A scheme to relax immigration laws to allow tens of thousands of unskilled workers to enter the country to build Olympic sites is being drawn up for ministers.
Migrant workers may be needed to complete the stadiums for the 2012 Games and also to work on separate engineering projects, Government advisers believe.
But the prospect of a new wave of immigration for construction schemes - at a time when the recession has seen nearly 200,000 construction workers laid off in the past year - provoked furious protests last night.
Projects which may need to draw in migrant workers - both unskilled and skilled - from outside Europe include the Crossrail tunnel in London, the High Speed Two railway line to the north, and the decommissioning of old nuclear and coalfired power stations. Migrants may also be needed to prepare for a possible football World Cup in England in 2018, a paper drawn up by Home Office advisers suggests. An invitation to foreign workers to take part in showpiece projects would mean the abandonment of Labour's 'points based' immigration system upon which ministers are relying to cut immigration.
This is just an invitation to the BNP to cause trouble in East London and other parts of the country where large building projects are being built with the help of MIGRANT LABOUR. Has no-one apart from the BNP got a policy on immigration FIVE MONTHS AWAY FROM A GENERAL ELECTION?
