Migration law needs teeth

However, although the immigration problem is currently in the spotlight – not least because of the dramatic increase over the past ten years in the number of people living here – they can hardly be described as new issues. For decades housing laws and the Regulation of Undertakings have amounted to an acknowledgement of the need to restrain inward migration.

Unfortunately, as the latest population statistics indicate, control policies have had only a limited effect. As Deputy Sean Power, chairman of the Scrutiny sub-panel investigating immigration management, has pointed out, there have been no prosecutions under the Regulation of Undertakings for more than 40 years. He takes the view that too little has been done on this front for far too long, with consequent adverse pressure on public services and Island infrastructure.

Deputy Power’s conclusion is that it is high time to get tough, and it is difficult to disagree with what he says. Although the Island is soon likely to see an entirely new law designed to control housing and work opportunities, that law will need real teeth if it is to operate more effectively than the regulations which have served us so poorly for so many years.

The Deputy and his sub-panel colleagues say that the teeth should take the shape of photographic identity cards and immigration inspectors empowered to raid building sites, kitchens and other places of work to identify people working illegally. In addition, they suggest that the public should be encouraged to blow the whistle on white-van men plying their trade outside the law.

These ideas might have an uncomfortable flavour of Big Brother about them and may even lead to talk of the German Occupation and the darker meaning of identity cards during that era, but the scrutineers have hit the nail squarely on the head when it comes to making any new law bite. If it is not enforced, it will be ineffective.