Immigration, and How People Are Valued 184


In the last recorded full year, to March 2019, net migration into the UK from the EU was 59,000 while from outwith the EU it was 219,000.

That table is from racist playground the Migration Watch website. It is a poisonous organisation, but their figures seem to be correctly extrapolated from the Office of National Statistics. There is one matter on which Migration Watch are actually correct, which I will come to anon.

Non-EU net immigration has risen substantially in each of the last eight years. The second most interesting point about the Home Office’s policy statement on the new “points-based immigration system” is that none of the existing routes by which 219,000 non-EU migrants per year enter the UK is to be abolished (paras 12-13, 20-24). So that 219,000 non-EU net migrant figure will not be reduced as a result of these changes. Indeed, as several references in the paper make clear, immigration opportunities for non-EU citizens are increased as a result of this paper.

Those immigration routes for non-EU citizens are increased quite substantially. I anticipate a major surge in immigration from the Commonwealth as a result of this change. The problem the Government will find is that a points based system results in a level of automaticity of qualification. Those from English speaking countries – let’s say Ghana or India, but it is true of scores – already have the language qualification and benefit from good educational systems. Crucially, there are large very established communities from those countries already in the UK which own a vast plethora of companies, which makes securing a job offer much easier. I have no doubt whatsoever that many companies will discover an urgent need for one new accountant and two new systems administrators, and that cousins and brothers with genuine, appropriate qualifications, who previously the family was finding it difficult to bring in to the UK, will now breeze through to work for the family firm.

Speaks English? Yes, 10 points. Job offer? Yes, 20 points. Salary over £25,600? Yes, 20 points. Appropriate skill level? Accountant or IT systems administrator, yes, 20 points. For the avoidance of doubt, I have spoken to people in Ghana today already working on how to make money out of helping people get in through the scheme once it starts on 1 January.

I have written before about the tragic deprofessionalisation of the former UK Immigration Service. The system has been privatised and largely decoupled from Embassies, with visa processing handled by private companies in separate buildings. The vast majority of applications are never seen at all by an immigration professional from the Home Office or FCO. They are handled by very poorly paid employees, often locals of the country, completely as a tick box computer exercise.

In the days when the UK had a real Immigration Service, and I line managed a visa section in Accra which had 22 British professional Entry Clearance Officers in it, the very wise Chief Immigration Officer Myron Reid used to tell his staff always to remember it was not the documents they were admitting to the UK, it was the person. The key test was; did you believe the individual and should they be admitted, not how much paperwork they could produce, verification of which was always very difficult. Nowadays the much lower paid, private sector employed drones taking the vast majority of decisions seldom see the individual. The paperwork is all that counts. This will be still more the case as they tick the boxes to add up the 70 points.

I make this forecast with confidence. The net result of these changes will be increased net immigration into the UK, with a substantial spike in non-EU immigration visible in the March 2021 annual return. This is the other point on which Migration Watch are actually correct. The difference is, of course, that I very much welcome the increased immigration opportunities which will arise and believe the increased immigration is essential to our economy and society. I also find it irresistibly hilarious that the large majority of those who voted Brexit and voted Tory, who were primarily motivated by racism, will as a consequence face a substantive surge in non-white immigration. You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at that.

It is also worth noting that, while the freedom of movement with the EU was reciprocal, it is being exchanged for a new policy that will not be. It is going to be far easier for an Indian citizen to qualify to work in the UK, than for a UK citizen to go and work in India.

Do I believe that the government is deliberately seeking to increase non-EU migration? No, I don’t. I think they are just massively incompetent, have misread the effect of the points-based system which was only a vote-winning slogan, and have not understood the lack of control of implementation resulting from their austerity destruction of the professional Immigration Service.

I appreciate this is not the analysis that has been given from pretty well all other left wing thinkers. They have chosen to fight this as a radical restriction of immigration. Of course, what is lost is freedom of movement. It will be harder for EU nationals to come and work here and particularly in jobs the government deems as low-skilled. I utterly deplore the loss of free movement, which was one of the great societal advances of my lifetime. However, I suspect that many EU citizens who wish to live in the UK will still manage to gain employment that fits with the government’s rules. I want for a moment to consider the question of labour shortages in certain industries, which has dominated media debate on the points based system to date.

Firstly it is worth noting that, if not deterred by the ludicrously costly bureaucracy – and that is a real bar to genuine applicants – the paper has sufficient loopholes to allow immigrants, including EU immigrants, to come for work in many of the areas where shortages are feared. Nurses, for example, will not have to meet the minimum salary threshold, because in the NHS and other institutions national pay scales will take precedence over the minimum salary of £25,600 (para 4). In the building trade, plasterers and electricians will count as skilled. What constitutes skilled work is peculiarly arbitrary – anyone who thinks filleting fish is unskilled work should try it. Still more arbitrary is the notion that salary defines the value or the skill of work done. Care work doesn’t seem to me exactly easy.

The fundamental takeaway from this policy is that people who earn under £25,600 are viewed as inferior beings. It is remarkable that a government that claims its aim is to end discrimination between EU citizens and others, views discrimination on grounds of earnings as more laudable.

There will indeed be labour shortages arising from the imposition of this policy, in hospitality, agriculture, social care and other sectors. This will cause some economic pain. The Brexit myth that there are millions of hard working Brits waiting to re-enter the Labour market once no longer undercut by rampaging Romanians, will be exposed for the nonsense that it is. So is the idea that care homes will start paying £18 an hour to attract staff as a result of Brexit.

The paper states that there will be a power to add further “shortage occupations”, a job offer in which will give qualifying points, and I strongly suspect that will be quickly and quietly used rather than permit sectors to collapse. The power of adding shortage occupations is left by the paper with the Migration Advisory Committee, rather than with mad Priti Patel, which I am told she is not too pleased about but gives some hope the economy will not be ruined for the sake of xenophobia. But the extraordinarily high cost of immigration applications is also going to be a severe barrier to finding alternative staffing flows to EU free movement for low paid work. Upfront Home Office application charges – most of which goes to those private agencies doing the call centre type visa processing – of some £1500 will of course be an entirely new obstacle to those from the EU, and a substantial problem. So is the probable new requirement for medical insurance for EU citizens working here.

