PRITI Patel’s immigration plan and the anniversary of George Floyd’s death were raised by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.

The Daily Express

The Home Secretary wrote in the newspaper that for too long politicians were indifferent to immigration.

“But people across the country, including Express readers, do not want their communities and way of life to change beyond recognition,” she said. “Acknowledging this is not “anti-immigration”. You voted to take back control of our borders in the 2016 EU referendum and drove the message home again at the 2019 General Election.”

She said the Government had already ended free movement and introduced a points based system.

READ MORE: George Floyd: One year on, has anything changed?

“We have published a fair but firm plan to stop people risking their lives on dangerous journeys to the UK, break the business model of people smuggling gangs, and speed up the removal of those with no legal right to be here. [We] will slam the doors on dangerous criminals before they even get here.”

The Independent

Chris Stevenson said a digitised UK border wasn’t a bad idea in principle, and would ‘certainly help modernise an immigration system in desperate need of reform.’

“But the reasoning for the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system – required for all visitors without a visa or immigration status – gave me pause,” he said. “It is the instant push to talk about a criminal element that concerns me.”

He said it smacked of an overly harsh system.

“At a time when we are striking out on our own, in the wake of a pandemic that has meant immense public spending and a big hit to the economy; do we really need extra barriers? Now is a time that we will need allies more than ever – and we shouldn’t be undermining that, in any area.”

The Guardian

On the anniversary of the killing of George Floyd, Kojo Koram, a teacher at the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London, said had the video of Floyd’s death not ‘spread across the internet like wildfire’, it is possible the police officer convicted last month would still be patrolling Minneapolis.

“Does this mean that, but for a twist of fate, we might have never seen the mass demonstrations for racial justice that have marked the past year?,” he asked. “The death of George Floyd caused last summer’s worldwide Black Lives Matter protests in the same way that the death of Franz Ferdinand caused the outbreak of WWI.

“This was the spark, but the kindling had been piling up for years. It was an outburst of anger at institutions that continue to carry the violence of the past into the present day. “