Member's statement: Illegal Immigration

Member's statement by Mr Jonathan Buckley on 7 September 2026.

MLA: Mr Jonathan Buckley
Party at the time: Democratic Unionist Party
Date: 7 September 2026
Type: Member's statement
Business: Members' Statements
Heading: Illegal Immigration
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5669650

Text

First and foremost, on behalf of the DUP, Mr Speaker, I join you in your condolences to the family of Stephen Walker: a remarkable man and a gentleman on and off the screen. I pay tribute to his courage and commitment as a journalist. He was fearless, fair and level-headed. I have no doubt that his loss has left a heavy mark with his former colleagues in the BBC and, indeed, with his family. Our asylum system is being manipulated on an industrial scale. If you do not know that, you have been living under a rock. The people who are being failed — the people who are most impacted and are paying the price — are ordinary, hard-working, law-abiding citizens. 'The Times' today reports the staggering allegation of a Home Office whistle-blower who claims that one in every 100 asylum applications is genuine. Let that sink in. If that allegation is even remotely close to the truth, we are talking about a system that is being exploited, manipulated and abused every day. It is the scale of it that should shock us. Illegal immigrants and, indeed, their gangmasters are making every attempt to manipulate and bypass laws that are not fit for purpose — failed legislation. Some in the Assembly shriek in horror at every opportunity when I raise the issue of illegal and uncontrolled immigration. Despite the Sinn Féin, SDLP and Alliance attitude of, "Let's bury our heads in the sand: we don't have a problem", we see that Home Office illegal immigration raids have resulted in over 1,000 people being removed from Northern Ireland. It sounds as though we have a problem, and Sinn Féin's attitude of, "Brits out, everybody else in" is as ridiculous today as it has ever been. It is not an orange and green issue; it is a common sense issue. It is not a left versus right issue; it is a security issue. Potentially, if we do not grip the issue once and for all, its unrepairable nature and the harm to our communities will be clear for all to see. It increasingly impacts on communities across Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Surely, the Government's priority should be to secure our borders and remove those who have entered illegally, not simply to manage the consequences —
— of bad legislation.

393 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Flagged Immigration, asylum, race, ethnicity and Travellers

Jev’s structured answers met every documented threshold for flagging as culture-war activity.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.58 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
Criteria met: Sectarian or communal antagonism (0.78); Dog-whistle messaging (0.87).
Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.62).
The text adopts the identity-based framing in its own voice (0.74).
Subject area: Immigration, asylum, race, ethnicity and Travellers.
The text adopts an antagonistic or dog-whistle framing, which is flagged even alongside legitimate scrutiny.

What a flag means. A flag means the activity contains at least one instance of culture-war framing that met the published test. It does not mean the whole activity is divisive, or that its substantive arguments are wrong.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.35	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.78	Yes
Cultural grievance politics	0.02	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.87	Yes
Controversy escalation	0.22	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.62	Yes
Overall judgement	0.58	Between thresholds

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing	0.23
Reports or questions it	0.01
Criticises or condemns it	0.02
Adopts it (chosen)	0.74

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
Immigration, asylum, race, ethnicity and Travellers	0.99
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.01
No identity-related subject	0.00
Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials	0.00
Parades, bonfires and commemorations	0.00

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 16:12 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

A second, larger AI model can read this record again, without being told the MLA’s name or party, against the same published rubric. It also asks whether the activity mainly serves the public interest or mainly advances division. Its verdict replaces the current one, whichever way it goes, and its reasons are published here. Each record can have one second assessment.

If you still think the record or its classification is wrong after that, or the record itself has a factual error, you can challenge it. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.