So the new policy will create at least temporary staffing shortages in some key economic sectors, will substantially diminish the rights of EU citizens, and will in my firm estimation lead overall to an increase in net immigration. I earlier referred to the second most interesting point being that the new policy did nothing to block pre-existing routes to non-EU immigration. The most interesting point of all is that it is a disaster for the rights of British citizens. British citizens lose the right to move freely around Europe, to work, settle and lead their lives over the vast majority of that great continent. It is an appalling restriction on the opportunities of all of us, especially of the young.

This great freedom has been thrown away to promote the views of racists. Those racists are so incompetent that at the same time as shredding British citizens’ right to migrate freely to the EU, they are inadvertently opening the doors to a new net increase in immigration into the UK largely from outwith the EU. This level of hapless blundering is a further marker in the extraordinary deterioration of the UK state as functioning entity.

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184 thoughts on “Immigration, and How People Are Valued

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  • Suhayl Saadi

    Excellent! More black, brown and yellow people will come here. I think the xenophobes and racists who drove this whole pile of nonsense will get exactly what they deserve – more ‘coloured immigration’ as it used to be called in the 1960s and 1970s. Britain will turn coffee-coloured. Remember that old slogan from the 1960s, “You want a n… for a neighbour, vote Labour’? Well, folks, you – England, you funny stupid thing – you voted Tory, thinking you’d get 1930 and Downton Bloody Abbey and now you’re all gonna have us all for neighbours. Thank you, Nigel. Thank you, Boris. Thank you, Michael. I am so happy today.

    • Magic Robot

      1930? ‘The cruel decade.’ Not the best choice you could have made.

      “A ‘Free Market’ in anything (labour in this case) never did the worker (foreign or native) any good; only the owners benefit.”

      People living in Britain are British – It matters not what their colour is – and as such, they should all be getting the rights they deserve. As I pointed out earlier, this is profoundly not the case and both Tory and Labour have connived at this since the mid 1990’s. It suits some, but not the worker.

      You do a disservice by name-calling.

    • Edward

      You make a good point. Craig clearly considers non-white immigration as some sort of punishment.

      • Suhayl Saadi

        No, Scotland did not vote for this Tory Govt.

        And yes, we are going to “swamp” you. Better get ready for it! Hold onto your top hats, what, Downton Abbey is drowning!

        Btw, is ‘Mein Kampf Alfred’, the English immigrant-in-Canada who hates immigrants, still rutting around these parts? People like him look at a black person and see a mitochondrion. Some of their best friends are mitochondria.

    • Suhayl Saadi

      I’m not getting at Craig in any way. He’s pointing out hypocrisy where he sees it and so am I. I was being ironic, of course.

      The fact is, this whole ‘immigration’ thing was rasied as a giant bogeyman to frighten people and to appeal to the usual tribal instincts, especially in the specific context of the destruction – by NATO/UK/France/USA/GCC – of Libya and Syria and the resultant refugee crisis – for particular political ends. Oldest game in the book, of course: Create an enemy to distract form true power dynamics.

    • Suhayl Saadi

      Here’s another bogeyman (lterally) created by the hard state, sort of indirectly related to the thread topic and really pretty relevant to the whole ‘Let’s create fear so that the population will follow us like sheep and support our self-enrichment’ tactic. It links to another piece which deals with, ‘Visas for Al Qaeda’.

      Then ask yourself, why was the Moazzam Begg trial stopped and by precisely whom? Might it be because the SIS was (?is… IS….ISIS!) cooperating with Jihadists in Syria? Rhetorical question as we know they were. As was/is the CIA. And so, when these ‘walking dead’ nutjobs go off at the deep end in London/Paris/Berlin/wherever, think of them as lumpenprol golems created by Vauxhall Cross and Langley and of course Riyadh. They serve a perennially useful purpose and can be activated, and can self-activate, anytime, anywhere, anyhow.

      The Corbett Report is really good, I’d recommend it.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vvLpA-2DsY

  • terence callachan

    And one effect in Scotland will be that none of these immigrants from the commonwealth will vote in favour of Scottish independence

  • Ben

    If Leftists seek influence to might want to appeal to moderates. The Zeitgeist breeze is blowing their direction. Or…just satisfy your sense of outrage with flaccidty.

  • Eric McCoo

    Great to see the Sturgeon demand more immigration for Scotland. Further reinforcing what even mad Emily Thornberry said ‘I hate the SNP. I hate the SNP. I think they’re Tories wrapped up in nationalist clothing, they pretend to be on the left but they’re not on the left.” We used to call them the Tartan Tories. Sturgeon is an even more dishonest Tony Blair minus the brains. An EU loving establishment globalist now walking on very thin ice on immigration.

    Calling the English racists and xenophobes is typical Scottish hubris.I used to be proud to be Scottish (because we were nice people) . Not any more. The SNP are horrors infected by sneering, American style corporate liberalism. Even their most enthusiastic cheerleader, Rupert Murdoch has turned against them. Not only by exposing Derek MacKay in the Sun but also the SNP’s attempt to bully the newspaper into dropping the story.

    Sturgeon made a terrible mistake agreeing to the December 2019 election. The Tory majority has made the SNP a toothless irrelevance who actually campaigned against Brexit, a particularly dumb thing to do for a party demanding another independence referendum.

  • Crispa

    Immigration is a red herring in relation to the care sector except perhaps in London which relies heavily on mainly non EU labour from abroad. Workforce data has shown that over the last decade about 16% of the workforce is other than British more or less evenly split between EU and non EU nationals – not all of the latter necessarily take up work as “immigrants”. Employment of both EU and non – EU nationals is variable across the country. Generally speaking the further north you get in England the less reliance on EU or non EU care workers. Brexit affects mainly care provision on the more affluent south east.Scotland complies their figures differently but the stalwarts of the Scottish social care care workforce would seem to be middle – age Scottish women.
    The main workforce issues in social care are privatisation, the upskilling of front-line workers without reflecting either their increased workloads or their skills in their pay, which continues at round about national minimum wage levels and unsurprisingly high turnover, which is likely to remain if there is a higher demand for comparable labour in comparable service industries. There has certainly been a shortage of registered nurses in nursing homes but this can be got round by employing the minimum number of nurses and training up care assistants to do the jobs that would previously be done only by qualified nurses – without recognising this in their pay. Whatever the msm go on about immigration restrictions, EU or non EU, are not the fundamental issues.

