Greens leader Zack Polanski has rejected claims his party would push for open borders on immigration, telling Sky News it is “not a pragmatic” solution for a world in “turmoil”.

Mr Polanski distanced himself from his party’s “long-range vision” for open borders, saying it was not in his party’s manifesto and was an “attack line used by opponents” to question his credibility.

It came as Mr Polanski, who has overseen a spike in support in the polls to double figures, refused to apologise over controversial comments he made about care workers on BBC Question Time that were criticised across the political spectrum.

Mr Polanski was speaking to Sky News earlier this week while in Calais, where he joined volunteers and charities to witness how French police handle the arrival of migrants in the town that is used as a departure point for those wanting to make the journey to the UK.

He told Sky News he had made the journey to the French town – once home to the “Jungle” refugee camp before it was demolished in 2016 – to tackle “misinformation” about migration and to make the case for a “compassionate, fair and managed response” to the small boats crisis.

He said that “no manifesto ever said anything about open borders” and that the Greens had never stood at a general election advocating for them.

“Clearly when the world is in political turmoil and we have deep inequality, that is not a situation we can move to right now,” he said.

“That would also involve massive international agreements and cooperation. That clearly is not a pragmatic conversation to have right now. And very often the government try to push that attack line to make us look not pragmatic.”

The party’s manifesto last year did not mention open borders, but it did call for an end to the “hostile environment”, more safe and legal routes and for the Home Office to be abolished and replaced with a department of migration.

Asked why the policy of minimal restrictions on migration had been attributed to his party, Mr Polanski said open borders was part of a “long-range vision of what society could look like if there was a Green government and if we’d had a long time to fix some of the systemic problems”.

‘We should recognise the contribution migrants make’

Mr Polanski, who was elected Green Party leader in September and has been compared to Nigel Farage over his populist economic policies, said his position was one of a “fair and managed” migration system – although he did not specify whether that included a cap on numbers.

He acknowledged that there needed to be a “separate conversation” about economic migration but that he did not believe any person who boarded a small boat was in a “good situation”.

While Mr Polanski stressed that he believed asylum seekers should be able to work in Britain and pay taxes, he also said he believed in the need to train British workers in sectors such as care, where one in five are foreign nationals.

Asked what his proposals for a fair and managed migration system looked like, and whether he supported a cap on numbers, Mr Polanski said: “We have 100,000 vacancies in the National Health Service. One in five care workers in the care sector are foreign nationals.

“Now, of course, that is both British workers and we should be training British workers, but we should recognise the contribution that migrants and people who come over here make.”

I’m not going to apologise’

Mr Polanski also responded to the criticism he attracted over his comments about care workers on Question Time last week, where he told the audience: “I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly want to wipe someone’s bum” – before adding: “I’m very grateful for the people who do this work.”

His comments have been criticised by a number of Labour MPs, including Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who said: “Social care isn’t just ‘wiping someone’s bum’. It is a hard, rewarding, skilled professional job.

“This is immigration as exploitation.”

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Asked whether he could understand why some care workers might feel he had talked down to them, the Greens leader replied: “I care deeply about care workers. When I made those comments, it’s important to give a full context. I said ‘I’m very grateful to people who do this important work’ and absolutely repeat that it’s vital work.”

“Of course, it is not part of the whole job, and I never pretended it was part of the whole job.”

Mr Polanski said he “totally” rejected the suggestion that he had denigrated the role of care workers in the eyes of the public and said his remarks were made in the context of a “hostile Question Time” where he had “three right-wing panellists shouting at me”.

Pressed on whether he wanted to apologise, he replied: “I’m not going to apologise for being really clear that I’m really grateful to the people who do this really vital work. And yes, we should be paying them properly, too.”

A group of crypto organizations has pushed back on Citadel Securities’ request that the Securities and Exchange Commission tighten regulations on decentralized finance when it comes to tokenized stocks.

Andreessen Horowitz, the Uniswap Foundation, along with crypto lobby groups the DeFi Education Fund and The Digital Chamber, among others, said they wanted “to correct several factual mischaracterizations and misleading statements” in a letter to the SEC on Friday.

The group was responding to a letter from Citadel earlier this month, which urged the SEC not to give DeFi platforms “broad exemptive relief” for offering trading of tokenized US equities, arguing they could likely be defined as an “exchange” or “broker-dealer” regulated under securities laws.

“Citadel’s letter rests on a flawed analysis of the securities laws that attempts to extend SEC registration requirements to essentially any entity with even the most tangential connection to a DeFi transaction,” the group said.

The group added they shared Citadel’s aims of investor protection and market integrity, but disagreed “that achieving these goals always necessitates registration as traditional SEC intermediaries and cannot, in certain circumstances, be met through thoughtfully designed onchain markets.”

Citadel’s ask would be impractical, group says

The group argued that regulating decentralized platforms under securities laws “would be impracticable given their functions” and could capture a broad range of onchain activities that aren’t usually considered as offering exchange services.

The letter also took aim at Citadel’s characterization that autonomous software was an intermediary, arguing it can’t be a “‘middleman’ in a financial transaction because it is not a person capable of exercising independent discretion or judgment.”

“DeFi technology is a new innovation that was designed to address market risks and resiliency in a different way than traditional financial systems do, and DeFi protects investors in ways that traditional finance cannot,” the group argued.

Related: SEC’s Crenshaw takes aim at crypto in final weeks at agency

In its letter, Citadel had argued that the SEC giving the green light to tokenized shares on DeFi “would create two separate regulatory regimes for the trading of the same security” and would undermine “the ‘technology-neutral’ approach taken by the Exchange Act.”