Cameron promised to cut immigration, but can’t deliver – British MP

It is impossible to cut immigration to the United Kingdom with the European Union allowing for freedom of movement, argues Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party.

The British coalition government has clashed over how to deal with rising immigration to the UK. Leading Liberal Democrat Vince Cable has criticized Tory Prime Minister David Cameron over a speech in which the premier vowed to cut immigration to “tens of thousands.” Cameron also said that some immigrants’ failure to learn English was “wrecking communities.”

It comes as member states in the EU are locked in a battle over the deluge of North African immigrants seeking refuge in Europe.

Farage acknowledged that immigration is a major problem for Britain, noting that some 3 million people have settled here since 1997.

“I’m delighted that the British prime minister stated the obvious – which is that when you have mass immigration happening rapidly in an area, and the people don’t speak the same language, then what you get is a ghetto-ization of towns and a dislocated society,” he said. “Only 4 percent of Liberal Democrat voters think that a net increase of the British population by immigration of a quarter of million people a year makes sense.”

However, Farage doubts that Cameron can keep his promises.

“Cameron started this debate, but trouble is that he can’t deliver,” Farage told RT. “Because he’s promising to cut immigration down from hundreds to tens of thousands – he can only do that by stopping people coming in large numbers from outside Europe.”

He believes that the UK, as a a member of the EU, does not have a real mechanism to tackle the immigration problem.

“Because we are the part of the European Union, we have total freedom of movement of people within the union,” he stated. “Since 2004 – since Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and now Bulgaria and Romania joined the union – [what we have are immigrants from] much poorer countries, most of them learn English as their first foreign language. And we have a huge number of people from those countries.”

“The EU does not know what to do, because it is individual member states that grant citizenship,” Farage concluded. “So, for example, when Romania gives a million passports to Moldovans, those Moldovans with EU passports will go wherever they like. If Mr. Berlusconi gives lots of Libyans passports, once they get EU passports, they can go wherever they like. And the argument which we make in [the UK] is that the United Kingdom is the most overcrowded country in all of the EU. … Why don’t we in Britain decide ourselves how many people come here every year?”