    • cherson

      I don’t think immigration is a red herring for the care sector. The most recent data on non-UK EU citizens in the social service sector comes from 2018 (https://www.gov.scot/publications/contribution-non-uk-eu-workers-social-care-workforce-scotland/pages/2/) and places the overall average at just under 6%. This at a time when vacancies in the sector also run at more than 5% (almost double the average for the Scottish economy) – see: https://data.sssc.uk.com/data-publications/193-staff-vacancies-in-care-services-2017-report – and when the sector is projected to grow (due to demographic change and Scottish Govt policy e.g. expansion of early years provision). In addition, employment participation rates are at historically high levels which means there is a limited pool of labour available to employers. The line put forward by the UK Govt that cajoling the “economically inactive” into employment is the solution is a “red herring”. Many of the “economically inactive” are students, those who retire pre-65, and/or are caring for family members. (NB in terms of nurses it is worth bearing in mind that fewer than 50% of care homes for adults in Scotland employ a nurse as they do not provide nursing care.)

      Craig refers to the “economic pain” this will cause but in relation to the care sector I think the issue is less the economic impact and more the impact on the individual’s unable to receive the support and care they require.

      • Martin

        Sorry if this sounds patronising but that’s a common misconception about the word economic – it doesn’t mean ‘related to money’ or something similar, and I imagine CM would agree with you about the importance of people receiving adequate care.

        I think perhaps the way we talk about ‘the economy’ leads people to think it’s some dirty industrial entity distinct from the more virtuous aspects of every day life. It’s a shame. If we taught economics in schools then climate change wouldn’t even be a problem

        • cherson

          Thanks Martin I understand that “economic” refers to more than just money/finance, however, my issue remains that the term “economic pain” is inadequate when referring to the pain that those unable to receive care will experience (and they were the focus of my concern).

  • Matt

    “The Brexit myth that there are millions of hard working Brits waiting to re-enter the Labour market once no longer undercut by rampaging Romanians, will be exposed for the nonsense that it is.”

    Here’s one. I’ve been unemployed for a long time. I’ll take a job picking fruit for minimum wage.

    I voted for Brexit, not because of immigration or xenophobia, but because of sovereignty. If educated English-speaking people are coming here to pay tax, I don’t have a problem with that, whether they’re from India, Ghana or Trinidad and Tobago. I agree that the Tories are making a complete mess of this, but I still wouldn’t vote to rejoin the EU if such a referendum happened.

    Frankly I’m tired of people assuming Brexit is motivated by racism. Yes, there are lots of racist people in this country who voted to leave. There are also lots of racist people who voted to remain, people who think I should be ashamed of my white heritage. But there are also many rational people, on both sides of the divide, who either feel that it’s ok for a continental body to govern us, or not. I’m in the latter group.

    Now all we need is a competent government. I expect a long wait.

    • Alib

      You don’t explain why you’ve been unemployed. There are jobs available so why have you been unemployed for a long time? Fruit and veg pickers were in very short supply last summer and was left rotting in fields as a result- so why didn’t you find work?

      You think it was rational to vote Brexit for the sake of “sovereignty”! I beg to differ. Please explain what exactly do you mean by sovereignty in relation to what we had whilst in the EU and how it will differ when we have left.

      • Reg

        Alib
        Quite simple really, the means tested poverty trap that means any income from insecure temporary badly paid work is means tested away via Universal Credit, Tax Credits, Housing benefit and Council Tax Benefit, that with the cost of travel to a job and the five week wait or longer for Universal Credit (that includes rent) can ensure you lose your house after the job ends.
        As Universal Credit means test for the month on when you are paid rather when you worked, if you are paid monthly it can be up to 3 months before you get a full monthly payment (depending when your monthly means tested dates from), longer if you have to work a month in hand. This is worse if your last wages payment is the 1st day of the means tested assessment period.

        So it is quite easy to get the unemployed to pick fruit, you allow them to keep the money and remove the risk of eviction from late payment of Universal Credit when they have to re claim after the job ends. God forbid people should get a living wage from working. The reason they will not do this is this and the previous New Labour government are committed to crushing the poor to ensure higher profits and lower inflation. A Universal Basic income would allow the unemployed to work without the risk of homelessness, and give a financial incentive to work.
        That old trope is, to get the rich to work, you pay them more, to get the poor to work you pay them less.

      • Magic Robot

        He’s just told you he’s unemployed because there’s no work for him. The landowner gets his crop picked for much less than he can live on. Support David Ricardo much?

      • Matt

        I have been unemployed for a decade because of drugs and depression, not that it’s relevant.

        Sovereignty is a rather simple concept. What we had in the EU was regulation from an outside body who we had no democratic control over. What we have outside of the EU is a government that can be removed every five years.

    • nevermind

      Thanks for considering that hilarity will change the situation Matt, white heritage you say? More like a mongrel nation from the start. You have been fooled by yourself.

    • Steve Peake

      So you’re ok with English speakers from India, Ghana etc, but not English speakers from Germany, France, Spain or Poland etc ? Why the differentiation ?

      You seem to fall victim to the common misunderstanding that the EU entailed ‘a contintental body governing us’. Do you know how decisions are made in the EU ? I suspect not.

      I’m also intrigued by your use of the term ‘my white heritage’. Now I’m white, but I would never use the term ‘white heritage.’ I might say ‘West Country heritage’ or even ‘half Scottis heritage’ (both of which I’m mildly proud of) or even ‘my European heritage’, but I would never refer to the colour of my skin as something to be proud of.

      So sadly, I’m not particularly persuaded by your insistence that you’re not racist.

      • Martin

        Did you know that contrary to the beliefs of presumably well-meaning but presumptuous and ultimately self-defeating guardian readers everywhere – who tend to assert that immigration is just economically beneficial in general and universally benign – research by the university of Oxford indicates that you feel the benefit (or cost) depending among other things on where you sit on the wage curve. In very simplistic terms, the wealthy benefit, the poor lose out and the net impact is positive.

        Now imagine that someone calling themselves a liberal names you a racist liar whilst expressing the most remorseless snobbery and lack of human empathy because you had the audacity to retell your actual lived experience. This is how you create the fertile conditions ideal for growing yourself a UKIP.

