In this series of videos on YouTube we are looking at Britain’s membership of the European Union from a Christian, Biblical standpoint.
We ask should the UK stay or leave and look today at the matter of hospitality to Muslim migrants in particular vs the security of our borders.
There is more on the Queen’s Coronation Service here.
This link backs up the points about the European Commission.
Surely, controlling our borders will mean keeping out people whom we have good reason to suspect are terrorists. But couldn’t we do that now, even if they are European Citizens ? If somebody is suspected of a crime in this country, he can be arrested. Being French or German doesn’t give him immunity to that.
So the question is, whether we are in the EU or not, how are we going to work out at our borders exactly who it is safe to let in, even for a holiday ? We aren’t ever going to prevent French people coming here for a holiday, even if they are Muslims, are we ?
No, because the UK immigration officers will be able to refuse a visa to whomsoever from the EU the UK just does not want, maybe from an intelligence perspective. They won’t have to give a reason, unless the decision is challenged in court. And they will be able to issue a visa to people outside the EU whom we do want.
You don’t need a visa to come to the UK from Norway or Switzerland, and before we joined the European Union you didn’t need a visa to come to the UK from France or West Germany. Not in the normal sense of something specially applied for in advance, as for visiting the USA. I really can’t see this changing.
If, however, you are using the word “visa” in the more technical sense of a routine stamp applied to passports at a frontier, the problem remains as I stated it above :
“how are we going to work out at our borders exactly who it is safe to let in, even for a holiday ?”
People from outside the EU can be let into the EU including the UK now. There is no barbed wire fence round it.
Some things need tightening up, then. The first duty of any ruler is security in the realm. But we can do none of it inside the EU.
I don’t agree. If we have good reason to stop a suspected smuggler or a suspected terrorist at the frontier with France, or at an airport, we can do that now, whether or not he is from the EU, and this would scarcely change in practice if we left the EU.