IF you want to see how not to handle an immigration crisis look no further than Spain.
Their Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez launched an amnesty for undocumented (ie illegal) migrants in April, seemingly, expecting only half a million to apply.
By 30th June, the deadline for applications, some 1.2million had sought to stay in the EU nation legally.
All they needed to qualify was having lived in Spain for five months and having no criminal convictions.
Then earlier this month the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that the sea is not a border and that the authorities could not quickly deport migrants who swim to Spanish territory. They could await the outcome of their application in mainland Spain.
This week we have seen the consequences in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa, with around 50-60,000 migrants – equivalent to towns the size of Luton or Reading – swimming over from neighbouring Morocco and walking unchallenged into Spanish territory. [That is equivalent to the population of Basingstoke or Rochdale.]
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The migrant amnesty has led to more people trying to get into Spain with many no doubt chancing their arm across the English Channel.
Senor Sanchez and his ultra-left-wing ministers are putting the rights of asylum seekers above those of their own citizens (sound familiar?)
Sánchez called it an “attack” on Spain, but he has only himself to blame.
We should all learn from his monumental error of judgement, one on a par with Angela Merkel’s in 2015, when she flung open the door to a million migrants with a casual wave of the hand, saying, “We can manage this.”