        Actually I should say ‘grew’ a UKIP shouldn’t I since you already did it? Well done. The only modicum of justice in any of it is that your crime has become a punishment you must suffer along with the rest of us.

        PS I’ve never used the phrase white heritage either, nor black heritage. Is it that you object to the general formulation or perhaps you prefer one over the other in a way that, no doubt, doesn’t make you racist, paradoxically? I’m just trying to figure out what the rules are. Any guidance much appreciated as I don’t want to find myself designated a racist by decree. Ta

      • Matt

        I didn’t mention Germany, France, Spain or Poland. That’s your assumption. For the sake of clarity, I don’t have a problem with this at all. I have worked with Polish people and they are good workers, they tend to mix well with the English, it’s not a problem. But don’t let that stop you making assumptions.

        “So sadly, I’m not particularly persuaded by your insistence that you’re not racist.”

        Racism is the belief that one’s own race is superior to that of another. You can add as many caveats as you like to try and broaden the term, but that is the meat and veg of what racism is. It is a sense of superiority. I don’t think white is superior. I think white is equal. That’s why I feel no shame. I don’t have a superiority complex, nor an inferiority complex.

        I never said anything about pride, I just said I’m not ashamed of being white. It’s amazing how desperate some people are to accuse others of being racist. I really don’t understand it.

  • Rhys Jaggar

    I can scarcely believe that someone capable of being an ambassador is so uncritically cretinous about the reality of immigration.

    When someone comes to this country, they require:

    1. A place to live.

    Who provides it? Who pays for it to be provided?

    I am clear that Remainers should put up immigrants at their own expense, particularly this author who needs to learn what it costs to house people on £25,000 a year. Their taxes of £5000 a year are no way going to pay for a new flat in under 30 years. What about their sponging employer being made to pay? It might make them use indigenous labour inside of the traditional British sponging from nations who actually bother to train their workers properly.

    2. How much extra strain is put on the health service by 200,000 extra people per year? What about the schools system? Transport systems?

    You cannot simply airbrush this away. Immigrants tend to breed more, put more pressure on schools and health services and they certainly do not provide the finance to build new classrooms, train extra teachers, pay for extra teachers, supply the increased infrastructure, staffing and budgets to fund the extra burdens on the NHS etc etc.

    It simply is lying with impunity to say that immigrants pay their way. They do not. If they come in and someone leaves, there is no extra pressure on the system. But with 200,000 a year new people demanding support services, people simply have to start saying ‘who is actually paying for all that support infrastructure?’

    It is not the employers and it is not the immigrants.

    It is the general taxpayers and more importantly, government debt.

    The other question which is never addressed is how much longer population in the UK can continue to increase due to immigration.

    What population will you say is too much? 100 million?? 200 million?? The population has increased by at least 40% the past 20 years and most supermarket estimates of population (based on total food spend) puts the population currently at the 80 million level, way, way higher than official census figures.

    Until the debate becomes an adult one, it is entirely acceptable to call the uncontrolled immigration crowd racist. They are racist against indigenous taxpayers and say that the country should be subject to whatever stampedes immigrants wish to push it through.

    I will not accept Mr Murray claiming that all who voted for Brexit are either racist or anti-immigrant. They are simply adults capable of mature debate. As soon as saying ‘immigration is a legitimate topic for debate’ is smeared, those doing the smearing are quite simply racists.

    I am entirely in favour of all Remainers paying in its entirety the decadal upfront costs associated with immigration infrastructure and support services.

    When they have to, they will soon learn the true cost of immigration……….

    • Eric McCoo

      Excellent post Rhys. It reflects my position as a real leftist and very similar to George Galloway another leftist.

      ‘There’s NOTHING “left-wing” about mass immigration. Not for the countries losing their best and brightest nor for the workers already here. It’s a confusion of liberalism with real labourism to believe otherwise. “Free movement” of cheap labour is a big business bonanza.

      https://twitter.com/georgegalloway/status/1197153213218201602?lang=en

      Calling decent people racist is how the establishment labels those who dare to tell the truth.

    • Le T

      I think you miss the point. The main thrust of Mr Murray’s piece is to highlight the fact immigration will most likely increase under the new points based system. He finds the irony funny, as do I. Most immigration to the UK is already from non-EU countries and that non-EU immigration will now inevitably increase, possibly significantly.

      By taking back control of our borders, the government had opened the gates wider than ever. Leaving the EU means the rate of immigration to the UK from non-EU countries will increase.

      Those who voted Tory in the last general election have defacto voted for increased immigration, not less, based on Mr Murray’s analysis of the government’s proposal because it will be relatively easy for applicants to meet the points target. Tory voters are also by default supporters of more diverse immigration in terms of ethnicity and religion. They want to bar Poles and Germans from entering but want to encourage more Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to come.

      So one could argue that Remainers are the real racists because they want to limit immigration to white Europeans. Brexiteers through the points-based system are demonstrating they want greater diversity and larger numbers of immigrants.

      In effect, Brexiteer Tory voters have said no. They don’t want white Europeans. They want to open the doors to people of all colors and creeds. If they can speak English and they’re educated, they’re welcome. India has millions of English-speaking university graduates. Under the new rules they’ll be able to come here far more easily and in far greater numbers. They might even take work away from skilled British workers.

      Indeed, based on your analysis above, these non-EU immigrants might have bigger families than the EU immigrants. They are also more likely to remain permanently in the UK. It’s far more difficult and unlikely for a Ghanaian or Nigerian to uproot themselves and their family and return to Africa than a French or Polish family to head back to their country of origin after a period of time working in the UK.

      By the way, I don’t think Mr Murray is claiming all people who supported Brexit are racist or anti-immigrant. In fact, I think he voted for Brexit and seems to advocate a so-called soft Brexit. He is certainly not a Remainer. That said, he respects the majority decision of the Scottish electorate to remain in the EU as well as the right of the English and Welsh nations to leave the EU.

      • Eric McCoo

        This is what Mr Murray wrote in this very article

        ‘I also find it irresistibly hilarious that the large majority of those who voted Brexit and voted Tory, who were primarily motivated by racism, will as a consequence face a substantive surge in non-white immigration. You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at that’.

