DANIEL HANNAN: Picture that sums up how the entire migrant industry regards the taxpayers of this country

What a vivid image of our country’s disastrous approach to immigration.

Yesterday’s Daily Mail carried a photograph of a dinghy carrying illegal migrants across the Channel. One of them, his face half-covered by a mask, raises both middle fingers at the camera in a sign of utter contempt.

It is a charmless, entitled and ungrateful gesture. It is also, let’s be honest, unsurprising.

Given the way we handle migrant crossings, we can hardly complain if new arrivals treat us with disdain. They see a broken system, wide open to abuse, geared up to hand over goodies unconditionally. How do we expect them to respond?

The story that accompanied that photograph perfectly illustrates the problem. It reported that, under the Employment Rights Act that came into force last week, illegal immigrants are now allowed to sue the firms that have taken them on.

As if it were not already bad enough to have a series of government agencies coming between companies and their staff and undermining the principle of free contract, we are now doing away with the essence of what it means to be a citizen – a citizen with rights and responsibilities.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission says that bosses must take ‘all reasonable steps’ to protect every employee from harassment (harassment meaning being told things that they find unpleasant) even if the employee is a ‘migrant worker without a valid work permit’.

I wish I could write that this is just some quango mouthing off. But Britain is largely run by Leftist tribunals, and the extension of rights to non-nationals has already started. In September, a Malaysian migrant in Cumbria was awarded more than £5,000 by an employment tribunal in a discrimination case, despite having no legal right to work in the UK.

An illegal Channel migrant, his face half-covered by a mask, raises both middle fingers at the camera in a sign of utter contempt

Think about what this means. Modern states work on the basis of an implied contract between government and citizens. The 17th century philosopher John Locke, who more or less invented our contemporary understanding of statehood, called it the ‘original compact’.

At some point, Locke posited, our ancestors could be assumed to have reached an agreement with one another to obey the same laws, respect one another’s property rights, and suffer the consequences if they abused the rules. The original compact might not have been a literal historical event, but it was the most useful way to understand the rights and obligations intrinsic in citizenship.

We expect the police to protect us, but that implies that they can use force against us if we break the law. We pay our taxes, and in return we get to use roads, schools and other services. We respect election results, even when our party loses.

All that, though, rests on a distinction between members of the community and non-members, between nationals and foreigners. A foreigner might acquire some rights and protections by gaining the right to settle in this country and then paying taxes here. But if such rights are available even to people who should not be here, people who are working illegally, then the whole notion of original compact is broken.

A British citizen might pay taxes, obey laws, be ready when the chips are down to perform military service. But those things no longer secure any privileges in return. Anyone can show up and claim the same entitlements as Britons.

What would you think about a country that behaved that way? Would you feel a sense of pride in belonging? Would you feel grateful and humble to have been admitted? I wouldn’t. Which brings us back to that disgusting photograph.

There are good and bad ways to manage an immigration policy. The good way is to select your migrants shrewdly; to pick those who have the skills and abilities to make a net contribution; to weed out those who are likely to behave in criminal or anti-social ways or, indeed, those who – through no fault of their own – are likely to be a major burden on our healthcare and social security services.

Under this model, you would be very careful about where you took your settlers from. You would try to avoid the arrival of lots of people from the same place, because ethnic enclaves retard integration. You would seek to ensure that citizenship came with a commensurate sense of pride and patriotism, a sense of achievement at having beaten hundreds of competitors to win that prized slot and a determination to make the best of it.

There is still a pro-immigration lobby in Labour, as we see from pressure on the Home Secretary to extend indefinite leave to remain. But even Labour MPs want to stop small boats

We are instead doing the opposite at every turn, especially with the cross-Channel migrants. They get here by breaking the law and evading the authorities. They remain here too often by lying and stringing out the process.

They are assisted by shyster lawyers, and sometimes charities who hand out phone sim cards in the Calais camps.

Imagine going through all that, cheating your way to a place here. Would you respect our country and its institutions – or would you despise it?

How did we end up in this situation? Like all nations, we have borders, and we notionally try to regulate them.

Indeed, when it comes to people seeking to enter Britain illegally by air, we have a pretty effective system. No visa, no entry.

But because maritime law requires us to rescue distressed vessels, we tear up all those rules when it comes to the Channel and provide a taxi service to gangs of young men from violent and backward places. No one would have designed such a system. Why, then, do we not end it?

The answer is that, to a large degree, immigration policy is not controlled by politicians at all. It is in the hands of activist judges, who see it as their role always and everywhere to prevent deportations.

Politicians on all sides have tried, with varying degrees of success, to get on top of the problem.

No party wants the Channel crossings which, apart from anything else, are electorally disastrous. Yes, there is still a pro-immigration lobby in Labour, as we see from the pressure on the Home Secretary to extend indefinite leave to remain. But even Labour MPs want to stop the small boats.

The only way to make it happen, though, is to withdraw from the international conventions that our courts use as their excuse: not just the European Convention on Human Rights, but the UN Convention on Refugees, perhaps the Convention on the Rights of the Child and much else. As a matter of fact, I think this will happen sooner or later.

The Conservatives carried out a major study into everything that would need to go, and Reform has adopted a similar position. Sooner or later, Labour will come round, too.

To be clear, we should abolish the entire concept of refugee status – a legal category which theoretically allows billions of people to move here. We should instead give the Home Secretary the discretionary right to admit, say, 5,000 people a year (a figure that could be varied up or down in any given year by Parliament). 

Is that tough on applicant No 5001? Yes, undoubtedly. But the current system is tough on everyone – migrants and natives alike.

When it happens – and it will – we will look back and wonder why it took so long.

Daniel Hannan is director of the Institute of Economic Affairs.