The Great Wall Of England

This isn't about allegiance to the English Queen in Queen's English. New proposals announced by British home secretary David Blunkett detail the fuss Her Majesty's government will make around new Britons before granting nationality. It wants them to take an oath to the Queen, and in English. But under that polite language the government is thinking of throwing illegal migrants out—and keeping unwanted ones away.

The February 7 'White Paper on Immigration, Asylum and Citizenship', by the home office, has shaken the huge population of illegal immigrants. Officials say they're in hundreds of thousands. Less circumspect estimates make it a million or so. Many are Indians and brothers-in-hiding from the subcontinental neighbourhood.

Take a camera to Southall or Soho Road in Birmingham. Just too many Indian-like dive out of sight. They fear what could be the inquiring eye. Says an immigration advisor: "The boys are coming in all the time. In trucks, in buses, all the time, we don't know where to put them up."

Of late, it's the migrant from the Balkans and central Europe, more than the Indian, who's looking to slip in. But immigration lawyers put the population of illegal South Asians alone in hundreds of thousands. Moves to throw them out now would have legal backing but could potentially beat the Idi Amin expulsions in scale.

British law deems an illegal migrant legal if he can hide for more than 14 years. But everyone who came in from about 1990 is under new threat. The Labour government plans to remove illegal immigrants on a scale never contemplated before. "Where workers have no right to be in the UK, they can expect to be removed," the White Paper says. "The government is determined to prevent this system from being undermined by people coming illegally to the UK or working here in breach of the law."

Blunkett announced last month that the White Paper will be followed by a legislation "to settle once and for all where we are going". The government will target people who entered illegally and those who entered legally but are working illegally.

The crackdown began last year. The number of illegal immigrants caught at the borders rose from 3,300 in 1990 to 47,200 last year. That is some indication of the numbers trying to enter Britain illegally, though it speaks also of improved detection. But if a broadly similar number came through in the 1990s, and even if a fraction of them are now thrown out, even this is larger than the 50,000 Asians Amin threw out of Uganda.

Operation Zephaniah launched last year traced hundreds of illegal workers who had been smuggled in from Punjab by just one gang. The ringleaders were arrested and convicted. Under another, Operation Mullet, the police cracked a gang that used to steal passports from South Asian families in Leicester, north of London. These passports were used to bring in other migrants.

The police will now target migrants who made it past the borders. "It's hard to pick illegal immigrants off the streets," says the immigration advisor. So, the government will squeeze employers. The maximum punishment for employing or harbouring an illegal migrant is being raised from 10 to 14 years. Telling of tales about illegal immigrants will also be rewarded. Laws to send back children where both parents are illegal immigrants are being planned.

Illegal immigrants won't just have to look out for the police now, but for their own employers and prying neighbours keen to pick up a little reward. "The government will cause great human misery by this move," says Habib Rehman from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. The government must take a "pragmatic and humane approach," he says. "People who've been working and filling a need should be regularised, not sent back. "

The impending action makes South Asians particularly vulnerable. Not only are they concentrated in certain areas but illegal working is confined to certain professions, chiefly catering. Blunkett estimates that 60 per cent of catering staff in London are illegal immigrants. "And don't forget," says the immigration advisor, "our people will become easier to stop and check because of their skin colour." Many thousands surely seem to be headed home this year.