Andrew Green (diplomat)

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Sir Andrew Green, KCMG (born 6 August 1941) is a former British diplomat and is the founding chairman of Migration Watch, an independent think tank concerned with what they view as unacceptably high levels of immigration to the United Kingdom.

[edit] Biography

Green was educated at Haileybury College, then a boys' boarding school (now co-educational) near Hertford in Hertfordshire, and at Magdalene, Cambridge where he read Arabic.^[1]. He served with the Royal Green Jackets between 1962-1965 and joined HM Diplomatic Service in 1965, where he worked for 35 years, spending half his career in the Middle East where he served in six posts. The remainder of his service was divided between London, Paris, and Washington DC. He was Ambassador to Syria (1991-94) and then Director for the Middle East in the Foreign Office, before finally serving for four and a half years as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He retired in June 2000.

Since retiring, Green has devoted his time to voluntary work. He is a former Chairman of Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British charity seeking to improve health care for Palestinians both in Palestine and the diaspora in refugee camps. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Sudan Peace Building Programme, working to rebuild relationships in that war-torn country, and is on the board of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human rights organisation which speaks for Christians and others around the world who are suffering persecution for their religious beliefs. He is regularly interviewed on British television and radio as a voice opposed to high levels of immigration, in his role as the founding chairman of Migration Watch.

Green has said that he first became aware of the issue of immigration when he was the Foreign Secretary's principal adviser on the Middle East in the mid 1990s. At that time he spent two years trying, on the Prime Minister's instructions, to remove from Britain Islamic extremist Mohammed al-Massari but was frustrated by the British courts despite having support from the Prime Minister.^[2]. This proved to be the starting point and on retirement he was able to look into matters further. He found that the net inflow of migrants from outside the EU was approaching 200,000 a year or 2 million every decade. (The latest government figures show that in 2004 this inflow was 268,000^[3]. He decided that this was a matter which should be brought to public attention and so founded Migration Watch UK towards the end of 2001.

He has described the organisation^{[citation needed]} as "an independent organisation. We have no political axes to grind. We simply believe that the public are entitled to know the facts, presented in a comprehensible form. It is then for the political system to decide what action to take."