comes in.
00:44And by their values, they'd be fine to enslave your child.
00:49They won't, because the police will stop them.
00:52But if there were no police, they wouldn't.
00:55Would you be happy living next to them?
00:57The answer is obviously no.
00:59So if you have cultures that are compatible, that share some of these same core values, you're right.
01:05You get along great. It's fine.
01:08But when you're talking about immigration, and when we talk about immigration, we're also talking about, we're really talking about mass immigration.
01:17Where in 2023, we had 685,000 net come in.
01:22That's 5.5 quarries.
01:24And quarries are really full towns.
01:27In 2022, 765,000.
01:31That's a lot of people.
01:34And when a population grows, it should grow at a reasonable rate, so that you can increase the public services along with it.
01:40But we know our public services are crushed.
01:43The more people you add to a queue, the longer the queue gets.
01:46Right?
01:48So of course we have a housing crisis that's caused by mass immigration.
01:53We have a crisis on the NHS.
01:56You can't get a doctor's appointment.
01:58The demand is so high.
02:00Mass immigration, not just immigration.
02:03One of my best friends, who's from Zimbabwe, I sponsored a citizenship.
02:07He signed my nomination forms. He's been out here with me all the time.
02:10He's got values that are compatible.
02:13Do you understand?
02:15We get along that way.
02:17So, yeah. Have I explained culture?
02:20Any thoughts of that?
02:22We'll see.
02:24Do you want to talk about the policy towards mass immigration, or are you just talking about the NHS?
02:28Hi. In fact, I think the question was the question.
02:31We are a full school. We are a multicultural school.
02:34By and large, I'm told you're a very happy school.
02:38Compatible cultures? Correct.
02:40But not every culture is compatible.
02:42It isn't.
02:44I mean, please comment on this. What do you think about that?
02:47All in school.
02:49Our problems with housing don't start from immigration.
02:52Our problems with housing start from the decision to sell all the council houses,
02:56cruelly, as they can.
02:58And most of you don't know this.
03:00When Pudding was first built, when the first site was built in the 1940s,
03:03it was immigrants who built the houses.
03:05It was Irish labourers who came over from the Republic of Ireland
03:08who laid the literal foundations of this town.
03:12And immigrants, over many years, from many different cultures, have come.
03:15They've added to our culture.
03:17Growing up in this community, it was one of the high points to have friends from a range of different cultures
03:21where you could appreciate a range of different activities as a result.
03:24But we're all fundamentally the same.
03:27The question about immigration is not about whether or not people are good or bad.
03:30I don't view any group of people as being inherently good or inherently bad.
03:33I think it's a mistaken way to look at the world.
03:35Technically, it's a racist way to look at the world.
03:37What I believe is that you've got to make sure that you've got the facilities
03:40to deal with people in particular areas in particular periods of time.
03:44And on immigration, there are two sets of things.
03:46One which is a driver from needing more immigration,
03:49and one is a driver against needing more.
03:51First, we deal with the obvious one that everyone wants to talk about.
03:54What are the problems with it?
03:55Yes, we have a shortage of housing in the UK.
03:57Yes, services are stretched.
03:59Yes, the processing facilities in the Home Office
04:01for looking at people who come into the country are very stretched.
04:04And you do need some systems to make sure that individuals who come in
04:07are not coming here to cause harm.
04:09But the flip side of that is the UK has an enormous problem
04:13in terms of its population ageing.
04:15And the reality is that my generation and your generation
04:18are going to struggle with the fact that we are going to have
04:21a record proportion of the country retired
04:23that we're having to work to maintain throughout the course of our lives.
04:26Few of us are trying to maintain more people,
04:28trying to keep more systems going.
04:30And people want to talk about inflation.
04:32Inflation is caused when you have less stuff,
04:34but the demand is either the same or higher than it was at all.
04:38That's why prices go up,
04:39because people are competing for the same sets of goods.
04:41If you've got fewer people making less stuff
04:43with the same size of population or bigger,
04:45we're going to have more inflation.
04:47This is the reality of the life that no one seems to want to talk about around all this.
04:51You've got to have an immigration system that works.
04:53It's got to know what the level of need is in the system.
04:56It's got to be humane,
04:57so that where people have a desperate humanitarian need to be in the system,
05:00they can be there.
05:01And cruelly, it's played host to many cultures
05:03where there have been horrific events taking place in their home countries,
05:07people who desperately wanted to go home,
05:09but needed somewhere to stay safe.
05:11The question is not whether or not immigration is inherently good or bad.
05:14Frankly, imagine if the Brexit had happened differently,
05:18and every British expat had gone off to Spain or France,
05:21had to suddenly come back and all in one bark.
05:23That would cause identical problems
05:25in terms of suddenly having to accommodate a large number of people.
05:28Arguably, more of the problems is that we retire and not work within the system.
