So what can in practical terms fully halt illegal immigration?

They still do!

It is correct that post Brexit immigration got out of control and all sense.

I wonder how many of the 400,000 or so Brits living in Spain mix with Spanish people, have adopted their norms and speak the language.

If they want or need interpreters then they have to pay for them.
Paying for interpreters in UK costs the tax payer tens of millions.

The money from the visas would help pay for it. No I don't think employers would suddenly start having volunteers.

As you said they are a tiny minority so it is not going to need many bureaucrats.

They are already clamping down on employers who employ illegals.

As I said I haven't thought out the details or got a firm plan, it is just an idea.

As pp said this isn’t right. People just used lorries pre Brexit.

Isn’t it just a coincidence though that it started after Brexit? Because they’d managed to crack down on lorry crossings so the smugglers set up an alternative route?

Conkersinautumn is absolutely 100% right. We do not have an immigration problem. The boats crossing the channel is 5% of overall immigration and only started after Brexit. And who started the whole Brexit thing? Farage. We need safe legal routes here and employ more people to process the asylum claims in a timely manner, not just create a backlog and then say, oh my god, our country is getting taken over by migrants!

Stopping allowing propaganda that the figures are somehow 'out of control' and making out that this is the reason why there is a housing crisis / economic crisis at the moment. Its a bullshit 1930s narrative that has successfully 'created a problem' rather than focused on improving what holds growth in the UK back.

We have to remove the idea that the UK is paved with gold. Or that it protects those who are guilty of crimes.
I do wonder if we need to define what an economic migrant is as opposed to an asylum applicant.

We can expect employers like Deliveroo and any others to uphold the legal requirements to ensure they do check the employment status of all their employees and not whinge that it is too difficult to do so. And if they don’t prosecute them. And really really work hard and fast on this.
We can remove every ( and yes, I mean every )vape shop selling cheap drugs and fags. And by doing so remove the exciting opportunity to make thousands they may have heard of.
We can remove visas from those countries that we know some are coming from. This will have limited success but will still impact.
We can set different requirements. If the French allow our lifeboats to go into French waters ( and they do ) to retrieve people, then we can go into French waters to turn them back.
The English speaking thing is neither here nor there. English I spoken across the world and many from former French colonies will be more comfortable speaking French.
I would not employ more caseworkers. I would train them very very well. An accurate decision is better than a fast but incorrect one.
Where we do want to remove people we do need to do it quickly. I am afraid the ECHR puts a stop to this. Many of the prior international agreements are not designed to manage mass migration in modern times. And need renegotiation.

It’s because high earners are leaving. I know a guy earning circa 200k who left this week. He’s not alone.

Net migration is down at the moment. That is probably because Labour are doing a bad job on the economy. So if we stick with labour that may be the answer. If we want to get rid of higher earners, all billionaires and people working in big international companies that invest in the UK, then Green would be the way forward.

I would try to encourage certain types of immigration such as full paying international students both in private schools and universities. Give them right to residency for a certain number of years afterwards if they have done specific degrees. I would clamp down on dodgy colleges.

I wouldn't offer asylum for quite a few things that we do offer asylum for but that would probably be against several international agreements that we have signed so expensive and tricky to get out of.

There is no requirement to seek asylum in the first safe country, and if this were the rule it would put an unsustainable strain on the countries bordering places like Afghanistan, Iran etc. It's perfectly reasonable for refugees to want to go where, for instance, they already have relatives or friends, or there will be support from others of their religion etc. It's also perfectly sensible for refugees in effect to be shared out amongst other countries, and we take far fewer than many European countries.

I agree with you! It’s difficult, especially when people are coming from large countries with multiple social/ethnic/cultural groups. But yes I also agree as that has been my experience too - and sounds like it has been for the pp, despite her horrible experience in Tehran.

NZ does have its own HR legislation and framework though, Australia strangely doesn’t.

Pulling out of the ECHR would require new legislation, and look what a long and messy thing that is on anything contentious. Any perceived benefits of not being in the ECHR (and to be clear I don’t see any, but understand others do) would be massively outweighed by the opportunity cost of parliamentary time spent on replacement legislation.

It was more a comment about the discussion above about Iranians. I could contradict myself and give a blanket overview and say that in general Iranians who come here tend to be more middle class, more educated, more culturally matched to the UK than people from other places and I would be doing what Ive cautioned against doing!!

Apologies, it was probably just how it came across in writing.

I didn’t question anything, I asked the circumstances and I said how horrible it must have been. I didn’t say or imply it didn’t happen, I wanted to understand the pp’s experience. How else can I do that without asking?

You’ve chosen to take the worst possible interpretation and accuse me of gaslighting, so I will assume the rest of your posts are in bad faith too.

...which is what Snakehead describes.

Remove the financial incentives for making the journey.
Everyone is an asylum-seeker, as no one is going to admit to being an economic migrant.
The UK cannot sustain it's current population so don't load it with more unskilled males

According to this article the smugglers are tracking down the people returned to France and forcing them to return, as it undermines their operation:

“The smugglers know where the shelter is in Paris where people sleep in the first few days after being returned to France. They caught me near the shelter and sent me back to UK by force in a lorry. The smugglers have guns, they control everything, we have to try to stay alive.”
The second man who returned said he was also caught by smugglers close to the Paris shelter and forced back to the UK in a lorry.“

It sounds like both men said this independently.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/mar/19/one-in-one-out-asylum-seekers-france-uk-lorries

Of course, there isn’t a blanket rule you can apply to anyone from anywhere, there are always exceptions and any system is bound to fail some time.

Yep, and the people coming want to come. Who have to pay someone to come. Usually they are not forced to come. The only way to travel is illegally, there is no other way. The whole route is dangerous whether you're talking about land or other seaways. The UK tends to focus on the danger of the channel. These people have already crossed very dangerous passages, by land and by water already.

If you have no legitimate way of making your passage, you employ someone to do that for you, its that simple.

You know that quite often parents are deemed as having 'trafficked' their children in to the UK. Does that sound logical to you?

Aus and NZ

Most people in the UK dont get the nuance in different groups of people from different regimes. We tend to separate people out into goodies and baddies

You're a goodie if you have fought against a regime and want to come here because now your life is in danger becuase of that. But you're still from a cultural background that may clash with progressive and modern values in the UK

You're a baddie though if you have beliefs and values which clash with our values.

There is a big difference in class of asylum seeker, there are some who have vey middle class educated, westernised one might say, liberal backgrounds. There are some from the same countries who may be very tribal, lots of blood feuds going back generations which have also travelled over here, lots of prejudice about other groups from their own countries and other countries, not educated and not progressive. No different to any country in the world where you have good positive citizens and then there are the others.

Please tell me you’re not comparing a people smuggler to TUI?

They are exploitative because they’re making money out of doing something illegal AND it’s very dangerous. People die on those crossings. The smugglers don’t care. They just want money and for people to keep coming.

Questioning the circumstances about the pp being spat at, when it doesn’t matter what they were. Spitting at someone is always disgusting and inexcusable and it sounds like it happened more than once.

Maybe you didn’t mean it like that but it came across that because your experience was ok, the pp must have done something wrong to be spat at.

Considering the lies told around Brexit, or the complete absence of information, I’d be extremely wary of removing the UK from any legal framework. Which countries, btw?