London, Jan 15: The biggest concern for most people in Britain is rapid increase in number of immigrants and they want the law to be toughened up. Half the people are worried about pressure on public services and jobs.

Polls conducted by various organisations show that numbers of immigrants coming into the UK are a bigger issue than crime and law and order.

On Monday, Immigration minister Liam Byrne, has pledged to get tough with a “harsh” agenda to tackle the situation as he launched a
10-point get-tough plan.

He warned newcomers they will have to play by “unambiguous rules”, speak the language, obey laws and pay taxes. From today all visitors requiring visas will have to be fingerprinted.

Byrne said those applying for a British visa from any of 133 countries would now have their fingerprints checked against a database.

But critics said that the plan promised nothing new. Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: “The Home Secretary is trying to ride two horses. On the one hand trying to talk tough, while on the other, presiding over a policy of chaos and confusion.”

“We welcome biometric visas but our borders will remain seriously vulnerable without a dedicated UK border police,” the Daily Express quoted Davis, as saying.

Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of the NO2ID campaign group, slammed the announcements as “pure spin”.

“With the Prime Minister committed to an unmanageable and unpopular ID card programme, the Government is panicking and wants you to panic too. This is an attempt to produce the illusion of control, and hide the budget for fingerprinting you and yours under the more popular heading of ‘immigration’,” he said.

A Home Office survey last month showed about three quarters of the population believe there should be an annual limit on immigration.

Earlier, a Migrationwatch report said that the British Government would have to build almost two million new homes just to cope with the immigrant influx in the near future.

For next 18 years 263 houses must go up every day, the equivalent of five cities of the size of Birmingham, it said.

Four in 10 of all new homes will go to new migrants, the report claimed.

Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of the Migrationwatch, said that immigration levels "are 25 times higher than at any time in nearly a thousand years of our history".

Migration into England will grow from 130,000 a year now to 171,500 in 2026, according to the Government's own projections.

The growth of the annual influx will see the number of new immigrant households rise from 73,000 now to 96,000 in 2026.

New households overall will rise from 223,000 a year to 246,000. New migrant homes will account for 39 per cent of those. (ANI)