Leading article: The Home Secretary is using foul language

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the "enforcement strategy" for dealing with migrants unveiled by the Home Secretary, John Reid, yesterday. It was the usual ragbag of draconian measures, half-baked ideas and headline-grabbing gimmicks that we have had from this government on the subject of immigration many times before.

There are to be text-message reminders for people over-staying their visas; compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals seeking to settle in the UK; fines for landlords housing illegal immigrants. Pilot schemes are to be established to use ID card data to ensure migrants pay for NHS care. A "watch list" of people not entitled to public services will be created. Some of these ideas, such as the clampdown on landlords, could do real harm if property owners decide it is more trouble than it is worth letting rooms to migrants. Most, however, will probably be quietly dropped when they prove unworkable.

Related articles

• Britain shamed for its 'immoral' exploitation of foreign labour
• Reid: illegal immigrants are scroungers

But in truth, this announcement was never really about the Home Office taking effective action. It was about political posturing, of the most reprehensible kind. Consider the way the Home Secretary set the scene for these proposals on the BBC's Breakfast show yesterday: "It is unfair that foreigners come to this country and steal our benefits, steal our services like the NHS and undermine the minimum wage by working." He continued in the same hysterical vein on Radio Five Live, boasting: "We are now throwing out more asylum seekers - failed asylum seekers - than ever before." This hysterical talk of "foreigners" who are "stealing" from native Britons and of "throwing out" asylum seekers is the kind of language usually associated with the far right. It is quite shameful to hear it coming from a British Home Secretary. Mr Reid claims these measures are directed at unregistered migrant workers. But the effect of his words will be to increase public animosity to immigrants in general.

There is indeed a problem with respect to migrant workers and their access to housing, healthcare and employment in Britain. But it is precisely the opposite to the one identified by the Home Secretary. As a report by the Von Hugel Institute pointed out yesterday, most overseas workers in Britain are, in fact, grossly exploited by employers. Far from "stealing" British jobs, they are filling gaps in our economy and being paid a pittance for doing so. If the Home Secretary is truly concerned about gangmasters undercutting the minimum wage by employing unregistered workers, he could help by giving asylum seekers the right to work while their claims are being processed by his inefficient department. The vast majority would be glad of a chance to pay taxes, rather than live on benefits.

The Home Secretary also neglected to mention yesterday that migrant workers tend to be crammed into the worst housing. And far from milking the NHS, they are less likely to come forward for treatment when they need it. Ill-health and poverty are common among migrant groups. The Government should be looking at ways to help them, not to make their lives "ever more uncomfortable and constrained" as Dr Reid put it yesterday. The UK is the only major EU economy that failed to mention migrants in its national anti-poverty strategy recently submitted to the European Commission. So much for "soft touch" Britain.

Dr Reid argues that "It's not uncivilised to treat our own nationals differently from overseas citizens." No, but "uncivilised" is certainly a fair description of a government that, having reaped the economic benefits brought by migrant workers to this country over the past decade, repays them by stoking up a popular climate of naked hostility and ill-informed prejudice.