Immigration Watch International

The new law recently signed by the governor of Arizona, SB 1070, makes it a state crime to violate some federal immigration statutes. While the law is extremely popular in the state, with 70 percent of Arizona voters approving of it and just 23 percent opposed, it has raised controversy. Below is a brief summary of the relevant information on illegal immigration in Arizona, followed by a short analysis of SB 1070’s major provisions.

* The federal government estimated that Arizona had one of the fastest growing illegal immigrant populations in the country, increasing from 330,000 in 2000 to 560,000 by 2008.1

* Arizona has adopted other laws to deter the settlement of illegal immigrants in the state in recent years. The federal government estimates that the illegal immigrant population dropped by 18 percent in the state from 2008 to 2009, compared to a 7 percent drop for the nation as a whole.2 This may be evidence that the state enforcement efforts are having an impact.

* The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has found that 22 percent of felonies in the county are committed by illegal immigrants.3 Illegal immigrants are estimated to be 10 percent of the county’s adult population.4

* Analysis of data from State Criminal Alien Assistance Program showed that illegal immigrants were 11 percent of the state’s prison population. Illegal immigrants were estimated to be 8 percent of state’s adult population at the time of the analysis.5

* Approximately 17 percent of those arrested by the Border Patrol in its Tucson Sector have criminal records in the United States.6

* The issue of illegal immigration and crime is very difficult to measure, and while in Arizona there is evidence that illegal immigrants are committing a disproportionate share of crime, it is not clear this is the case nationally.7

* In 2007, the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that 12 percent of workers in the Arizona are illegal immigrants.8

* In 2007, the Center estimated that illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) comprise one-fifth of those in the state living in poverty, one-third of those without health insurance, and one out of six students in the state’s schools.9

* In 2007, the Center estimated that one-third of households headed by illegal immigrants in Arizona used at least one major welfare program, primarily food-assistance programs or Medicaid. Benefits were typically received on behalf of U.S.-born children.10

* The new law (SB 1070) is extremely popular among Arizona voters. A Rasmussen poll found that 70 percent of voters approve of the new bill, and just 23 percent oppose it.11

Among the new law’s provisions:

* The new Arizona law mirrors federal law, which already requires aliens (non-citizens) to register and carry their documents with them (8 USC 1304(e) and 8 USC 1306(a)). The new Arizona law simply states that violating federal immigration law is now a state crime as well. Because illegal immigrants are by definition in violation of federal immigration laws, they can now be arrested by local law enforcement in Arizona.

* The law is designed to avoid the legal pitfall of “pre-emption,” which means a state can’t adopt laws that conflict with federal laws. By making what is a federal violation also a state violation, the Arizona law avoids this problem.

* The law only allows police to ask about immigration status in the normal course of “lawful contact” with a person, such as a traffic stop or if they have committed a crime.

* Estimates from the federal government indicate that more than 80 percent of illegal immigrants come from Latin America.12 Thus, there is concern that police may target only Hispanics for enforcement.

* Before asking a person about immigration status, law enforcement officials are required by the law to have “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal immigrant. The concept of “reasonable suspicion” is well established by court rulings. Since Arizona does not issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, having a valid license creates a presumption of legal status. Examples of reasonable suspicion include:

o A driver stopped for a traffic violation has no license, or record of a driver’s license or other form of federal or state identification.
o A police officer observes someone buying fraudulent identity documents or crossing the border illegally.
o A police officer recognizes a gang member back on the street who he knows has been previously deported by the federal government.

* The law specifically states that police, “may not solely consider race, color or national origin” when implementing SB 1070.

* When Arizona’s governor signed the new law, she also issued an executive order requiring the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board to provide local police with additional training on what does and what does not constitute “reasonable suspicion.”13

Arizona’s new immigration law shows what happens when a state on the front lines of a failed immigration policy reaches the bursting point. What you get is a blunt instrument that produces lawsuits, more political polarization (if that’s possible) and the risk of hostility between the local police and the public.

