Cameron’s initiative reflects a change in rhetoric across the political mainstream, after years when talking about immigration was seen as taboo and the reserve of racists. All three main parties now talk tough on immigration after polls showed it had become one of voters’ main worries ahead of a 2015 election.
Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled a crackdown on immigration on Monday, saying he planned to show illegal migrants “the door” and rein in welfare benefits he believes lure foreigners to live off the British state.
In a wide-reaching policy announcement, Cameron addressed public concerns about Romanians and Bulgarians winning the right to work in Britain next year, a prospect that has prompted the right-leaning press to warn of the arrival of “hordes” of welfare-hungry migrants.
“Net migration needs to come down radically from hundreds of thousands a year to just tens of thousands,” he said.
Cameron’s initiative reflects a change in rhetoric across the political mainstream, after years when talking about immigration was seen as taboo and the reserve of racists.
All three main parties now talk tough on immigration after polls showed it had become one of voters’ main worries ahead of a 2015 election.
The success of the UK Independence Party or UKIP, which campaigns against “open-door” immigration and humiliated Cameron’s Conservatives in a vote for a parliamentary seat, has added to the pressure for policy change.
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