THE TELEGRAPH: A mass rally yesterday called for a one-off amnesty to allow hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the UK to become full citizens.
The Strangers Into Citizens campaign, which attracted thousands of supporters to Trafalgar Square, proposes that migrants who have been in Britain for more than four years should be given a two year work permit without access to benefits.
Then, at the end of the two years, they would be given indefinite leave to remain, subject to criteria such as an English test, criminal checks and employer references.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, who held a multilingual mass at Westminster Cathedral beforehand, told the rally that immigrants deserved to be treated with "fairness, with justice and with dignity". Amnesty demanded for 500,000 immigrants
Mark Alexander
