ANKARA
British Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled plans to include a tough new immigration bill in his Queen’s Speech later this month, after government figures released Thursday showed net migration to the U.K. rose by 50 percent last year.
Cameron said the new bill would make “Britain a less attractive place to come and work illegally.”
The Office for National Statistics said 109,000 more people came to Britain last year compared with the previous year.
“If you have uncontrolled immigration, you have uncontrolled pressure on public services,” Cameron said.
The current law states that migrants who work illegally can be sentenced to a six months’ custodial sentence and/or an unlimited fine.
“Uncontrolled immigration can damage our labour market and push down wages,” he said. “It means too many people entering the UK legally but staying illegally.”
The new bill will allow the government to deport migrants first before they appeal the decision as well criminalizing working in the U.K. illegally, allowing police to seize migrants’ wages.
“We'll take a radical step, we'll make illegal working a criminal offence in its own right,” Cameron said.
"That means wages paid to illegal migrants will be seized as proceeds of crime,” he said. “If you're involved in illegal working - employer or employee - you're breaking the law."
The director of the Migrants’ Rights Network, Don Flynn, criticized the government’s plans to seize migrants’ wages, telling the BBC it would create "systems of modern slavery without hope of protection from the law."
"Their vulnerable status means they are confined to the most insecure and exploitative forms of employment, usually earning scarcely enough to maintain themselves on a day-to-day basis."
The British PM also pledged to “give British people the skills to do the jobs Britain needs.”
“It is about making it harder for people to be working illegally and setting a clear deterrent for those that want to stay here illegally,” Home Secretary Theresa May told BBC Radio 4.
“We continue to have as a government the aim of bringing net migration down to the tens of thousands.”
