A 70 Million Population Means Too Many Forced Marriages
Labour MP Frank Field has today published a declaration on immigration, by a cross-party group of MPs and Peers, entitled “70 Million Is Too Many”
We are gravely concerned about the rapid increase in the population of England that is now forecast. We note that the official projections show the population of the UK will increase from 61.4 million in 2008 to exceed 70 million by 2029. Over the next 25 years the population will increase by 10 million, nearly all of the increase being in England. 70% – 7 million – will be due to immigration…
We are convinced that failure to take action would be seriously damaging to the future harmony of our society. Nearly a million votes by our fellow citizens for an extremist party amount to a danger sign which must not be ignored. For too long the major political parties have failed to address these issues and the intense, if largely private, concern that they generate throughout our country. If politicians want to rebuild the public’s trust in the political system, they cannot continue to ignore this issue which matters so much to so many people. The time has come for action.
Reducing support for the BNP would be just one of many benefits from more tightly controlled immigration.
Another would be a decrease in so-called fetching marriages, where young people from minority communities (particularly from the Indian sub-continent) are pressured into marriages overseas in order to bring a family or tribal member to the UK.
The pressure group MigrationWatchUK, which works closely with Frank Field and the Tories’ Nicholas Soames on immigration, has published a number of warnings on fetching marriages over the last decade. This quote is from their document “Transnational marriage and the formation of ghettoes“:
1. International arranged marriages are a major factor in the formation of ghettoes in Britain. Even in the second generation, a high proportion of immigrants from certain countries enter arranged marriages with spouses from their county of origin. This sets back integration by a generation. The flow of spouses and fianc(e)s from the Indian Sub Continent (ISC) doubled between 1996 and 2001. Now nearly half of ethnic Indian and three quarters of ethnic Pakistani and Bangladeshi children aged 0-4 have a mother born in her country of origin. 30% of all children born in Bradford are born to foreign mothers; in Tower Hamlets the figure is 68%. And the Pakistani population of Manchester, Birmingham and Bradford increased by about 50% between 1991 and 2001.
2. It is now essential that immigration policy should discourage international arranged marriage which has become a means of immigration.
All groups with a stake in reducing forced marriages should be prepared to give their support to reasonable, cross-party calls for more tightly controlled immigration such as that published by Frank Field today.
Update: Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has spoken publicly in defence of the declaration.
Lord Carey said the issue angered many people and could lead to violence, and that the immigration system had to focus more on maintaining “values”… he said, immigrants must “understand” the UK’s culture
