By Tim Montgomerie
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Some good news this morning on an otherwise disappointing day.
The Coalition's immigration policies are beginning to work. The numbers
coming into Britain are the lowest for a decade and are down by a third on last year. In an email to Tory supporters Theresa May celebrated the news:
"Today's
figures show that we're cutting out abuse and making our immigration
system much more robust. We are putting a stop to the uncontrolled
immigration we saw under the last Labour government and creating an
immigration system which truly works in our national interest."
The Sun was quick to welcome the news AND to praise the Home Secretary:
"There
are plenty of areas where the Coalition is failing. But immigration
isn’t one of them… The Coalition has a way to go before the annual
increase is down to the “tens of thousands” the Tories committed to. But
the trend is at long last in the right direction. Hats off to Ms May
for that."
Andrew Green of MigrationWatch also welcomed the progress in a blog for The Spectator's Coffee House (my emphasis):
"The
government’s policy has not only worked, it has worked as was intended
with minimum collateral damage. The fall in student numbers was among
the colleges where the abuse is believed to have occurred, not among the
universities where non EU student visa numbers last year were up 3 per
cent. Work permits are up by a similar amount and business visitors
increased by 100,000 to 1.7 million. It would be hard to expect a better
report card on a complex area of policy."
We're three years into this Coalition and, despite the difficulties,
there is good news to report. One million new private sector jobs. The
deficit down by a quarter. Immigration down by a third. Crime down by
10% (Theresa May again). Hopefully the news on these and other fronts
will be better still by the election.