While President Bush angers many Republican congressmen and most voters by seeming to coddle illegal Mexican immigrants, his surprisingly loyal and usually liberal trench-mate in the Iraq War, Great Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, has just unveiled a bold plan to reduce the influx of foreigners that is shredding the cultural and economic fabric of the Mother Country. Blair is cranking up for a tough reelection fight in Parliament, with his left-wing Labour Party members in reluctant tow because of the PM's embrace of Bush's policy to wage war on terrorism in the Mideast. Never one, however, to miss a chance to alter the public's surly mood, tightrope-artist Tony has just decreed to the crowd inside Britain's perennial three-ring political circus tent that any foreigner from now on who wishes to live on the United Kingdom's royal soil must a) speak the Queen's English, and b) have job skills needed by Britain. This is a radical departure from the U.K's decades-long role as a welcome mat for uneducated and poor ex-colonials, plus swarms of Islamic missionaries from Hell. What is truly amazing, though, is that while the redrawn immigration policy is couched in terms of protecting British culture and economy, it never cites who or what most threatens Britain, namely, non-assimilating and hostile Muslims. Blair has cleverly played what cynics surely will call a "race card," without revealing (but hinting) his real motives for restricting additional foreigners. The not-too-subtle facts of PM Blair's policy, on the other hand, can be clearly found in its four-tiered system for classifying would-be immigrants:

Tier One applicants will have the best chance to be accepted, with high skills such as those of a medical doctor, cyber-world genius or finance wizard. Tier Two will be medium-skilled workers who come with a career offer such as for teachers and nurses. Tier Three will be low-skilled workers with a short-term job offer--but priority will be given to Europeans, not Third Worlders, and all who are accepted must leave the country immediately when their job term ends. Tier Four, with tough screening and virtually no chance of ever being allowed to settle in the U.K., will include students (predictably, the easiest age group to recruit for terrorism) and religious ministers (read, imams).

The same Brits who scorn Tony Blair's wartime alliance with George W. Bush nevertheless seem eager to accept Blair's immigration reform. A Sunday Mail poll on the very eve of his February 8 announcement revealed that 78% of respondents agreed that immigration law is "not tough enough"; 20% wanted all immigration to stop, and 70% declared Britain needed no foreign workers. This public awakening has been a long time coming, and when native Britons observe London today, they can't avoid seeing that 14% (one million) of their capital's population is now Islamic, and hearing the daily calls to prayer being bellowed from the odd minarets that punctuate the ancient city's skyline. Not as dramatic (and never discussed by liberal Labour leader Blair or his Conservative counterpart) is the far more dangerous specter of simple demographics. Because natives in post-Christian U.K. (like Western Europe) have more sex and fewer babies, the birthrate of 1.6 children per woman is about a third short of the 2.1 level need to sustain the population. Meantime, immigrant Islamic women are pumping out a rollicking average birthrate of 6.0 children! This means that in 70 years (within the lifetime of those children), the indigenous population of Britain and the rest of Europe would fall by 100 million, into minority status with all its earthshaking cultural and political implications. Despite Blair's new immigration rules, the 1968 forecast by British MP Enoch Powell easily could materialize. He warned then that Britain was "heaping up its own funeral pyre" by allowing excessive immigration. The Left reviled Powell's "rivers of blood" speech, and his career crashed. Were he alive today, prophet Powell likely would be in hiding, trying to avoid some London mullah's fatwah ordering his beheading. Let us pray that Mr. Blair keeps his head on this issue.