By Max Musson:

Just when we might have hoped the immigration situation could not get any worse, it has today been announced that our government will offer an undisclosed number of Afghan interpreters who have been assisting British troops in Afghanistan, the right to come and live in Britain, with free travel to the UK and their first three months accommodation provided rent free.

Press reports state that “up to 600 Afghans” who have risked their lives to act as interpreters for British troops and officials are to be given the right to move to Britain. However the reports then go on to state that there are as many as 1,200 such interpreters, that 94% have received threats from the Taliban, and that fewer than 3% have stated that they will feel safe once Coalition forces are withdrawn.

This means that at least 97% of the interpreters will apply to take up the British government offer on purely safety grounds, that’s 1,164 of the 1,200, and the other 3% can be expected to apply also on economic grounds. After all, who would want to continue to scratch a living in a poverty stricken central Asian dust bowl, when they can come and live at tax-payers expense in Britain?

The plan then provides for the ‘immediate dependents’ of the interpreters to come to Britain also, and that means that with just one wife (Muslims are allowed to have up to four) and an average of say, four children, that makes potentially 7,200 people.

Initially the interpreters and their families will be issued with visas for just five years, but we all know that none of them will ever go back voluntarily.

Whitehall have projected that this package will cost the British tax-payer £40 million based upon an expectation that 600 interpreters will take it up, but obviously, based upon my more realistic assumptions above, it will cost a whole lot more.

The plan has been approved by David Cameron and officials in the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence after meetings of the National Security Council. The details of the plans have now been passed to other ministers across Whitehall for approval.

A No10 source stated: “The Prime Minister has been very clear that we should not turn our backs on those who have trod the same path as our soldiers in Helmand, consistently putting their lives at risk to help our troops achieve their mission.

“We should recognise the service given by those who have regularly put themselves in real danger while working for us.”

However, my understanding, and certainly what we have been led to believe is that the whole purpose of our prolonged involvement in Afghanistan was to make the country safe and stable for the newly democratically elected government. It would seem that our military involvement in Afghanistan has been a costly waste of time, both in terms of money spent, lives lost and soldiers crippled.

Furthermore, I understood that in this prolonged military mission, beyond the initial military routing of Al Qaida, was a matter of us helping the Afghans, and not the other way around.

Far from us offering financial provision for the few Afghans who did attempt to help themselves, perhaps the Afghan people should be paying us, to compensate the British tax-payer and the thousands of soldiers and their families who have sacrificed much to prop up the unsteady regime of Hamid Karzai?

By Max Musson © 2013

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