        Deplorables ??

    • Giyane

      Rhys Jagger

      I’m with you up to a certain point on the overstretched resources argument. But looked at from the immigrants point of view, continual right wing colonial predation on the countries they were born in have made a life in the predator’s country attractive. And the predators, who are companies and politicians don’t have to foot the bill for immigration.

      This is why the idea of people electing Wright wing colonial predatory government is ridiculous since we all know that these are 100 % responsible for wrecking the world out there from which immigrants are running away.

      This government conducted s rigged election and has presented it as the people’s choice. The reality is that the people’s choice is to have Corbyn, a politician who stands against war and exploitation in power. This is unacceptable to the magic money tree banking money printers and military industrial gung ho empire2 nutters.

      What is happening now , and ever since Iraq and Afghanistan , is that US and UK democracy has been subverted by the Zionist lobby to utterly destroy the Middle East.
      Craig is an internationalist and a frustrated diplomat.
      He contested the neo con policy that created immigration
      .The financial system exploded in 2007 because of all the solid economic arguments you mention. But the neocons responded to Craig’ s objections and the entire system explosion by rigging the 2010 election by incorporating the LibDems into their minority and conning us that way.

      • Giyane

        Rhys Jagger

        Also, the propaganda by the BBC aligning the man with the answers Jeremy, has not stopped. Yesterday I listened to one of Labour’s female leadership contestants and Blunket who backs Nandy accepting that people didn’t trust Labour. Are these people politicians or house wives and husbands? Do they not have shirts to iron and lawns to mow?

        The supine acceptance of failure is too moronic to be believable. There must be bungs to grovel to neocons on the radio.

      • Bruce

        I’d argue that the UK and US have been subverted by Zionists since the outset of ww1 and probably a fair bit earlier in the UKs case.

      • sky

        Not really because he ignores the fact that immigrants pay into the system more than the take out

          • Charles Morrish

            No it doesn’t, migration and the economics around it are far more nuanced than the simple ‘there’s extra people so they must be taking our jobs and houses and clogging our health and education systems’
            It ignores the fact that immigrants have been educated elsewhere at no cost to this country and arrive as economically active participants in society. They tend to be young adults with initiative and drive – consider the determination to move to a foreign country, leaving family (parents etc) behind, and having to cope with a foreign language. As young adults they tend to be healthier so the argument about strain on the health service is weak.
            The lack of housing is also a poor argument in that responsibility for lack of housing lies with government, house building rates in this country have been woeful for many years now.
            Some migrants will choose to stay permanently and raise families, and at that point they will place a demand on education and health services, however they will have ‘paid into the system’ through tax and national insurance by that time.
            Please also remember that some migrants will choose to work here for a period of time and then return to their country of origin because of family and cultural ties – or perhaps because they have been made to feel unwelcome! In such cases this country has gained enormously, willing workers with initiative and drive who have contributed to the economy without us having to educate them or pay in any way for their childcare and health needs when children who then leave before they reach the position of being economically inactive in old age!
            As for the comment by Rhys that ‘migrants breed more’ that is at best sweepingly inaccurate and at worst simply racist.

          • Richard Colvin

            Replying to Charles:

            I agree with what you’re saying but does this not result in some of the less well-qualified and maybe less confident British-born young people being denied an opportunity to gain decent work experience and a half-decent living wage as opposed to being on state benefits? Our least privileged, most disadvantaged young people are having to compete with bright foreign-born young people who, as you say, “tend to be young adults with initiative and drive – consider the determination to move to a foreign country, leaving family (parents etc) behind, and having to cope with a foreign language.” This is tough competition for some. So are we not writing-off some of our young people, denying them a chance to grow, rendering them more and more unemployable?

    • Dungroanin

      Got out the wrong side of bed again Rhys?

      Did you miss my comment earlier to some Immigration Watch supporter with what the NUF had to say or forget our conversation on the over population myth?

      Providing Housing, Health, Education, Security is the GOVERNMENTS RESPONSIBILITY.

      Failure to provide it adequately is the governments FAULT – not individuals, cotizens or migrant.

      Austerity is and was a political choice. Annihilation of affordable social housing was too. As is the underfunding and privatisation of all services.

      And don’t even think of digging up Maggies putrid purse and handbag as an excuse 😉

      • Magic Robot

        Finishing off with a silly wink does not make what you write any more true.

        The ‘Free Traders’ are the group who benefit from this corrupt employment ‘system.’ Their hero was David Ricardo, the millionaire stockbroker who devised the ‘Iron Law of Wages’ as “the natural price of labour is the price which is necessary to enable the worker to subsist and to perpetuate their race without increase or diminution.”

        Both the Tories and Labour have connived at this since the mid-90’s.

    • Paul Short

      The arguments of Ricardo and indeed of Smith belong to a previous development stage of society and economics, and despite what some on here seem to think those ideas are not widely accepted amongst economists as Gospel by any means. Any modern, and indeed most older, societies, are dynamic systems – they do not have edges; there cannot be too many people (unless numbers reach levels easily double what they are now, and even then only in some areas) unless there is no work for them. Housing levels, health provision, education funding are all determined by governments, not set by some iron law of economics. There are no iron laws of economics – only analyses which help one sort of opinion or another. There is no question but that without significant immigration into Britain from anywhere at all, the overall population would decline – and this applies especially to Scotland (and leaving out English immigration into it) and to Wales amongst many other areas. Britain is not a bucket; it is not a box; it is not a room – its ability to absorb population increases depends not on size of land, but on work available – and the more people are in Britain, working and spending, the more Britain can absorb even more people. But then – I rather suspect you have other reasons to object to immigrants? Thought so.

  • Bruce

    The only thing that should matter is whether a city/region/nation wants immigrants or not. If they do, then let some in. If they don’t, then don’t let any in. And if the native inhabitants want to specify where their new countrymen come from, that’s fine too. Economic benefit is irrelevant, and is used as a smokescreen.

    But almost no western population is consulted about this most important issue….why is that? And anyone who questions the rampant immigration levels the west is currently experienced is shouted down as a racist and oh, maybe even a closet nazi. Why is that?

    It would also help if the west stopped bombing 3rd world countries, but that is not directly related to the immigration issue. That is, immigration would still be high without aggressive uk, us bombing.