The law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. without proper documents. It allows the police to stop anyone on “reasonable suspicion” that they may be in the country unlawfully and arrest them on the spot if they can’t produce identity papers. The police aren’t required to have a search warrant or even to suspect some illegal action has occurred before questioning a person. Traditionally the federal government has enforced immigration laws, so this is an extraordinary state criminalization of a heretofore federal authority.

Not every undocumented U.S. resident is Latino, but most are. Given that about one-third of Arizona residents are Latino, opponents of the measure fear it will raise charges of “racial profiling.” The ever-helpful Al Sharpton has already announced that he’s headed to Phoenix. More legal challenges are expected before the law takes effect later this summer.

The loud voices denouncing “Arizona” should understand that the results of the nation’s failed immigration policies have come down on this state. Hundreds of local immigration measures have been enacted nationwide with the goal of restricting access to everything from housing to jobs to drivers’ licenses. As these efforts squeezed the border in the 1990s via three-tier fencing, remote-control cameras and motion-detection devices in Texas and California, Arizona became the major, often violent, entry corridor.

Arizona’s police chiefs association opposed the new law. Local enforcement agencies don’t want responsibility for enforcing national immigration laws because they say it makes them less effective at their day jobs. When people in immigrant communities see the local police as deportation agents, they become less likely to report crimes and help in investigations. Conditions worsen.

Restrictionists insist, with some justification, that these laws are shrinking the illegal population. The larger reality is that border crossings track the economy. The recent downturn has meant fewer illegal entries and more immigrants going home. Before the law, Arizona’s illegal population had fallen 18% in the past year.

Congressional Democrats have no intention of enacting serious immigration reform before November. President Obama is surely playing politics with the situation in Arizona for gain in the fall. He’d like to pick a fight and define Republicans as anti-Hispanic going into the election, without having to propose anything substantive.

We’d support a national immigration reform that was realistic about the fact that most of these are economic migrants who will find a way to come here in any case if this is where the jobs are. The most effective way to reduce illegal entries and defuse these tensions is to expand legal channels, including guest worker programs. This would reduce illegal immigration and free up security resources to threats from drug gangs and the like.

But so long as Republicans, Democrats and Mr. Obama mainly view immigration as an electoral weapon, the nation can expect more desperate laws like Arizona’s.

Prabath Aluthge, chief of Sri Lanka’s National Counter Human Trafficking Resource Centre, told The Australian the recent wave of boat arrivals was driven by success stories spread by Sri Lankans who had travelled to Australia.

But as authorities intercepted another boat carrying 41 asylum-seekers near Ashmore Reef on Monday, Mr Aluthge said a crackdown by the Sri Lankan authorities and the toughening of Australia’s asylum regime had led to a decline in the number of boats leaving Sri Lanka.

And Malaysian authorities announced they had stopped an Australia-bound boat carrying 75 Sri Lankans from leaving Malaysia on Friday.

In an exclusive interview, Mr Aluthge said he expected the changes in procedure, which include the suspension of processing of all new Sri Lankan asylum claims for three months, would have a deterrent effect, as would the deportation of people whose claims had been unsuccessful, a move foreshadowed by the Rudd government.

Australia was considered to be a soft option by prospective Sri Lankan boatpeople, Mr Aluthge said. “I think you have a very lenient asylum policy,” he said. “These people, they want to go to a country where asylum policy is very lenient, where it is easy (to obtain) citizenship, easy to get welfare benefits from the host government,” the Sri Lankan official said.

Mr Aluthge said neither Tamil nor Sinhalese Sri Lankans had any grounds for claiming asylum in Australia now the country’s bloody civil war had ended.

Since 2009, almost 1000 Sri Lankans, mostly minority Tamils, have arrived in Australia by boat.

All told, they comprised about 20 per cent of the total number of boatpeople to arrive as part of the present surge.

“The successful people informed their friends about Australia – to come there and you can earn something and you can get political asylum very easily,” Mr Aluthge said. “They motivate with this information.”

However, Mr Aluthge said there had been a decline in boats leaving Sri Lanka for Australia. “We have an awareness campaign. There are police very alert. We have established a coast guard department,” he said. “And . . . now the war is over, the entire navy can work with the coast guard.”