05:32But you've got to make sure that the system is capable of responding to demand.
05:36And you've got to make sure that you've got an immigration system that's humane
05:39and that takes into account the country's needs as a whole.
05:41It's not about whether or not the people are good or bad.
05:44Okay, thank you Peter.
05:46If you were a litigant or a litigant for your policies,
05:49do you want to add something to that?
05:52Before I get chewed off.
05:55So yes, you said you were, you mentioned it.
05:58Well, it's just that, like I said, there is an enormous weight that has to be put down
06:01on all of our public services because of mass immigration.
06:04I remember mass immigration is where you essentially have no border controls.
06:09You're not bringing doctors and nurses openly.
06:12You're allowing sort of anyway an awful lot of delivery drivers and things like this,
06:16which we, sorry as an economy, it's not a high priority for us.
06:20So we are going to freeze non-essential immigration.
06:23Freezing.
06:24The policies of the population will not increase from immigration any longer.
06:28So we can let the public services improve over the duration of as long as we need to
06:33before these restrictions can be relaxed.
06:36And, but yeah, it's, you know, we're talking about bodies and humanity.
06:41Of course, it's very, very important.
06:43You know, none of that's an omitted question.
06:46But there are cases, there are arrests and crimes that have been committed where children
06:51have been, I'll just say assaulted, and the defendant says they didn't know it was illegal.
06:59So this is what I'm talking about when I say that our cultures are incompatible.
07:02Because in where they have grown up, they never realized that that was a problem.
07:07Don't you think that's important?
07:09It is, of course it is.
07:11We have to be more careful about this.
07:14Which is why, again, bringing it back to you, some are able to integrate absolutely well.
07:19And that's great.
07:21Some are not.
07:22And they make efforts.
07:23And it's a problem.
07:25We have the grooming gang scandal.
07:27Remember?
07:29I don't know if I should talk about it.
07:30Well, as I understand it.
07:31Oh, you don't need to.
07:32As I understand it.
07:33Two things politicians do day in and day out.
07:37And those are very easy two things.
07:39Number one, blame somebody else for all their failures.
07:42And number two, promise something and don't tell you how they're going to deal with that.
07:48Very easy thing to do.
07:50And many politicians do that.
07:52One of the beauty of our town, Crowley, our country, United Kingdom, when I walked through
07:58that door, I saw those flags.
08:00First I thought it might be the euro because of those flags out there.
08:04But then I saw the number of flags.
08:06There were much more than euros.
08:08And I thought it's probably the diversity of the school.
08:12It's very beautiful to see all of you different people sitting here as one community, as one school.
08:21We can't blame everything to Indians.
08:24We live on an island.
08:27We have always been a very compassionate nation.
08:31We have helped people in the first world war.
08:33We have helped them in the second world war.
08:35We have helped them in the Soviet war.
08:37We have helped people now in Ukraine.
08:39We have helped people day in and day out.
08:41But at the same time, we need to make sure we have a system in place where we can deal
08:46with those people who are coming here.
08:48And plus the people who need our help, those people are coming over here.
08:54Two things I will say.
08:55Number one, as a government, governments have mechanisms to control who comes in, who goes out.
09:02He mentioned some numbers, but he didn't mention a number of those people in those numbers
09:08are the students, coming on a student visa, studying here, pay very high fees, go to universities.
09:15And at the end of their time, a large number of them go back, take our values, our culture,
09:22take back and say good things about our nation across the globe.
09:26The other thing, we talk about illegal immigration.
09:29The people coming on boats, coming in our country, we need to have a system in place.
09:34Because after processing, there are countries over there, for example, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria,
09:41where the people who are not eligible for our help, we cannot send them back over there.
09:46So we need to have a system where people are not eligible to stay in our country,
09:51we can send them somewhere back, safe and secure, where their life is not in danger and they can live.
09:58And that's why I don't agree with many things, our government, our policy, because everybody is different,
10:06we have different views, but I haven't heard any other party, nationally, locally, saying
10:11what is the viable policy they have to tackle that illegal immigration at the moment, apart from the Rwanda policy.
10:18The other thing, we mentioned numbers, parties will mention numbers, but remember what I said in the beginning.
10:24You and me need to pay for those numbers.
10:27So all these billions, 20% higher there, 20% lower there, the cash flow there,
10:32we're going to end up paying in taxes to those figures and tax and things.
10:37So when somebody tells you something, please ask them, question them.
10:41How are you going to fund them, are we going to pay that?
10:44And then make your mind, make your decision, and choose whoever you want to choose tomorrow,
10:50or people listening out there, whoever they want to choose.
10:55It is always possible to look at an individual group and say, a particular part of this group is against an offence,
11:02and therefore that's something which you derive a belief about groups as a whole from.
11:06Overwhelming majority of sexual assault within the United Kingdom is people who were born and raised here committing sexual assault.