    • Edward

      A Newcastle every year.
      A Bristol every two years.
      A Birmingham every 3-4 years.

      Oppose this and you’re a racist.

    • Magic Robot

      “anyone who questions the rampant immigration levels the west is currently experienced is shouted down as a racist and oh, maybe even a closet nazi. Why is that?”

      Because they want to cover up the dirty truth and divert the attention from themselves, that they want ‘Free Trade’ in labour as a means of driving down wages thus increasing profits for the owners.

      • nevermind

        Some really cant cope with reverse colonisation, tough for the now lttle emperors to fathom that their cheap bargain economy is due to outsourcing pollution and seeking cheap Chinese / Vietnamese labour , hallo Mrssrs. Dison and Radcliffe.
        Those who seek a hard Brexit will be very unpopular before the year is out and it will be down to their spendthrift bumblin’ incompetence.

  • Johny Conspiranoid

    “Those racists are so incompetent that at the same time as shredding British citizens’ right to migrate freely to the EU, they are inadvertently opening the doors to a new net increase in immigration into the UK largely from outwith the EU”
    Is it a mistake or is it intentional? The captains of industry don’t want a labour shortage whatever the duped voters want.

  • Mary

    Awful racism on display on QT from Weymouth last night. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000fk6x/question-time-2020-20022020

    Question Time audience member slammed after calling for UK to ‘completely close borders’
    The woman received a backlash for her views on immigrants “flooding in” who “cannot speak English” in a fiery Question Time debate about Home Secretary Priti Patel’s new points based immigration proposal
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/question-time-audience-member-slammed-21544101

    Panel Michael Portillo, Ash Sarkar, George Eustice. Howard Davies. Alison McGovern.

    • Mary

      The MP for South Dorset (which includes W\eymouth) is one Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax!

      This is from the start of his diary on Wednesday.

      ‘Diary – new immigration policy announced
      19 February, 2020
      The main news today was the Government’s immigration policy. A points-based system will be introduced in January next year. Top priority will be given to those with the highest skills, including scientists, engineers and academics. The Government is keen to move away from cheap labour from Europe. Those from the EU, except for those who are already living and working here, will also come under the new rules. Those wanting to come here will have to meet certain criteria, including speaking English and have an approved sponsor. Concern has been expressed by the care and agriculture sector who have relied on cheap labour from abroad, but, as I understand it, visas for say apple-pickers will be available. The aim of this policy is to first honour our manifesto commitment to reduce immigration and to level-up the skills base in our country. I believe it is crucial we recruit and train far more of our own nurses, for example. …..
      /..
      https://www.richarddrax.com/news/diary-new-immigration-policy-announced

        • Magic Robot

          michael norton
          Refer to A.J.P. Taylor’s ‘History of Britain.’

          In essence the British Medical Association told the Attlee government at the inception of the NHS in 1948, “if you start training working men and women as doctors, we’ll down tools.”
          The ministers wondered if this were meant to be taken literally, as in surgeons performing operations, for example.

          They were met with a stony silence – the ministers went pale, and the matter has never been brought up again from that day to this.

          • Mary

            That was 70 years ago. It’s very different now. Many doctors and nurses are leaving the NHS because of the stress and workloads. At my GP practice, five of the six partners have Middle Eastern origins. That is a shame as they are needed in their own countries. Mine was born in Baghdad. He is much needed there following the death and destruction visited on Iraq by the West, led by Bush and Blair.

            PS I have worked in the NHS.

    • Bramble

      Hardly a surprise given that the same racist, anti immigrant lies are on display here as well. We’ve had decades of this stuff being spewed out by the establishment media (I remember the reverent way in which the BBC cited Migration Watch and the kid gloves they used when interviewing Sir Andrew Green – now Lord Green I believe). Naturally its basic assumptions are accepted as “truths” by so many. Propaganda works. It’s how “democracies” disguise the true totalitarian nature of their regimes.

      • Mary

        This Lord Green. Andrew Fleming Green, Baron Green of Deddington – Crossbencher. Former UK Ambassador to Syria.

        ‘He chaired Medical Aid for Palestinians (a British charity seeking to improve health care for Palestinians both in Palestine and in refugee camps) for three years. He was for 12 years a board member 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 was the co-chair of the lobbying group British Syrian Society, founded by President Assad’s father in law Fawaz Akhras, until his resignation in 2011. He was re-appointed as Director of the Society in 2018.’

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Green,_Baron_Green_of_Deddington

        https://members.parliament.uk/member/4346/registeredinterests

  • Eric McCoo

    The government is simply responding to the democratic wishes of the electorate. Something the SNP and its grovelling, establishment loving and entitled adherents simply refuse to recognise. They refuse to recognise the 2014 and 2016 referendum results as if they were superior beings like the profoundly anti democratic EU.

    The reason we have mass immigration is that it makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. The SNP are a big business supporting, anti voter abomination and I predict they will be a spent force within two years now that Murdoch has turned against them. Mr Galloway says he would love a second referendum. Right after the Salmond trial. LOL !

    Pre Murdoch

    In 2010 Labour got 41 seats in Scotland, the SNP 6.

    In 2019 Labour got 1 seat in Scotland, the SNP 48.

  • Borncynical

    I heard a comment the other day which completely turns the ‘anti-immigration=racist’ meme on its head. Unfortunately I can’t recall who said it but it was most likely a journalist as I often watch the late night Press Reviews on BBC and Sky to keep up with the latest msm nonsense. What they said, without a hint of irony, with regard to filling vacancies for low-skilled jobs was that vacancies cannot be expected to be filled from the British population because we have become so ‘advanced’ (sic) as a society that ‘we’ are above doing menial jobs and have to look to others to do them. This was said in all seriousness as justification for opposing immigration controls. Roll back to the heady days of the Empire!

    • michael norton

      Almost all of my life I have done physical jobs, mostly outdoors or semi-outdoors.
      I am not ashamed of spending a life as a person who works with his hands, in fact, I am proud that i have been able to contribute using my body and my mind.
      I would rather be shot than work for Amazon and their ilke.

  • Charles Morrish

    This is a reply to Richard Colvin who responded to an earlier comment of mine. We’ve reached the end of the reply chain 😉 so this has to be a new comment!

