Pressure On UK For Immigration Amnesty!

The maverick mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has called on the UK government to grant an immigration amnesty to all illegal immigrants who have been in the country for ten years.

Mr Johnson said 'The alternative is to continue in a situation in which half a million people or maybe 750,000 people in Britain, most of them in London, not registered, with no papers, contributing to the London economy, making money, but not paying tax'.

No one knows how many illegal immigrants there are in the UK though the consensus seems to be that it is somewhere between 750,000 and 1,000,000. A 2012 study by the London School of Economics suggested that there were around 860,000 illegal immigrants in the UK of whom around 600,000 live in London.

'Crazy'
Mr Johnson said that the government's attempts to crack down on immigration were 'crazy' and were harming Britain.

Mr Johnson is perhaps the best-known politician in the UK. Polling shows that he is recognised, and liked by many people who do not know the names of any other politician. He has a considerable personal following and won the mayoral election for the Conservative Party in London in 2012 with 44% of the vote at a time when the party had under 30% support nationally, according to polls.

He told Total Politics magazine 'The idea that you can go to 500,000 people, most of whom have friends and neighbours and lives in this city and sort of rip them out, deracinate them, pull them up by their roots, it's not going to happen'.