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Migrant Workers (Regularisation)

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I have been following his argument closely and with genuine interest. The evidence from other countries that have brought forward such regularisation measures would suggest that each time they have been introduced, a larger number of illegal immigrants have been introduced into the programme. For example, Italy has had five such programmes. In 1987-88, 119,000 illegal immigrants were regularised, and that figure has increased in stages, to 235,000 in 1990, 259,000 in 1996, 308,000 in 1998 and 700,000 in 2002. Does that not suggest that such regularisation programmes actually encourage illegal immigration?