Dozens of local community members attended an immigration seminar this weekend to quiz the Immigration Minister, Phil Woolas MP, over issues ranging from amnesties for illegal immigrants, migration reforms and the student visa system.

Organised by Rochdale’s Labour Parliamentary Candidate, Simon Danczuk, the event saw a lively debate take place about whether Britain should adopt an amnesty for illegal immigrants, a policy favoured by the Liberal Democrats. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Mr Woolas told the audience. “Spain has had four such amnesties and all it does is see traffickers push people back into the country again. With the best of intentions it ends with dead bodies in the back of lorries. The solution we’re working on is to clear the asylum backlog and we’re making good progress on this. We’ve got it down from over 600,000 to just over 200,000 and we’re on target to clear this by next year.”

He was also asked about the recent arrests of foreign students and concerns about bogus colleges being used to enrol ‘overseas students’ to enable them to obtain visas. “We’ve introduced protocols that are much more stringent to stop this scam,” he said. “We know bogus colleges have been used to get visas and that’s why we’ve moved swiftly to close the loophole. We’ve reduced the number of colleges that people can register to study from abroad from over 4,000 to just over 1,200.”

He also defended the new high-tech electronic borders system, saying it was being used to detect serious criminals, fraud and other illegal activity - not to check where people go on holiday.

When asked about how he was enjoying his job – one of the most controversial in Westminster – he said it was his “lifelong purpose” to deal with immigration.

Explaining how fighting racism had originally got him into politics – “the first Asian boy who joined my school was nicknamed banana. He even called himself banana. I thought it was appalling” – he said he had to recognise that the economic downturn had changed everything.

“Dealing with immigration in a recession is very challenging,” he said. “In times of economic difficulties, racial stereotyping becomes stronger but also if you've got skills shortages you should, as a government, attempt to fill those skills shortages with your indigenous population. But I do believe that immigrants want to get on and that’s why they come to this country. They make an enormous contribution.”

Thanking the Immigration Minister for coming to Rochdale, Simon Danczuk said he had enjoyed the debate very much. “A lot of people ask me about immigration issues on the doorstep which is why I invited them along to share their views with the Minister,” he said. “We cannot duck issues which matter to our communities and I will continue to establish dialogue with local people and Government Ministers.”