PRESS RELEASE AND INVITATION
Embargoed until midnight 19th May
Wednesday, 20th May - 6.45pm for 7.00pm
Sir Andrew Green KCMG
Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migrationwatch UK, will speak to the Bruges Group on Wednesday 20th May. The meeting will be at 7.00pm at the Foreign Press Association. The title of his talk will be, Immigration: The Impact of the EU.
He will say that it is obviously no help to immigration control to have 500 million people with a right of entry to the UK. The influx of 1.5 million East Europeans to Britain demonstrates the flows that can be generated by wide differences of wealth. In the medium term these numbers can be expected to come into balance as they have for Spain, Portugal and Greece. Romania and Bulgaria will take longer but the wild card is Turkey.
QUOTES FROM SIR ANDREW GREEN
Sir Andrew Green will say;
"To open our borders to 80, quite soon 100, million Turks would be a disastrous error. We must learn the lesson of the Eastwards expansion - namely that new member states with a much lower standard of living produce very large numbers of migrants. We must not again be fobbed off with talk of transitional periods. All such arrangements come to an end - as we will discover in two years time when 70 million East Europeans become fully entitled to the welfare state to which we have contributed all our lives. As usual, the Government (and Opposition) are stone deaf when it comes to the "I word". They need to wake up to the consequences of their timidity."
Sir Andrew Green will also outline a research paper published by Migrationwatch on the same day, which gives a full survey of EU asylum policy over the last 20 years. It concludes that Britain's opting in to the asylum Directives has, on balance, been beneficial. However, this will become much more problematic in future as the EU seeks to lay down common standards rather than minimum standards. Proposals for "burden sharing" are also likely to be very unwelcome.
PRESS AND MEDIA ACCREDITATION:
To attend, please contact Robert Oulds on 07740 029787 or via E-mail: info@brugesgroup.com>
Interviews with Sir Andrew are available as are refreshments including; wine, orange juice, mineral water and nibbles
Click here to view Sir Andrew's power point presentation>
LOCATION: Foreign Press Association
11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AJ
AGENDA:
Lectures: 7.00pm – 8.00pm
Discussion: 8.00pm – 8.30pm
Wine and refreshments: 8.30pm – 10.00pm