Most smuggling rings in Sri Lanka were organised out of Colombo or the Negombo region north of the capital, he said. But the market is mostly Tamils in the northern part of the country.

Mr Aluthge said the organisers paid agents across the country to recruit passengers, sometimes even guaranteeing their debt for the journey, which could run from $5000 to $10,000. “They sometimes mortgage their properties, sometimes they get bank guarantees,” he said.

A year ago, when I interviewed Roy Beck, head of Numbers USA, he didn’t think that they had the votes:

Just look at the Senate. It looks like there’s going to be a good chance that the Senate is going to have 59 Democrats. …There were about 15 Democrats who voted against the amnesty in 2007. I think we ought to get about half of those and maybe more. If you got 8 Democrats to vote against it, that means you’d need 9 Republicans. I don’t see it. At most, I see 6 and they might not get but 2 or 3 — especially if they offend McCain.

…I don’t think Pelosi thinks she has the votes. …She goes out and makes statements that get all of us all upset and gets her applause from the Hispanic caucus. But …there were right around 50 Democrats who co-sponsored the SAVE ACT last year, which was a very, very strong enforcement bill. This amnesty will not have nearly the strength of that. I think one of the reasons that those Democrats signed that bill is that they’re from districts whose constituents are pushing them hard on this. So, I think we’d have a good chance to get 60-70 Democrats in the House to vote against that and I don’t think we ought to lose more than a half dozen Republicans. If we did that well, then we’d beat it in the House.

Keep in mind that since then, in large part because of health care and deficit spending, the political environment has become absolutely poisonous for Democrats. There are plenty of predictions that the Democrats will lose the House, only Democrats in bluest districts can feel completely safe, and make no mistake about it: comprehensive immigration reform would be about as popular as Barack Obama at a Tea Party.

So, why would the Democrats consider pushing the bill at all if it won’t pass? There are probably two reasons for it.

One, they’re hoping that it’ll fire up the Democrats’ Hispanic base, which is an iffy proposition to begin with. Although Hispanic Americans do tend to be pro-illegal immigration, polls show that for the most part, it’s not one of their biggest issues. Still, the Democrats have made a lot of promises and some Hispanic liberals are starting to get antsy. For example, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (Ill.) has been threatening to encourage Hispanic Americans to “stay home” on election day to punish Democrats for not pushing amnesty.

Plus, as an extra added bonus, Republicans fought each other like rabid wolverines over the issue last time and the Democrats will be hoping for a repeat while they scream “racist,” “nativist,” and “bigot” from the sidelines. In other words, this probably has a lot more to do with politics than policy.

So, since that’s the case, how do we fight this bill? We fight it by playing it smart, not tearing each other to shreds, and by sticking with the arguments that will have the most resonance in the 2010 election.

#1) We need “security first.” Even John McCain, the man who led the fight for comprehensive immigration reform last time around, has since admitted that the American people don’t believe we’ll secure the border.

Incidentally, there’s good reason for that. For example, the Obama Administration has announced that the border fence which was begun by the Bush Administration won’t be “finished until at least 2016.” So, if we’re lucky, in 2016, 15 years after 9/11, we may for the first time have a secure border that terrorists can’t just walk over with a nuclear bomb. That’ll be great, won’t it?

Tell you what: let’s stop putting the cart before the horse. Let’s finish the fence, adequately staff the border patrol, get a proven system in place to prevent illegal aliens from being able to get jobs with fake Social Security numbers and then and only then, we can come back and discuss the whole “path to citizenship” issue. If that’s too long to wait for the illegal immigrants, then they can always just go home.

#2) Jobs, jobs, jobs. Amnesty for illegals: It’s for those times when you have a 9.7% unemployment rate & want to take even more jobs from Americans. When so many people are out of work and having trouble taking care of their families, why in the world would anyone want to give away American jobs and drive down American wages? How out of touch with what’s going on in this country do you have to be to want to hand American jobs to foreigners via amnesty when so many people are hurting?