11:13Overwhelming majority of crime, overwhelming majority of gas.
11:18I think you would imagine that you're going to do too much to ease it over.
11:21It's heading to counter-demographic factors, to find a level that will fall out the numbers.
11:26It is not helpful in trying to have a conversation about the numbers of people entering the UK,
11:32trying in any way to allude that people are more inclined to be criminal by virtue of being different.
11:38It's not virtue of being different, it's virtue of having a different value system that they put up.
11:43This is a political point.
11:53I'm standing here, and half of you are sitting here, living, breathing examples, if the immigration is right,
12:00how we can act as one society. I'm standing right here, you are sitting over there.
12:04So we can't blame everything on one group or the other group.
12:08I don't know what subjects I should study. She might be a philosophy student, she might be a economics student, she might be a law student.
12:18It's interesting how you range and talk about immigration. That's why it seems such a difficult question.
12:22It seems to be possible that immigration is good thing or a bad thing.
12:26But Ian, do you have an answer to that?
12:28Well, it's a good thing.
12:30All the people who have come from abroad into this country have brought good things on the whole.
12:37We've got many, many hundreds of thousands of vacancies in this country.
12:43In NHS, there are over 100,000.
12:45Care sector, there's 152,000.
12:49Hospitality, there's over 12,000 people.
12:52There's nobody doing those jobs.
12:54Now, we have been reliant on immigration for filling those posts for many years now.
13:01But these people do bring a lot with them.
13:05They come into work and therefore they're paying tax.
13:09They're paying tax into tax revenues.
13:12They're also doing vital jobs.
13:15If you go into a hospital, it's likely you'll be treated by an immigrant doctor or nurse.
13:21If you have a grandfather or mother who goes into a care home, it's likely they'll be treated and helped by somebody from abroad.
13:30That can't be a wrong thing, surely.
13:33I can't see that.
13:35I'm quite sure.
13:36In a way, we're all immigrants.
13:38If you go back far enough, we're all immigrants.
13:41Normans, Saxons, Jews, Celts and so on and so on.
13:47It just depends on how far you go back.
13:49Immigrants have always been blamed.
13:52They are an easy target because they're a visible target for people to put blame on.
13:57And that's why this has been an issue at the moment.
14:00Yes, we need to have some controls about immigration.
14:03That's true.
14:04But we are accepting 1.2 million people into the country at the moment.
14:09But over half a million are leaving.
14:12So there are half a million coming in or so and half a million of them going out.
14:17So I understand that your answer to the question, you're probably saying a good thing.
14:21I'm only questioning you here because I need to say a couple of other things about it.
14:25What I want to say is that in this country, fish and chips used to be the favourite food of everyone.
14:33Today it's curry.
14:34Now why is that?
14:35Because it's been brought on by the Royal Government and made it so.
14:38I love curry.
14:39I love fish and chips as well.
14:41And that is, I think, a down to people coming into this country and providing it to us.
14:47In the 60s when I grew up, I never heard of curry.
14:50The first time I ever tried curry was when I was 18 or 19.
14:54That's an immigrant.
14:55That's what immigrants do to us.
14:59You should be proud of that.
15:01Thank you.
15:21After that debate, I'm glad we can agree on that.
15:25It's a high opportunity for fish and chips.
15:34So, this is a debate for the whole of my adult life.
15:39We're in a group just through negativity now.
15:42Because people...
15:47The party you represent, the predecessor to this party, the Brexit party, you came before that.
15:54On every issue.
15:55Immigrants as well.
15:57During the Brexit campaign, a lot of the lead vote was based on the immigration army.
16:02And the people coming here were their contributors.
16:05They were putting in more than they were taking out.
16:07We didn't have to bring them all in.
16:09They'll tell you that the European Union forced us to take all these people.
16:13They didn't.
16:15We signed up to the treaty.
16:19We didn't put caveats on that to say that if they can't look after themselves for a certain amount of time, they can go back.
16:27We didn't do it because we needed it.
16:29And we still do.
16:32You talked about your friend.
16:36Last week, a friend of mine, a British citizen, walking down the road of Asian heritage,
16:45wasn't out doing anything political.
16:47He was walking down the road.
16:48Someone threw him a bag and shouted reform at him.
16:52Have you any thoughts about the things that your party says on a national stage?
17:05It's such a tiny story, I'm not sure what the context is.
17:07What's it tiny? What's it tiny for him?
17:09Well, just the theoretical form.
17:11I mean, was it hard to pat him? It seemed to be a person there.
17:13I mean, if it was meant to be a targeted thing because this person was of brown skin.
17:17Yes, that's right.
17:18If that's the case, then that's disgusting.
17:20And don't do anything about it.
17:21Absolutely.
17:22100%.
17:23But why didn't you say reform?
17:24You've never seen him shouting when anyone's in the audience.
Comments