    Richard, thanks for your comment, I think you make a good point regarding the competition for jobs with our own folk and how it may affect them in the long term. It is difficult to asses how many – certainly some – are affected in this way and I’m not sure how appropriate research could be constructed to establish that.

    The answer of course lies with the education system to provide an appropriate start for all young people educated here. What I can say, as a retired teacher (comprehensive schools in Scotland) is that we moved heaven and earth to try and ensure that all our youngsters moved on to ‘positive destinations’ on leaving school. Employment, further education and higher education are all examples of ‘positive destinations’. The ’bright’ kids who decided to take a year out before making up their minds were not deemed to be moving on to a positive destination and therefore counted against us! That’s what can happen when someone in an office somewhere decides to develop a system that can be ‘measured’

    As a further point it is worth remembering that the local applicant for a job will always have the advantages of local language/dialect/expression and knowledge of local geography over a migrant applicant and all other things being equal, is therefore more likely to be the successful candidate.

    • Yr Hen Gof

      “As a further point it is worth remembering that the local applicant for a job will always have the advantages of local language/dialect/expression and knowledge of local geography over a migrant applicant and all other things being equal, is therefore more likely to be the successful candidate”.

      This might well apply when the local employer shares the cultural background of the prospective local employee, however, many businesses both large and small are now owned and run by immigrants or at least descendants of immigrants, equally, it is in their nature to employ those who share with them much of that which you grant as an advantage to local applicants.
      Do you see many non Chinese working in Chinese restaurants, English chefs in Indian restaurants, British labourers working for Polish builders? Locally, we have a Romanian shop, a Bulgarian shop and a shop owned by Bangladeshis, in each case the shop staff are perfectly at home with the culture, language and I’m sure traditions of the shop owner, for a very good reason.
      I’m sure you get my point.

      • Charles Morrish

        You make a perfectly valid point that migrants of a particular ethnicity will in many cases find work with employers of the same ethnic background.
        This does not negate the point I made regarding the advantages of local applicants for most jobs, as the vast majority of employment opportunities are, not surprisingly, offered by the non migrant community (85% of the total population nationally)

  • JustAThought

    So actual result will be huge increase in immigrant – and those people will be required to take out private medical insurance?

    Good way to kick start the UK private health sector…..?

    Is that the real plan?

    • michael norton

      Yes, that is part of the plan.
      !/4 million people enter the U.K. each year, they will need a Health plan in place before they get a job here.

      • Ken Kenn

        That’s a very good point and if Johnson goes down to a deal with the US as a last resort and it will be
        the NHS ( no longer National ) will not be open to people who earn over X amount per year.

        They will have to pay US insurance companies Premiums out of their net pay or receive employer healthcare benefits.

        Does this remind you of anywhere?

        As far as immigration goes there may be a queue to get into London but that’s all.

        Patel quotes ” Inactive ” numbers of 8 million plus who could take up the slack of declining worker numbers.

        I thought we had ” full employment ” so more immigrants should be a good thing – shouldn’t it?

        They could always raise the retirement age to 75.

        Ian Duncan Smith (by crikey he’s suckled at the teat of the State for all his life ) has posited that policy.

        The media as usual ask no questions.

        p.s Where’s Laura the BBC’s human mobile phone mast relaying the messages of CCHQ to a waiting world?

        I’ll wager she’s working on getting a job with Fox radio with a view to working on Fox News eventually.

  • sky

    Surprisingly no one is really commenting on 26k being deemed as the line between skilled and unskilled and therefore unworthy….to be frank being a person stuck in a dead end job at much less than that and trying to move on I am lucky to see anything at that level . I may try to get some current stats from Reed employment agency website. From memory I did look at this about 6 months ago and something like 66% of vacancies were 22k or less

    • glenn_uk

      That’s a fair point. The “minimum wage” is actually the standard wage for a large proportion of the workforce, and that is considerably below the £26.5K the government considers worthwhile.

      I imagine the well known High Street names, besides all the Internet traders, are very proud to be staffed – by this measure – with completely unskilled workers, who would not even come near being qualified to reside in this country.

  • SIS

    I find it astonishing that possible Israel agent and disgraced Pritti Patel is in the job she is in.

    If these bumbling clowns in government keep going the way things are going, food prices will rocket next year.

    No Eastern Europeans to wipe the behinds of the old English racists who voted for Brext. No cheap labour to pick and process food.

    • sky

      I think the Tory government is operating on the principle of daily chaos to wear people down so they give up opposing them

  • N_

    On immigration…….Dominic Cummings describes himself as running a company called “North Wood” that “tries to solve problems (management, political, communication)”.

    A quick search at Companies House failed to find any company of that name of which he is listed as a director or officer or person with significant control. The only companies he is listed in connection with are Dynamic Maps Limited and Klute Limited. (Note: a company called Dominiccummings Ltd. exists, but the eponymous guy involved with it appears to be a different person entirely, with a different birthdate.)

    Can we guess where this is going?

    1) What jurisdiction is (or was) North Wood registered in?

    2) Who are its directors and major shareholders?

    3) Political problem solving, huh? Who does it have it contracts with, then? Not the British government by any chance?

    • N_

      I thought companies registered in any of the three jurisdictions in Britain (E&W, S, NI) would show up in the Companies House database even if they have been dissolved.

      So where was or is Dominic Cummings’s company North Wood registered?

      Singapore? Russia? Panama?

      Any non-Tory MPs reading this? Get on the case…

  • Loony

    Unsurprising to read more ignorant smearing of people with the smearing itself being entirely predicated on ignorance and stupidity. It is difficult to comprehend the mentality that seeks to elevate ignorance and stupidity to the highest of virtues.

    If you take a look at the UK in aggregate and in its current form then there are at least 2.5 billion people whose economic lives would be improved by relocating to the UK. 2.5 billion people would increase the population if the UK by about 40 times.

    Is this likely to be a feasible outcome? If it did occur then would the UK maintain or improve the average economic and lifestyle opportunities afforded to its current population?

    If you really believe that the UK could even exist, much less thrive with a population of over 2.5 billion why not step up and overtly confirm your arrant ignorance. If getting to a population of over 2.5 billion is neither practical nor desirable then it follows that there must be some barriers to entry. Defining what these barriers should be and reaching broad agreement as to efficacy of any such policy is not straightforward. Naturally it is made more complex when the most base of motives are ascribed to any ideas with which you may disagree. The only real question is “why?” – but even that does not really matter as it is a racing certainty that no answers will be provided.

