Roger Helmer onder vuur van Britse pers

Back in 2002, I wrote a piece that ended up in my book “A Declaration of Independence”.  Somewhere in the depths of this piece, I made a reference to the repatriation of immigrants.

Did I propose compulsory repatriation?  No, I did not.  Did I advocate voluntary repatriation?  No, I did not.  So what did I say?  I merely expressed my surprise at the strident attacks from some politicians at the time on the very idea of voluntary repatriation, as though this were self-evident wickedness.  It seems to me that if an immigrant desires to be repatriated, and we choose to help him, that is an act of kindness and compassion.  I don’t advocate it as a policy.  But equally, I can’t see why the idea is, in and of itself, wicked.

However the Observer newspaper takes a different view.  They have had (I assume) a team of researchers reading everything I have ever written, and looking for lines of attack.  Well done them.  I hope they learned a few things.  But they came up with the repatriation quote, and used it as a basis for a shock-horror story under the title: “Ukip shock over by-election candidate who backed voluntary repatriation”. 

I get the full alarmist treatment merely for questioning why some politicians attack the concept of voluntary repatriation in strident terms.  But the EU itself actually has a policy of voluntary repatriation of immigrants.  There is a European Return Fund with a budget of €130m/year, designed to pay for voluntary repatriation. The UK signed up to this in 1999 under Blair with the Voluntary Assisted Return & Repatriation Programme, or VARRP, which is administered on behalf of the British government in the UK by the charity Refugee Action.