Migration Watch UK has launched an official petition against Boris Johnson’s proposal to give amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants.

Boris Johnson told the House of Commons on Thursday that he favours an illegal migrant amnesty, and that his government will be looking at “the economic advantages and disadvantages” of issuing one.

Following his first statement to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, the Tory leader was reminded that he had “courted popularity with pledging an amnesty for illegal immigrants” as Mayor of London by Labour’s Rupa Huq, who asked him if he would now be “a man of his word” and deliver on it.

Johnson readily conceded that “[on] amnesty on illegal immigrants, it is absolutely true that I have raised it several times” and that “it did not receive an ​overwhelming endorsement from the previous prime minister when I raised it once in Cabinet” as Foreign Secretary — but that it was back on the table now that he was in charge.

Home Secretary: There ‘May Be’ One Million Illegal Migrants in UK

https://t.co/DamSjGXT4o — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) October 18, 2017

“I do think that our arrangements in theoretically being committed to the expulsion of perhaps half a million people who don’t have the correct papers and who may have been living and working here for many, many years without being involved in any criminal activity at all… I think that the legal position is anomalous,” he said — with “people who don’t have the correct papers” being a reference to people who have entered or stayed in the country illegally.

“[W]e need to look at our arrangements for people who have lived and worked here for a long time unable to enter the economy, unable to participate properly or pay taxes without documents,” he continued — casting his earlier suggestion that the people he was referring to hadn’t been involved in “criminal activity” into some doubt.

“We should look at it and, the truth is, the law already basically allows them an effective amnesty, that’s basically where we have settled now. But we should look at the economic advantages and disadvantages of going ahead with the policy that [Rupa Huq] described, and which I think she and I share,” he concluded, to some murmurs of discontent from the Tory backbenches.

The illegal migrant had already been arrested last year and released by cops, even though he had no right to be in the country https://t.co/Yp0Fi6mNLX — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 5, 2019

Alp Mehmet, chairman of the Migration Watch UK think tank and pressure group, told Breitbart London that “an amnesty would simply reward illegality and encourage more illegal immigration in the future.”

He said that his petition, organised in anticipation of Johnson becoming Prime Minister and pushing for amnesty, “carries the clear signal that amnesties for illegal immigration don’t work, as has been seen in Spain and Italy.”

“Amnesties are also unpopular,” he added. “Over three-quarters of the public — 77 per cent — see illegal immigration as a serious problem.”

Migration Watch UK has previously published research warning that official estimates for the number of illegal migrants in the country may far below the real figure, and that the impact of social housing, for example, could be massive, with costs running into the billions of pounds.

As expected, Prime Minister Johnson drops the pledge to cut net migration to below 100k per annum, supports amnesty for undocumented migrants and calls for standard skills-based migration policy. “Britain’s Trump?” Total rubbish. — Matthew Goodwin (@GoodwinMJ) July 25, 2019

Amnesties for illegal migrants in the United States, supposedly offered in hopes that they would clear the authorities’ backlog and give them a fresh start to get a grip on illegal immigration, have failed to have the desired effect.

Amnestied illegals simply used their new legal status to bring in relatives and spouses through “family reunification”, or chain migration, while new illegals were encouraged to enter in the belief that they too would eventually be allowed to stay if they simply remained undetected for long enough.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery