In yesterday's Times Online, he writes:
How does the amnesty work?Add to this that he keeps on going on about how most/some/all illegal immigrants are being kept as slave labour by gangs (his spin on why this daft policy is a good idea) - but again it's impossible for him to say how many.
A question.
How exactly does Nick Clegg's amnesty work?
The central argument he advances for it is that we can't deport these illegals because we don't know who they are or where they are.
He gets pretty impatient if pressed on this.
But if we don't know who they are and where they are, then how do we know that applicants have been here for 10 years and therefore qualify for amnesty?
We know that some are slave labour because of the deaths of the cockle-pickers of Morecambe Bay in 2004.
More frightening by far, though, is the horrendous sex-trafficking industry in the UK - worse in numbers than any slavery in our embarrassing past. The CWO has researched this and neither the police nor the many NGOs involved know where the victims are or how long they've been here.
What we do know is that those forced into prostitution and the slave labour are kept locked up and far away from the police & immigration. The locks aren't necessary though as the victims stay there from fear that their families back home would be tortured and killed if they told anyone.
Of course we need to find the gangs and release their victims. We need to give the victims both mental and physical help, possibly for years.
This isn't something new and a misinformed amnesty is not going to help - it will only send a signal to the desperate that if you get to the UK, you'll get citizenship: I doubt many will read the small print first.
