Veritas leader Robert Kilroy-Silk has called for an end to "mass immigration" into the
Launching his new party's immigration and asylum policies, the former chat show host said only the rich benefited from the influx of foreign labour.
However he conceded that his party would allow in an unlimited number of people to move to the
He said the party, which claims to already have 158 candidates in place for the general election, wanted an "honest debate" on the issue.
Any asylum seekers arriving from
It was "absurd" that the asylum system cost taxpayers £147,000 per successful application, he said, holding up a picture of a refugee on hunger strike who he said had no case.
Instead, his party would allow in its "fair share" of genuine refugees allocated by the United Nations - swapping the image for one of a starving African child.
A quarter of the £2 billion saved by dismantling the asylum system would be spent looking after them - with the rest used to lift British children and old people out of poverty.
Kilroy-Silk said: "The people who benefit from mass immigration of low-skilled workers - and this isn't a matter of race or colour, this is numbers – are the landlord, the rich, the employer.
"And the people who pay, who lose out, who have to pay the social cost of the increased pressure on their housing, on their social services, on their hospitals and schools, are the poor bloody British, as always.
"We've got 1.7 million people unemployed, 2.7 million on invalidity benefit - half of whom the prime minister said could be working; we should be training our own people for these occupations," he added, saying it was "immoral" to bring in trained staff from poor countries.
