More than three-quarters of Britons want to see jobless immigrants forced to leave UK
Matthew Hickley
Phill Woolas, the Immigration Minister, said he was not surprised by findings of a poll which showed that nearly eight out of ten people believe all unemployed foreign migrants should be asked to leave the UK.
Mr Woolas said the the British people would never be comfortable with immigration until they believe ministers have a firm grip on the nation's borders.
Mr Woolas said: 'The poll figures are not a surprise. They are a concern, and in significant part they are because the public don’t believe that the government has got control.'
'The central goal of my immigration policy is to provide the assurance to the public that we know who’s here and who’s not here.'
Asylum seekers pictured in Calais recently: Many are hoping to reach Britain where they believe they will find work, but as new study shows three-quarters of people want non-working immigrants to leave the UK
Insisting the Government's border controls were working, Mr Woolas added today that hundreds of refugees risking their lives in Calais to get into Britain are "locked out, not queuing to get in".
He told GMTV the UK's borders were tougher than that between the United States and Mexico: "We are, on the whole, stopping people getting through," he said.
"We're counting people in and counting people out."
March, 2009
FW: 1/11/11