#3) We’re too broke for an amnesty. As is, 47 percent of Americans are paying no income taxes. Do we really need to add to their ranks — and let’s not kid ourselves because that’s what we’re talking about.

Point being, if 47 percent of Americans aren’t paying income taxes, how many illegals, most of whom have low paying jobs, would be paying income taxes if they became citizens? 10%? 20%? In other words, when the country is broke, why do we want to bring in millions more people to collect food stamps, welfare, and earned income tax credits even though they don’t pay income tax? Are we so short of Americans who do that sort of thing that we actually need to bring in poor people from other parts of the globe to take advantage of our social safety net?

#4) Amnesty is unfair to immigrants. Nobody has been treated worse in the whole amnesty debate than legal immigrants. They love and respect this country enough to obey the rules — and what do they get in return? Oftentimes, they have to wait in their home country. They fill out reams of paperwork. They pay thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Then what happens? They’re spoken of in the same breath as some guy who snuck into our country in the middle of the night and stole somebody’s Social Security number. Furthermore, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, illegals are going to be rewarded for breaking American laws while legal immigrants have to put up with the same old hassles. What’s the message to legal immigrants? The message is, “You’re stupid for loving and respecting this country enough to obey our laws.” Legal immigrants to this country deserve to be treated better than that.

#5) We’ve already tried this once before. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. As former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese has noted, we’ve already tried this once during the Reagan Administration.

They allowed roughly 2.7 million illegal aliens to become citizens and in exchange, we were supposed to implement security measures to fix the system. Guess what? We never fixed the security problem and today, we’re talking about giving citizenship to roughly 4 times as many illegals.

So, why would anyone who actually wants to solve the problem suggest implementing a government policy that’s already a proven failure? Of course, that’s just it: What politicians want is more illegal workers to pad the bottom lines of businesses that give them campaign contributions and more potential voters for the Democratic Party. What they don’t want is to fix the problem because they’re worried about what’s good for them personally, not what’s good for the country.

A boat with 49 suspected asylum seekers and two crew was intercepted north-north-west of Ashmore Islands on Sunday night, the 114th to arrive since the Rudd Government softened John Howard’s border regime. This took the number of people in 2009-10 to 4210, the highest in a financial year, with two months to go.

Opposition immigration and citizenship spokesman Scott Morrison said the number eclipsed the 4175 in 1999-2000 and the 4137 in 2000-01. “To paraphrase Kevin Rudd, he had a gold medal year on boat arrivals in 2009-10,” Mr Morrison said.

Mr Howard still holds the record for the most number of boat arrivals in a calendar year – 5516 in 2001. That may be broken, with the rate of boat arrivals this year exceeding the pre-Tampa Howard era.

A spokesman for the Immigration Department yesterday said 2063 asylum seekers were housed on Christmas Island, which will rise to 2114. Christmas Island’s capacity is 2040, with 400 extra beds still weeks from being ready after bad weather stalled work.

The Federal Opposition is demanding Mr Rudd and Immigration and Citizenship Minister Chris Evans admit what it’s costing the Government to house the influx. “Figures obtained from Senate Estimates earlier this year revealed when the Rudd Government prepared the 2009-10 budget they believed only 200 people would arrive,” Mr Morrison said.

“In November last year Senator Evans asked for an [extra] $134 million to cover 1400 arrivals, with each arrival costing $81,900. “With this year’s arrivals now at 4210 we can expect an additional bill of more than $200 million, based on the figures previously provided by the Immigration Department.”

He said Senator Evans should release a statement of the increased costs of flights between Christmas Island and the mainland. “The Minister must also detail new costs such as reopening the Curtin detention centre and increased operational costs at the other detention centres around Australia . . . taking the spillover from Christmas Island.”

On Friday another boat en route to Australia, containing 75 Sri Lankans, was stopped by Malaysian police.

Excerpt: President Obama and his allies have made no secret about their immigration goals: easy amnesty, loose enforcement, and ever-higher levels of legal immigration. One prominent labor leader has boasted that continued mass immigration ‘will solidify and expand the progressive coalition for the future.’

