Sir Gulam: We need a 10-year ban on migrants
BRITAIN should shut its borders to all immigrants for up to 10 years to prevent racial unrest, a top Indian-born businessmen said yesterday.
High-profile Labour donor Sir Gulam Noon, known as the “curry king” because of his multi-million-pound ready meals empire, said a ban was needed to stop racist groups exploiting tensions.
“I strongly feel that whoever are the immigrants here, we’d better give them jobs and give them dignity to live here before we import some more,” Sir Gulam told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show.
“I do not want a situation whereby a party like the BNP says, ‘Listen, all your jobs are being taken away by immigrants’. We have to be extremely careful.
“Some sort of a ban should be there,” said Sir Gulam, who last week survived the terrorist attack on the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai by barricading himself into his suite.
Sir Gulam, 72, who came to the UK in 1966 with just £50 in his pocket, is understood to have said: “We should wait for five or 10 years, until all the newcomers have been properly integrated and assimilated into the country.
“Until then we should just shut the door. We can only accommodate so many. There is always a danger that for the sake of political correctness, or a party’s political advantage, we find ourselves filling up the country with too many immigrants who will disturb the balance and upset the people – particularly the young people – of the host community.”
He also warned: “You can’t just put hundreds of thousands of people on this small island. There is a limit.”
He believes that immigrants must learn English and schoolgirls should not wear veils. The moderate Muslim also called on Britain to be tougher on extremists, saying it was a “soft target because we are mollycoddling these people”, who then saw it as a sign of weakness. His message to extremists was: “If you don’t like this country, get out.”
A Home Office spokesman said in response to Sir Gulam’s comments: “People understand that migration can bring benefits but they also rightly demand that we have robust systems in place to control those coming here.
“Our new points-based immigration system is about getting only the right people and no more.
“It is a powerful set of controls, which allows us to raise and lower the bar depending on the needs of the labour market and the country as a whole. We will use those levers.”
