British citizenship figures: inattention, incompetence or design?

By Andrew Green Published: 7:30AM GMT twenty-six February 2010

There could be a little statistical quirks in this - a check in estimate last year or a pour out to get in prior to the new intrigue for probationary citizenship comes in to force after this year. But the extended design is as transparent as a bell. Grants of citizenship are up by a cause of 4 or five given the benefaction supervision came to power.

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The numbers are huge, scarcely one and a half million new adults given 1997. Was this inattention, insufficiency or design? It is tough to be certain but I think elements of all three.

Until recently, five years of authorised chateau in Britain was probably all that was required, a cursory check for a rapist jot down - and Bobs your uncle. Indeed, until last Mar time outlayed as a tyro counted towards the five years. You usually indispensable to magnify for a integrate of years, and 95% of applications were postulated - and your British pass was there for collection.

What could the supervision have been meditative of ? Have ministers not beheld what was happening? They contingency have done, and contingency have incited a blind eye. It was, after all, the approach outcome of their preference - secluded at the time - to go for mass immigration. If that was the target on what drift could they have challenged it"s logical, in truth inevitable, consequence?

For the rest of us we find ourselves in an increasingly fractured multitude notwithstanding all the efforts being made, late in the day, to inspire amicable cohesion. Those efforts must, of course, be pursued. But they contingency be reinforced by a dynamic bid to get the scale of immigration down to a turn that will have the problems manageable.

That is because we wish to see immigration brought in to change with emigration, and we seek, as a initial step, a extended domestic joining from both parties to this effect.