********

2. New Arizona Law Puts Pressure on Utah

Excerpt: When Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the toughest state illegal immigration law in the nation on April 23, 2010, it made it imperative that Utah’s newly enacted child identity theft protection law (SB251) take effect as scheduled on July 1, 2010, without any changes.

If the Utah law isn’t implemented as scheduled, Utah’s widely perceived sanctuary state status, complete with driving privilege cards and an in-state college tuition program for illegal aliens, will make it a prime destination for illegal aliens currently living in Arizona and for those who continue to unlawfully enter the United States.

********

3. USCIS, Interpreter Releases Rally Around Shrunken H-1B Program

Excerpt: The once unstoppable H-1B program that used to bring more than 100,000 new temporary alien workers every year to the U.S. appears to be in trouble, and its friends are rallying around.

USCIS is currently running what looks very much like an advertisement for the program, included in the flashing photo-montage of highlights on its website, and the Grand Old Man of Immigration Law has written somberly about the program and its problems.

********

4. Activists Amplify Arizona Act, Accelerating Attrition Aftermath

Excerpt: Arizona Gov. Brewer dealt with the immigration bill very neatly this afternoon — she signed the bill, supporting it unapologetically, but at the same time issued an executive order directing the development of a training program on how to implement the law without racial profiling. The lefties outraged by the bill aren’t going to be placated by the executive order (which is kind of redundant, since cops everywhere a awash in sensitivity training), but it will be helpful for lots of Arizonans who support the bill but don’t want to feel guilty about it.

********

5. Poetry vs. Prose

Excerpt: The president’s comments today criticizing the Arizona bill were pretty anodyne. He described it as an example of ‘irresponsibility’ (at least he didn’t say they ‘acted stupidly’), but implicitly justified it in a clinging-to-their-guns-and-religion fashion by saying it was the kind of thing that would happen in the absence of amnesty. Also: ‘I’ve instructed members of my administration to closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation.’ The ACLU’s going to make sure that the Ninth Circuit does that, so the administration is off the hook for now.

********

6. Will They or Won’t They?

Excerpt: As I’ve written before, there isn’t going to be a ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ bill reaching the president’s desk this year; it’s just not going to happen. But there is going to be a lot of sturm und drang about it, as the president signaled in his comments today on the subject.

Byron York has a piece today where he asks ‘So why are Obama, Pelosi and Reid going forward?’ He opts for the fifth of his five possible explanations: ‘They’re fully aware that the public doesn’t want ‘comprehensive’ reform but are racing to do as much as they can before the elections take away their power to defy the public’s wishes.’

********

7. VOA Interviews Kephart on Amnesty

Excerpt: Voice of America in Washington DC did an un-biased piece on the prospect for amnesty that aired worldwide on beginning April 12, 2010. It concludes that, despite demonstrations by those supporting “immigration reform” in Washington D.C. in March 2010, the prospect for such legislation, at least for now, is not good. Chris Simkins reported for VOA in the video below and in the linked article above.

********

8. Within Reason: Officers Checking Status

Excerpt: This week the Arizona state legislature passed a bill that, among other things, says that if local law enforcement officers encounter someone they suspect is an illegal alien, they should take ‘reasonable’ steps to try to determine the alien’s immigration status. A new web program sheds light on issues such as these.

********

9. Senate Hearing: Terrorism Policy 7, Immigration Policy 1

Excerpt: There was an interesting and unconscious test of the attractions of immigration and terrorism policy yesterday on Capitol Hill.

Eight speakers attended a Senate hearing on ‘visa security’; seven of them spoke only, or almost only, on airports and terrorism; one (John McCain) spoke about illegal immigration. Given the duties of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, any of the eight could have spoken about either subject.

********

10. More than 1.1 Million Secured Immigrant Status in FY 2009

Excerpt: A total of 1,130,818 persons obtained permanent resident alien status in fiscal year 2009; it was the first time in U.S. history that this number topped one million for the fifth year in a row.

Department of Homeland Security data on the year was released a few days ago.

