MANSTON, Kent—The chairman of the local parish council in the English village of Manston—where a former RAF base has been turned into a processing centre for illegal immigrants—has suggested young Albanian immigrants be sent to Scotland where they could be “utilised” by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
The government announced this week that, as of 8 a.m. on Wednesday, the number of people at the Manston facility was down from 4,000 to 1,147.
More than 40,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the English Channel this year and, when the Western Jetfoil facility at Dover docks became too small, the Home Office took over the former RAF land at Manston earlier this year. The immigrants are supposed to undergo security and identity checks there before being moved to other accommodation while their requests for asylum are processed.
O'Mahoney said many Albanians were “gaming the system” and vanished into the black economy to work illegally and send money home.
Asked what should be done with the immigrants, Guy Wilson, chairman of Manston Parish Council, told The Epoch Times, “My politically correct answer is that we have a statutory duty to look after them, to mollycoddle them, to provide accommodation and food for them.”
“But my non-PC answer is that we have a reduced workforce in England and Scotland and a lot of these young migrants from Albania—those aged 18 to 30—could be hopefully utilised by Nicola Sturgeon. They could join the workforce. They could get work permits to work in Scotland and boost Scottish economy and productivity quite considerably. Most of the migrants are prepared to work for next to nothing,” said Wilson, who is 77.
Wilson, a tax accountant and property developer, said his family had been in Manston for 85 years but he is bemused to find the village suddenly in the headlines.
“Manston really has been in the news. It’s amazing. It’s a tiny place. Who would have thought it would be in the world news?” he mused.
Manston’s Role in Defying Nazi Invasion Plans
Manston’s only previous claim to fame was as the home of a Battle of Britain airfield.Pilots took off from Manston in their Spitfires and Hurricanes to intercept German bombers heading up the Thames estuary to blitz London.
Wilson said he remembers his father and uncle telling him about a German bomber which crashed in their field after being brought down by anti-aircraft fire in nearby Margate.
“The pilot had taken a pill to kill himself. He was so huge they had to cut him out of the plane,” Wilson recalls.
The RAF’s victory in the Battle of Britain meant the Nazis’ planned invasion of Britain never happened.
Eighty years later the Home Secretary Suella Braverman was criticised by Labour MPs after she described the immigrant crisis as an “invasion.”
The day after she made those remarks, the charity Detention Action sent her a letter warning of legal action if she did not address the “egregiously defective conditions” at Manston.
The main entrance to the Manston immigrant processing centre is right opposite the Spitfire and Hurricane Memorial Museum and it was there pensioner John Platt was visiting on Wednesday with his wife Barbara.
Platt, who lives 10 miles from Manston, told The Epoch Times: “My view of the migrant situation is that its an absolute cheek that they come here and expect us to do something about it. I’m sympathetic to their plight but not our way of dealing with it. I think we’re a soft touch.”
He said the immigrant crisis was like someone climbing over his fence and then expecting to be able to camp in his garden.
‘We Need Them, Especially in the Building Industry’
His wife said: “I can’t understand why the Albanians come. They pay a lot to traffickers to come here, so how can they be economic migrants? We do need them, especially in the building industry, but they have to come here legitimately, in a law-abiding way.
All around Manston new homes are being built and the village could soon become part of an urban sprawl including Margate, Ramsgate, and Broadstairs.
A new station, Thanet Parkway, is due to open in the spring and will allow people to commute to London in just over an hour.
An even bigger game-changer would be the reopening of Manston airport, which has been closed since 2014.
While the future for this corner of Kent might be bright, there is a black cloud over the present—the seemingly endless influx of illegal immigrants crossing the 20-mile wide Straits of Dover from France and Belgium.
Wilson said the high numbers coming in October and continuing this week may have been because of calm seas and mild weather.
He said: “The sea temperature is 59 to 60 degrees [Fahrenheit], so when the press talk about freezing water they’re wrong. You don’t get hypothermia in those waters. And there have been very, very calm seas in the last few weeks.”
Winter Weather Could Reduce Number of Immigrants
“But the Channel gets a bit rough in the winter and I will suspect there will be a lot less coming between now and March,” Wilson predicted.He said: “There are about 30 people on those little boats and they are only 12 inches off the water and it can be quite dangerous. But they are happy to accept the danger when they are welcomed by the English and put up in a four-star hotel.”
Earlier this week immigration minister Robert Jenrick said it was “not appropriate that we are putting up asylum seekers in luxurious hotels.”
Jenrick also said, “It’s certainly not mine or the home secretary’s intention that Manston is turned into a permanent site for housing migrants.”
Asked about Jenrick’s comments, Wilson said: “Politicians, even nice chaps like him, lie through their teeth and by saying it may not be permanent; it doesn’t mean to say that it won’t be there for another couple of years. If he came out with an alternative that might be a different story but he didn’t.”
The leader of Ashford Borough, Gerry Clarkson, declined to be interviewed by The Epoch Times but provided a statement in which he said: “We have no control over this decision at all, and are extremely angry at the Home Office on how they have handled this situation ... All Kent and Medway local authority leaders are writing jointly to the secretary of state for the Home Office to ask her to stop using the county as an easy fix for what is a national, strategic issue.”
The Epoch Times spoke to one illegal immigrant, who gave his name as Arben Berisha, near the hotel on Wednesday.
He said: “You think all Albanians are criminals. We aren’t. We just want to work.”
The Epoch Times also reached out to Detention Action, but they declined to be interviewed.
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