So-called 'experts' at Oxford University say illegals now make up one in 100 of the population.
I've no idea where they got that figure from, but it has to be hopelessly wide of the mark.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Captain Beaujolais, now Lord Beaujolais, told me that there were probably 250,000 people in London alone that the authorities knew absolutely nothing about.
Migrants launch a boat into the English Channel as they prepare to make the perilous crossing from Dunkirk in northern France. Since 2020, more than 150,000 have crossed in small boats
His guesstimate was based on the number of foreign nationals being arrested by Scotland Yard for a variety of crimes, from driving without a licence to aggressive begging and suspected terrorism offences.
Some had entered Britain in the back of lorries, others had overstayed their tourist or student visas and disappeared into the black economy. Many had ripped up their papers and flatly refused to say where they'd come from.
That was 23 years ago. Are the academics at Oxford University seriously expecting us to believe that the number of illegals across the whole country has only increased by 500,000 since then?
Since 2020, more than 150,000 have crossed the Channel in small boats and still they keep on coming. And that's just a small proportion in comparison with those who have entered Britain legally but temporarily and then vanished off the radar when their visas expired.
A more accurate assessment came as long ago as 2016, when an immigration panel judge, writing anonymously in The Mail on Sunday in defiance of the Home Office, estimated there were at least 1.5 million illegals here.
Many have entered Britain in the back of lorries. Here, migrants clamber aboard in Calais
The judge said: 'How do I know this? Partly because of the cases that come before me, but also because of the evidence of the sewage industry – an excellent way of gauging how many people are really living in this country.
'The discrepancy between the official figures and what is actually going down the pipes shows there are more than a million more people in London than are legally registered and another half million or more outside the capital.'
For years we were told it was impossible to keep track of illegal migration. But, as I wrote at the time: The answer, my friend, was flowing round the U-bend.
You'd get a far more accurate assessment of the problem from Dyno-Rod than the Home Office, which for more than two decades has conspired with politicians to deceive us about the scale of immigration.
The judge writing in The MoS exposed how many illegals lie and cheat, often using false passports easily obtained abroad and peddle sob stories which fall apart on cursory examination.
Grown men pretend absurdly to be minors. Heterosexuals pretend to be gays fleeing persecution. Albanians pretend to be Kurdish refugees. Yet the system continues to indulge them.
Even when foreign nationals who have no right to be here are detained, they are rarely if ever deported. After their final appeal application is rejected, they simply go missing. Nobody bothers looking for them.
The only way in which the Oxford figures may be remotely accurate is if the vast majority of those who were in Britain illegally have been granted asylum or indefinite leave to remain.
Which, come to think of it, wouldn't surprise me in the least. It's over 20 years since Labour ripped up our borders and, in the words of the odious Peter Mandelson, 'scoured the world for immigrants'. A Blair speechwriter later admitted that the policy was designed deliberately to 'rub the Right's noses in diversity'.
Frankly, they didn't care less whether those migrants came here legally or illegally. The intention was to change the face of Britain irrevocably. Shamefully, during 14 years in government the Tories did nothing to reverse the trend, despite us voting to 'take back control' in the Brexit referendum.
Immigration, both legal and illegal, is off the charts and Labour has no intention of doing anything about it. Far easier to screech 'racist' at anyone who dares to draw attention to the crisis.
For years, the official figures have been an underestimate. The politicians like to talk about 'net' migration, balancing new arrivals against British nationals getting out of Dodge for good.
In the US, some on the Right call it the great 'replacement' theory, supplanting the native population with newcomers who have no cultural or historical ties to the country. Under Biden, more than seven million illegals from all over the world have entered America over the Southern border.
The same thing is happening here. This week we learned that officially the population grew over the past year by 662,400 to a record 68.2 million. That, too, is almost certainly a few million short of the true number. Check the sewers.
It's not just the pressure on public services and housing. There's also a failure of far too many immigrants to assimilate.
Britain is changing at breakneck speed, with virtual ghettos now firmly established in our major cities, where English is no longer the first language in some areas.
When Nigel Farage remarked that on his train into London from Kent it was becoming increasing rare to hear an English voice he was denounced as a racist, even though he was telling it as he saw it.
That's not to disparage the millions of hard-working migrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere who have contributed so much to our society.
But while we are ordered to 'celebrate diversity' at every turn, anyone who stands up for traditional British values and customs or questions the overwhelming scale of immigration has been routinely smeared as a knuckle-dragging white supremacist on a par with the Ku Klux Klan.
Migration is now the biggest political issue, which can no longer be brushed under the mat.
A debate which dared not speak its name until recently is breaking out into the daylight. Those voices will not be silenced.
A country which can't, or won't, control its borders ceases to be a sovereign nation and becomes a Tower of Babel, somewhere people live but don't belong.
Britain is bursting at the seams and can't handle this level of unfettered immigration, legal or illegal.
It's time to pull up the drawbridge.
Millionaires are fleeing Britain in record numbers in advance of Martha Reeves's upcoming Budget, which is expected to squeeze them until the pips squeak.
At this rate, Clarkson will have to fall back on his farm. What's the point of a show called Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? if the winner will have to hand most of it over to the Treasury?
Contestants will settle for 32 grand, even if they've got all their lifelines intact. And what of Britain's budding entrepreneurs? Why would Del Boy Trotter bother knocking his pipe out flogging Peckham Spring water trying to become a mill-yon-aire if his profit was going to disappear in tax.
No income tax, no VAT is not going to be a prospect under Labour. I suppose the Trotters could always desert Nelson Mandela House for more accommodating climes. This time next year, Rodders, we'll be living in Dubai!
Spent Wednesday night flicking channels following the track of the Florida hurricane as the speed increased to 160mph. Then I turned to the BBC, which reported that Milton was expected to deliver winds of 'up to 270 kilometres an hour'.
You couldn't make it up.
Net Zero nutjob Ed Miliband says he'd happily live next to a wind turbine or electricity pylon.
He should try sticking one up on Hampstead Heath near his London home and see how his trendy Guardianista neighbours react. Littlejohn.
(Photo: Getty/iStock)
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