Debate contribution: Illegal Immigration: Impact in Northern Ireland

Debate contribution by Ms Paula Bradshaw on 20 May 2025.

MLA

Ms Paula Bradshaw

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

20 May 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Illegal Immigration: Impact in Northern Ireland

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4964285

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I support the amendment but not the original motion. The reason why I will not support the original motion is that it is plainly wrong. At an event in Belfast City Hall yesterday, real life narratives of how asylum seekers in Northern Ireland cannot access the education system were highlighted. Anaka Women's Collective published a report called 'Stranded Dreams' that shows that, without a specialist programme, asylum seekers in the 16-to-24 age group are effectively shut out from formal education. Northern Ireland already faces a greater challenge than neighbouring jurisdictions in keeping young people in formal education past the age of 16. However, that has precisely nothing to do with asylum seekers. In reality, the system works against them, even in a society where we need more people willing to take risks and set up businesses, as many asylum seekers would wish to do. It is also the case that the motion makes a call on the wrong Department, and the amendment usefully corrects that. The amendment corrects a few other things as well. With unemployment here at just 1·7% and the date on which the population of Northern Ireland starts to decline now projected to be as soon as 2033, we have a skills shortage and an imminent demographic time bomb. I share the sentiments of others in the Chamber around the immense contribution that people who have come to make this place their home have made to our healthcare, our economy and our education, and they should be welcomed and embraced. We do not need divisive rhetoric, because it becomes dangerous. It is reasonable to talk in terms of managing immigration more effectively but not to blame immigrants and pit them against others. Everyone in the House should be clear that the dramatic rise in the funding required to house asylum seekers is the fault of those who mismanaged the process, not the fault of the asylum seekers. Indeed, the very issue is that not only has the entire funding requirement risen but the accommodation remains entirely unsuitable, particularly considering that people have been fleeing war zones with the complex needs that they have had to endure and now live with. A managed migration policy will focus on integration, and that is why the amendment correctly calls on the Executive Office to bring forward the refugee integration strategy, among other things. Let us be clear about what the cost of inaction really is. Last summer, we saw the riots in south Belfast in particular after the anti-immigration rallies. We saw individuals and PSNI officers attacked, businesses damaged and community tensions heightened. The PSNI received an extra £2·8 million in the October monitoring round to cover the direct cost of tackling the disorder. What would that £2·8 million have covered? How many nurses would it have been able to employ? How many new houses could have been built? How many courses could have been put on for people who want to escape poverty? The cost is not purely financial, however. Just this morning, I was alerted to between 25 and 30 pieces of anti-immigration graffiti that appeared overnight in the Belvoir estate in my constituency. That is where divisive and inflammatory rhetoric gets us. What were the people who put up that graffiti intending the outcome to be of its going on those walls? Was it to scare and intimidate young children and their families so that they are fearful of walking among their community? That is what happens when that sort of graffiti appears, and no one in the Chamber should be championing that or saying that it is the right way to address the issues in front of us. We still await the draft Race Relations Order. We have been awaiting it for many years, and the community in question has been waiting for it for many years. That will see discrimination outlawed and will allow the order to be brought up to the standard that we require in the 2020s. We still await the refugee integration strategy with its implementation plan and funding model, and we need to see details of how the next racial equality strategy will be delivered. What we see in the motion is an attempt to divert from doing the work of making sure that Northern Ireland plays its role in helping those fleeing war and natural disaster while ensuring that there is social integration. That means that we need to get on with publishing, resourcing and implementing the strategy, as I said. We can look at the concerns about housing.

OK. Thank you.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:33 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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