{"id":568407,"date":"2025-11-13T21:08:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/568407\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T21:08:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:08:17","slug":"scotland-needs-a-million-more-migrants-to-work-the-land-and-tackle-climate-change-says-green-msp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/568407\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland needs A MILLION more migrants to ‘work the land’ and tackle climate change, says Green MSP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scotland needs \u2018at least one million more\u2019 immigrants to \u2018work the land\u2019 and tackle climate change<\/a>, a Green MSP has claimed.<\/p>\n

MSP Ariane Burgess admitted it would create a challenge for the Highlands \u2013 which may not be ready for \u2018multicultural\u2019 impact of the mass influx.<\/p>\n

She said migrants may be better suited to farming than indigenous Scots and the country must \u2018be welcoming and embrace people\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Highlands and Island MSP is a champion of land reform but criticised recent legal changes to force the break-up of some large estates for not being radical enough.<\/p>\n

Her comments come amid plans to provide temporary accommodation for hundreds of asylum seekers at a barracks in Inverness city centre, sparking a major row.<\/p>\n

Last night Scottish Tory<\/a> MSP Douglas Lumsden said: \u2018These bonkers remarks show just how out of touch the Scottish Greens are with the public.<\/p>\n

\u2018If Ariane Burgess and her Green colleagues had their way, we wouldn\u2019t have any borders at all \u2014 and yet John Swinney still won\u2019t rule out a grubby deal with them after next year\u2019s election.\u2019<\/p>\n

Green rural affairs spokesman Ms Burgess, convener of Holyrood\u2019s local government, housing and planning committee, spoke at a land reform conference hosted by lobby group Revive in Perth last Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"Green <\/p>\n

Green MSP Ariane Burgess has called for an influx of a million migrants to Scotland<\/p>\n

\"Ms <\/p>\n

Ms Burgess believes migrants may be better suited to working the land than Scots<\/p>\n

She said: \u2018If there aren\u2019t any people in the straths and the glens, we\u2019re not going to be tackling climate change \u2013 we absolutely need people in our rural communities.<\/p>\n

\u2018I go round my region and I think, \u201care people in the Highlands and Islands ready for a multicultural Highlands and Islands\u201d – because that\u2019s absolutely what we need.<\/p>\n

\u2018What I learned when I was busy with the independence campaign is that Scotland needs at least one million more people and they\u2019re not going to come from here, they\u2019re going to come from elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u2018They\u2019re going to come because they can no longer live where they grew up because of climate change, because of wars.<\/p>\n

\u2018So we need to be welcoming and embrace people and actually many of those people possibly have more of the earth and the skills in their bodies and their bones and possibly know how to work the land better than we do \u2013 maybe not specifically to our climate, but they could have a lot to bring and enrich Scottish culture.\u2019<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the Scottish parliament passed land reforms which could force the break-up of some large estates.<\/p>\n

The Bill is designed to help reduce the concentration of rural land ownership among a small number of people, and to give communities a greater say in what happens on privately owned land.<\/p>\n

It also seeks to increase opportunities for community buyouts of land and could allow for large estates to be split into smaller plots when they are put up for sale.<\/p>\n

\"Cameron <\/p>\n

Cameron Barracks in Inverness where 300 immigrants are going to be housed<\/p>\n

But Ms Burgess said ministers had shown a \u2018lack of ambition to deliver the real land reform that is so vital\u2019.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a Green councillor has claimed that asylum seekers who are being moved into Cameron Barracks in Inverness should be offered a civic buffet.<\/p>\n

Chris Ballance told a meeting of Highland Council that the 300 men who are set to be housed at the site must be welcomed.<\/p>\n

In a bizarre intervention in the debate surrounding the contentious scheme, the Left-wing politician, who was wearing a white poppy, told councillors: \u2018I will be asking the Inverness Common Good Fund at our next meeting to grant a civic buffet to all of these asylum seekers, in due course, to give them a great welcome in our great townhouse.\u2019<\/p>\n

Mr Ballance, who represents Aird and Loch Ness, also said that it was a cure to the depopulation crisis facing the Highlands.<\/p>\n

He said: \u2018Of course some may be economic migrants, so what?<\/p>\n

\u2018Last week we were discussing the huge problem of depopulation in rural Highlands. Economic migrants, by definition, are people who come here to work.<\/p>\n

\u2018Young people, with enough get up and go, to risk their lives crossing seas and continents to work. Isn\u2019t that just what we need?\u2019<\/p>\n

He said that the \u2018reasonable people of Inverness have sympathy and compassion for people escaping persecution\u2019 and added: \u2018I see the racist bile on social media, and I guess that most of it comes from Peterhead or England rather than the Highlands.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Scottish Greens said: \u2018Rural depopulation is a massive problem for Scotland, and so is our ageing population.<\/p>\n

\u2018We need more people to build homes, provide care and support small businesses who are crying out for more workers.<\/p>\n

\u2018Migration is good for Scotland and can give us the people and skills that we need to build our economy and power our public services which have been so badly harmed by the disaster of Brexit.\u2019<\/p>\n

A Scottish Greens spokesman said: ‘Rural depopulation is a massive problem for Scotland, and so is our ageing population.<\/p>\n

‘We need more people to build homes, provide care and support small businesses who are crying out for more workers.<\/p>\n

‘Migration is good for Scotland and can give us the people and skills that we need to build our economy and power our public services which have been so badly harmed by the disaster of Brexit.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland needs \u2018at least one million more\u2019 immigrants to \u2018work the land\u2019 and tackle climate change, a Green…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,92,4884,7852,12,568,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-568407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-dailymail","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-john-swinney","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-perth","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115544438036388615","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}