Meeting of the Parliament 10 September 2025
Not at the moment.
At the heart of the problem are criminal gangs who bring illegal immigrants into the country in small boats. In the year to June, nearly 90,000 asylum applications were made in the UK, and 50 per cent of those arrived via irregular routes—the vast majority by boat, but others by lorry or shipping container.
The First Minister and Scottish National Party can no longer bury their heads in the sand, because the negative effects of illegal immigration—and of the asylum hotels, which are the visible tip of that iceberg—are very real.
During the summer, I knocked on thousands of doors across Dumfriesshire and, time and again, the issue of illegal immigration came up. It came up among the young and the old, and among those living in small villages and in large towns. It came up among those who are directly impacted by asylum hotels, and among those who have simply watched the small boats arriving on their televisions with an increasing sense of alarm.
The costs are not just financial—there are economic costs, social costs and opportunity costs. Yes, we all want Scotland to be a welcome, open nation. I have had the privilege of living and working overseas, and I know how important migration is for modern, dynamic economies in order that they can attract global talent and, in so doing, create a country with rich and diverse cultures and experiences.
However, uncontrolled migration—or worse still, rampant illegal immigration—simply cannot be the sustained solution to any workforce challenge, and the SNP is playing a strange game of identity politics if it believes that to be true.
As we see from Scottish local authorities, the financial burden of housing immigrants cannot be understated. In fact, SNP-run Glasgow City Council has admitted as much itself—Susan Aitken says that the debt-laden local authority faces a staggering £66 million overspend on homelessness. Today, city chiefs fear a fresh influx of newly homeless refugees as the Home Office reduces the length of time for which people can stay in Government accommodation.