MOSCOW (Sputnik), Alexander Mosesov – The United Kingdom serves as a welfare office for the world’s impoverished population, the leader of Britain First party told Sputnik on Monday.
Last week, the UK Home Office announced plans to cut automatic weekly financial support to rejected asylum seekers remaining on UK soil starting next summer. The cuts are estimated to affect at least 2,900 families while saving the government £49 million ($76 million) a year.
"Britain is like a social security office for the world’s poor," Britain First leader Paul Golding stressed.
Golding told Sputnik the estimated 4,000 migrants in the northern French port of Calais, some of whom he has spoken with, "are not here to embrace our country, but to exploit it."
"They are looking for handouts and benefits," he stressed.
The deputy mayor of Calais implicated London's welfare and benefits policy for the ongoing crisis.
Up to 10 deaths have been reported this summer amid thousands of attempts to board Eurotunnel trains or passing lorries en route to the southern British shores.
Security at the border has been reinforced with additional guards, sniffer dogs and fences, although migrants continue to breach defences and enter the United Kingdom in droves.
The chief constable of Kent County in southeast UK estimated last week that as many as 70 percent of the migrants from Calais could successfully reach Britain.
"Hordes of cheap labour entering the UK jobs market decrease wages and undercuts British workers," Britain First leader Paul Golding added.
Golding argued that the estimated 3.5 million unemployed Britons remove any need for foreign workers to enter the UK labour market.
"It’s time to shut the door and put our own people first," he argued.
The Bank of England estimated that the number of foreign workers in the UK rose by 300,000 this year.
Half of the 1.91 million Europeans working in England hail from the former Eastern bloc, while another 1.18 million arrived from outside the European Union.
Westminster is attempting to make Britain less attractive to foreign workers with Prime Minister David Cameron’s post-election anti-immigration proposal.
Among the measures unveiled by Cameron are reducing the demand for highly-skilled foreign workers and developing a local workforce through 3 million additional apprenticeships.
