DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Why do we give sanctuary to those who despise our Western values?

Published: 18:00 EST, 13 November 2026 | Updated: 18:00 EST, 13 November 2026 How long can the Government go on stubbornly refusing to recognise the dire threat to national security posed by uncontrolled mass migration?Listening to Andy Burnham and his equally deluded Cabinet, you’d think migrants were all model citizens working diligently in the NHS or care system. They are not.Many clearly do not share Western values of equality, tolerance and adherence to the rule of law. Indeed, some actively and violently despise them.The case of Mohammed Alfatih, a former Hamas bodyguard accused of plotting a terrorist massacre in continental Europe from his adopted home in suburban Birmingham, is just the latest example.Understood to have entered the UK illegally, Alfatih was granted refugee status in 2015 and citizenship six years later, despite having worked for a proscribed group and been detained in Egypt for operating a weapons-smuggling tunnel into Gaza.While living quietly here, he allegedly used his British citizenship to travel freely in Europe, meet other Islamist terrorists, transport weapons across borders and help select targets. He was convicted at Birmingham Crown Court yesterday of unlawfully wounding a bailiff inquiring about unpaid parking fines. He is now awaiting extradition to Germany on unrelated terror charges. That case should be fast-tracked. Listening to Andy Burnham (pictured with Angela Rayner) and his equally deluded Cabinet, you’d think migrants were all model citizens working diligently in the NHS or care systemBut huge questions remain. Why was he allowed to settle here in the first place? What checks, if any, took place before he was granted citizenship? How many more like him are living under the radar?This disturbing affair comes after two other cases which suggest Iran may be using our broken migration system to plant agents here. Two Iranian nationals who came on small boats have been charged over an alleged terror plot against the Jewish community in Manchester.Separately, the US Department of Justice has charged three more Iranians with planning an attack on the American air base at RAF Fairford and nearly 20 other incidents. It’s clearly time to get deadly serious about migration, yet Labour shows no intention of doing so.Even modest attempts by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to strengthen borders or limit migrant rights are torpedoed by her party’s mule-headed backbenchers.To placate them, she has agreed to open ‘safe and legal’ migration routes into Britain. Why? There are already legal routes. If applicants don’t meet the criteria they should be refused, not offered a back door.But it’s Labour’s approach to those who push back against uncontrolled migration which is most despicable. Anyone objecting is accused of being racist or a Nimby.Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has given the go-ahead to dump more than 1,250 asylum seekers into an MoD facility next to the Oxfordshire hamlet of Piddington, population 350.Given the rash of high-profile cases of sex attacks by male migrants, villagers are afraid and oppose the scheme unanimously.That Labour wants to bulldoze it through makes a mockery of Mr Burnham’s much-vaunted devolution agenda – and his pledge to make the safety of women a priority.The truth is that only the Conservatives have the will and strategy to deter illegal migrants, based on the twin pillars of third-country assessment and withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights.Under Labour the boats, and the unknown dangers they hold, will just keep coming.