********

11. American Common Sense and Legal Immigration

Excerpt: An item on the political website RealClearPolitics argues that Americans are just fine with high legal immigration – rather, it’s just illegal immigration they have a problem with and are exercised about. But that argument doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

********

12. The Migration Problems of the Rich and Famous are USCIS’s Concern

Excerpt: The USCIS has begun a comprehensive review of one aspect of its decision-making, and it starts in an interesting place – the migration problems of the rich and famous.

The agency has released a summary of the April 12, 2010, ‘listening session’ which dealt with the ‘Request for Evidence Project,’ an examination of the agency’s requests for information in connection with the three nonimmigrant visa classes, O, P, and Q, and one immigrant category, E 11.

********

13. Attrition Through Enforcement Marches On

Excerpt: The Arizona Senate yesterday approved the final House version of an immigration bill, sending it to the governor for her signature (which is expected, though she hasn’t committed to it yet). The bill describes its intent this way

Indeed our failure to act responsibly at the federal level will only open the door to irresponsibility by others. And that includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona which threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe. In fact, I’ve instructed members of my administration to closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation, but if we continue to fail to act at the federal level we will continue to see misguided efforts opening up around the country.

THE government is allowing illegal immigrants and asylum seekers to stay in the country because it fails to send staff to one in five appeal hearings.

Figures obtained under freedom of information (FoI) laws show that Home Office officials, who are supposed to defend decisions on asylum and immigration, failed to show up for 34,627 appeals last year, more than double the 2006 figure of 15,272.

Half of these hearings resulted in a victory for the appellant, up from just over a third two years ago. Many led to people staying who had been refused the right to remain.

The failure of the Home Office to send officials to fight its case was described as “inexcusable” by Chris Grayling, the Conservative shadow home secretary.

Grayling said: “It’s absolutely inexcusable for people who are in Britain illegally to avoid deportation simply because of Home Office incompetence. This has really got to be sorted out.”

It undermines claims by ministers that they have secured Britain’s borders. This month Alan Johnson, the home secretary, defended the government’s record and accused the Liberal Democrats of being inept on the issue.

Last week reporters spent two days at Taylor House in Islington, north London, one of the country’s busiest asylum centres.

On one day, 24 out of the 26 hearings went ahead without a Home Office presenting officer. On a second day the figures were 21 out of 26 unattended. Last year there were 171,000 such hearings nationwide.

A judge who was hearing the case at Taylor House of a Nigerian student fighting for the right to stay told her: “It is not my job to step into the shoes of the secretary of state and cross-examine you, but I may now be forced to do that.”

The Home Office also failed to attend an asylum appeal at the tribunal in London brought by the 19-year-old son of a former Iraqi intelligence officer who had worked for Saddam Hussein.

The teenager, who had been in Britain since 2007, claimed his life would be in danger if he had to return to Iraq. This is despite a previous Home Office decision that the children of former Ba’ath party officials were not at risk.

Last week the case of Zulfar Hussain, a paedophile who won the right to stay in Britain after claiming his human rights would be breached if he was deported to his native Pakistan, drew criticism of the immigration appeal system.

The 48-year-old is soon to be freed after completing half of a five-year jail sentence for abducting and sexually exploiting two 15-year-old girls. Hussain plied his victims, who were living in care and described as vulnerable, with drugs and alcohol. The Home Office admitted in a letter accompanying the FoI request that staff shortages meant it could not supply officers for all cases.

Immigration lawyers say the “farcical” non-appearance by Home Office staff significantly improves their clients’ chances of victory and judges say it undermines justice.

Simon Harding, a barrister with the London chambers of 36 Bedford Row, said: “These are Alice in Wonderland courts and you will rarely see a Home Office officer. In practice what it means is that fewer people are getting deported.”

Adam Pipe, a barrister in Birmingham, said: “Yes, there are times when you think, great, there is no one here from the other side.”

In the absence of a Home Office representative the judge has to rely on a written bundle of evidence provided by the Home Office. Some judges have been forced to ask lawyers bringing the appeal effectively to cross-examine their own clients by raising points of clarification.

