This week I stood up in the European Parliament in Strasbourg and spoke about an ‘inconvenient truth’. It was a speech that most in the chamber simply did not want to hear. To howls of derision, I told the European Parliament that what we have now on the continent is not a refugee crisis, as the media continues to tell us, but an economic migrant one.

In my opinion, we need to be honest about the problem we are facing and call it what it is. Now is not the time for politically correct language. The liberal Left, in their desire to please all of the people all of the time, are helping no one and solving nothing. These are issues that need addressing head on.

The current economic migrant crisis continues to drag on and won’t be going away any time soon. This is simply because the European response to the mass movement of people from Africa and the Middle East has been so contradictory and confusing that many are still flooding into Europe in their droves.

The UKIP stance on immigration is well documented. At the 2015 General Election my party stood on a platform of allowing skilled migration and putting an end to mass, unskilled, uncontrolled immigration. The Labour and the Conservative parties respectively have more often than not been far too afraid to even mention the issue for fear of enraging the liberal left and the apologists who continue to do down our great country.

However, since the elections in May, it seems that the topic of immigration is all these nay-sayers can talk about. This week we had Home Secretary Theresa May pledging a crackdown on asylum seekers and immigration. Empty words when you consider the latest net migration figures stand at a record 330,000 in the year to March 2015.

Meanwhile only last week, Labour leadership loser and political flip-flopper Andy Burnham blamed EU migration for ‘widening inequality’ and a ‘race-to-the-bottom’ with regard to workers’ wages. Either Burnham has had an epiphany, or he has been wilfully lying to the British people when he talked about mass immigration being of great benefit in the past. In fact, his party leader, Comrade Corbyn, believes in a Britain without borders, free from any nuclear deterrent, and seemingly free from any sense of national identity.

The current economic migration crisis continues unabated and we are still being told that Britain isn’t doing enough. In a previous article, I highlighted that we already do more than our fair share in accepting asylum seekers. However, regardless of what we are being told by the media and politicians, the majority of these people are not genuine asylum seekers from war-torn Syria, they are opportunistic economic migrants who see the prospect of work and benefits in rich northern EU member states worth risking their lives for.

According to Eurostat (the EU’s own statistical gathering body), between April and June this year the EU counted in some 213,000 so-called refugees, yet only 44,000 actually came from Syria. Eighty per cent came from elsewhere with 27,000 coming from Afghanistan and nearly 18,000 coming from Albania, a country hoping to join the EU in the not too distant future.

These men – and they are predominantly men – from Albania, are simply attempting to jump the queue under the guise of being a Syrian refugee. Many are travelling on fake Syrian passports, of course. Last month Dutch journalist Harald Doornbos revealed that he was able to buy a genuine-looking Syrian passport for as little as $825 (about £540) in Turkey and have it ready within forty hours. In fact, the German government has said that a third of ‘Syrians’ reaching Germany are in possession of forged Syrian passports and ID cards.

I do wonder where all the women and children are, as virtually all of these migrants seem to be young, healthy men. Only last week the charity Human Relief Foundation reported from the so-called ‘Jungle’ migrant camp in Calais (pictured above) that between 95-97 per cent are men.

So where are the women and children? Back at home in Syria sheltering from bombs and ISIS? If that is the case, then how very gallant and brave of these young men of fighting age to abandon their families in Syria.

American video journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem recently interviewed women in refugee camps in Syria and the general feeling amongst them was that their men had abandoned them. However, on the whole, figures suggest only a small minority of these men making their way across Europe are actually from Syria.

On top of this we also have the security issue. Worryingly, ISIS claim that as many as four thousand Islamist fanatics have covertly smuggled themselves into Europe posing as refugees. In addition, this week it was also announced that the FBI and authorities in Moldova are fighting hard to prevent radioactive materials from falling into the hands of ISIS terrorists. Imagine what carnage they could cause if they had access to caesium and other dangerous and radioactive chemicals. It is clear ISIS view the chaos in Europe as an opportunity.

Finally, if we have learned anything this week it is that EU leaders have decided how to finally resolve this never ending migration crisis.

On their visit to the European Parliament, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have called for… wait for it… even more European integration.

My question is: do we really need ‘more Europe’? Indeed, I suggest it is the EU that has facilitated much of this crisis.

With the Schengen agreement in tatters and opposition to proposed EU asylum quotas led by Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has claimed that 95 per cent of refugees are in fact economic migrants, I am beginning to wonder whether by 2017 there will actually still be a functional and working EU from which we can withdraw.