The way immigration and bogus asylum seekers have been manged to date is nothing short of a social and economic catastrophe. I am utterly convinced this issue will come to define previous governments. Warning after warning was dismissed and was reframed. Warning after warning that the State was effectively being ripped off were ignored with the excuse that we were in an emergency and therefore proper controls did not apply. Billions have been spent and very likely billions more will be spent because this State has adopted the slowest possible approach to managing a crisis that has been plain for all to see except for those who wanted to push the de facto open border policies. If the Minister wants to see what talking tough and taking no meaningful action on the asylum chaos looks like and where it will lead to, then he may look no further than the UK. There the entire political establishment is being convulsed by defections from the establishment parties. The people are fed up of governments which promise much but do little but deliver tough-sounding rhetoric with no actions. The same is true here. Our people here are angry at how unwilling or how powerless governments have been in dealing with this generational crisis. This Bill promises much, but my fear is that it will be bogged down in bureaucratic nonsense and loopholes sought and found by the overpaid NGOs which are determined to oppose all necessary reform. I have very serious concerns which I have raised many times in this House about the vetting, or lack of vetting, of bogus asylum seekers, the delays deporting asylum seekers with criminal pasts, many of whom come from safe countries, and no vetting of the providers of IPAS accommodation. They have been described here as businesspeople but they are not all businesspeople. Some of these providers could be better described as gangsters and they have question marks over their suitability or the appropriateness of having those people involved in the provision of any type of accommodation. What vetting is being done there? I do not believe there is any vetting there either of the providers and who is involved. We need an urgent overhaul of both our dysfunctional immigration system and the IPAS system in terms of who is providing the accommodation. Are those people checked? My sense is that none of them were checked at any stage. Some, as I say, are totally unsuitable. The people involved in the provision of IPAS accommodation, some of them gangsters and chancers, continue to profiteer from an unchecked, unregulated and broken system. This is extremely alarming. We need urgent action on this before it is too late. I, as a represenative here, want action. I want a dramatic reduction in the numbers of economic migrants and in the numbers of bogus asylum seekers entering our country. I want no more excuses and deflection. We need reform urgently in terms of the people coming in, the vetting system and lack of vetting, and the lack of urgent deportations and timely deportations, but also there needs to be a vetting process of the suitability of some of these providers because there are serious question marks there.

Sentiment score: -0.18