Fokrul Islam, of the Oldham law firm Lawmans, said: “It is a farce because I am clearly not going to ask a client a question which will harm their case.”

Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, accepted that the government was not able to staff all the hearings. “As far as staffing goes, you do get peaks and troughs and sometimes there are shortages,” he said. “At the same time we are working through a huge backlog of cases. We always staff those cases where an individual is considered a threat to the public in some way.”

He added: “Often we choose not to fight a case because the circumstances of the appellant change.”

The British National Party, inheritor of the ideological mantle of Oswald Mosley’s Union of Fascists in the 1930s, can realistically hope to win only one London-area constituency among the 650 House of Commons seats — if even that. But opinion polls suggest that the party will attract significantly more of the popular vote than the seven-tenths of 1 percent it won in 2005.

The party’s rise, such as it may be, can be traced to the same issue — the rapid increase in nonwhite immigration, particularly from the Muslim world — that has recently empowered far-right parties across Europe, notably in France. Britain’s counterpart to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the demagogic French politician who reached a runoff for the presidency in 2002, is Nick Griffin, a soberly suited, 51-year-old Cambridge-educated graduate in history and law.

Mr. Griffin is a fringe politician. But in this election, more than in any other in memory, popular anxiety about the rapid rise in immigration in the 13 years of Labour rule is the ghost at the banquet. It is a political reality strong enough, according to opinion polls, to influence votes in dozens of constituencies, but one that the major parties can afford to address only in the most modulated of keys, and then, usually, only when others raise it on the campaign trail.

To understand that, it is enough to recall Enoch Powell. Forty-two years ago, Mr. Powell, a prominent Conservative, made a speech saying Britain “had to be mad” to admit 50,000 immigrants a year, mostly then from British islands in the Caribbean. He likened the consequences to the “tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic,” the 1968 race riots in America. A classicist, he indulged his passion for ancient history. “I am filled with foreboding,” he said. “Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’ ”

Mr. Powell was promptly sacked from the Conservatives’ shadow cabinet; he left the party and wandered in the political shadows until his death in 1998. His “rivers of blood” speech has stood ever since as a warning to mainstream politicians of the fate of those who raise the immigration issue with overwrought language, particularly with a racist tinge. In 2005, many people thought Michael Howard, then the Conservative leader, crossed the line with his tough language on immigration, further dooming his party to its third straight loss to Labour.

Small wonder, then, that the prime ministerial contenders trod warily when a nonwhite woman in the audience raised the issue at the second of three televised election debates on Thursday.

To nobody’s surprise, each of the three emphasized the need to curb migrant inflows. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat, urged an amnesty for the million or so illegal immigrants estimated to have lived in Britain for 10 years or more, to “get them out of the hands of criminal gangs,” balanced by stricter border controls; Prime Minister Gordon Brown, for Labour, said new identity cards for foreign residents and a points system for immigration applicants had begun to cut the numbers; David Cameron, the Conservative, advocated a cap on entrants from outside the European Union, “to get it down radically.”

But their competing policies were less notable than the care the three took to avoid any shade of prejudice. “The first thing to say,” Mr. Cameron said, “is that we have benefited from immigration; and people who come here and live legally, we should be incredibly warm and welcoming and hospitable and build a strong and integrated country. I think it’s really important to say that, first up.”

One party leader not invited to the debates was Mr. Griffin, though he wrenched the debate back down to street level on Friday when he unveiled the B.N.P.’s election manifesto. It called for “absolutely no further immigration from any Muslim countries, as it presents one of the most deadly threats to the survival of our nation.” Mr. Griffin said Britain was “full up,” and it was time to “close the doors.”

What has given the issue new political weight is the scale of immigration during Labour rule. Extrapolations from government figures suggest that looser regulations adopted in Tony Blair’s early years as prime minister have led to a net inward migration of about two million people since 1997, with a peak of 330,000 in 2007. Many new arrivals have come legally from East European nations in the European Union, notably Poland. But by far the most non-Europeans have been Muslims, who historically have been slower to assimilate than other immigrants.