    • michael norton

      Well it seems quite clear to me that we can not continue to have 250,000 extra people alive in the U.K. each and every year.
      For one thing, where will they live, on flood prone areas, perhaps?
      We are desperately short of doctors, some people have to wait a month to see a doctor.
      Roads are chocked to death, you can barely move.
      How many hundred billion more new railways, will we have to build?
      The country is already full to bursting.

  • Squeeth

    Ahem! I voted exit in the referendum and happen to believe that immigration is the best thing to happen to Britain since the end of the Second World War. Stick that in your pipe Craig. ;O)

    • N_

      @Squeeth – Some people voted Brexit for reasons other than immigration, and some of those people voted with honourable intent, such as Dennis Skinner. But doubtless some voted for Hitler too for non-xenophobic reasons, and of those, I am prepared to believe that some had honourable reasons (like having been f*cked over by the CP or whatever, and in addition having their wife run off and leave them so they had to iron their own shirts and didn’t have time to acquire any brain cells). Perhaps those straight bananas in the supermarkets were really getting to you? Couldn’t walk down the street without the EU telling you what to do? Perhaps you even believed the Poles and Romanians would keep on coming to Britain after Brexit?

      None of this should detract from the fact that support for Brexit was mostly a huge upsurge of anti-immigrant Powellism.

      With the far right eugenics boys now in the ascendant, a bit of contrition might be called for from all those people (maybe even 10000 of them, something like that?) who voted for Brexit for other reasons than “Enoch was right” and “send them back”.

  • N_

    On eugenics…Sabisky – Cummings – Plomin…

    When I read this article by Matt Ridley, I recalled the observation that in England you can say any old sh*t in a posh accent and people will think you’re clever. Why? Because they’ve had it drummed into them from a very early age that they themselves are stupid no hopers, that’s why.

    Ridley is doing his best to defend what he was brought up to think is beyond reproach, what he has never in his life questioned for a single minute, namely rule by his own vile class. He thinks that rule is an essential feature of “proper” society. He is probably never going to think otherwise except if he gets kidnapped by an armed proletarian group and kept in captivity for a year or two, or if there’s a social revolution and all his references such as “being a name at Lloyd’s” and “Jack owns 10000 acres” and “Balliol College” all become meaningless and of no interest except as markers of mental illness. He is also deliberately encouraging disarray among the critics of the state of affairs that he loves so much.

    And remember – the IQ nuts are now out in the open in and around Downing Street. I remember when Murray and Herrnstein were considered by most of the political class to be untouchable far right Nazis. Well it isn’t like that any more. Nobody calls Steven Pinker the Nazi that he is.

    Listen to the moronic Ridley…

    First, if intelligence was not substantially genetic, there would be no point in widening access to universities, or in grammar schools and bursaries at private schools trying to seek out those from modest backgrounds who have more to offer.

    This is called a WIND-UP, delivered with a straight face. It should absolutely not be taken at face value and countered only “intellectually”. Anybody who does that has been trolled. They are laughing at you behind your back if you do that.

    Does he think he is using logic? The main reason why Eton and Winchester offer bursaries and, more than that, why they support some genuinely charitable activities with about 0.01% of their annual income, is because these m*****f***ing institutions are themselves charities, so they do it for PR. The law doesn’t actually say that organisations that have as their main purpose the sale of luxury services to the filthy rich should be able to dodge tax. If it did, every superyacht chandlery would have charity status. That wouldn’t look good. That’s why they have to spend a little bit each year on “access”. Get it? Yes, of course Ridley gets it. Everybody who is involved in running top private schools or propagandising for them knows it damned well.

    This has been so for at least a century. A minor reason for why the ruling class acts like this is that they want to recruit the cream of the working class, or more often the cream of the lowish middle class, so long as it adopts the same manners as theirs – especially their accent. Why not? With only extremely few exceptions (e.g. David Frost – and think about his accent), they won’t let them marry their daughters – but hey, that’s their “private life”. The strategists among them (and that’s only a very small proportion of them – not the boozers and gunslingers) know that their own ranks contain quite a large number of morons, whom nowadays they can’t chuck into the Indian Civil Service or the armed forces. So why shouldn;t they recruit a small number of people from outside? They did in India. They did in Africa. They did in China. And they do in Britain. The whole “theory” of the “bell curve” doesn’t say that all working class people are retarded and that all ruling class posh boys are highly intelligent. It says that’s true ON THE AVERAGE. So for example from these scumbags’ point of view a working class person with an “IQ” of 145 is say 4 standard deviations from his class’s norm of 85 whereas a ruling class person with the same “IQ” may be only 1 standard deviation from his class’s norm of 130. So they may try to recruit him. So what? It doesn’t prove they’re bending over backwards to help the dirty prole scum and recognise them as occasionally having some worth as human beings, which is what the snakelike Ridley is trying to convey. If they want to recruit, they REMOVE the target from the working class. The class war is rather like any other war in this respect.

    He continues: “And this brings a final paradox: a world with perfect social mobility would show very high heritability.

    F***! How can he even use such terms as “social mobility” and “heritability” without referring to the social relation that people like him believe is the holiest of the holy, namely INHERITED WEALTH?

    • N_

      Ridley offers the following statement, A => B:

      “If intelligence was not substantially genetic, there would be no point in widening access to universities, or in grammar schools and bursaries at private schools trying to seek out those from modest backgrounds who have more to offer.”

      What he is really trying to support here is the contrapositive of namely not-B => not-A, an statement that looks like this:

      “Since it is highly pointful and awfully wonderful that the elite offers a few bursaries to those who come from the great unwashed, intelligence is therefore mostly genetic”.

      A => B is basically the same statement as not-B => not-A. But clearly, put in the second form it is totally ridiculous. Put in the first form it is also totally ridiculous. It is ludicrous in any form. But by changing it around like that, Ridley sugarcoats it and has a good laugh among his chums at what a great wind-up people like Robert Plomin and and himself are all engaged in.

  • Mary

    Patel is upsetting the staff at the Home Office. DG of Visas & Immigration and Passport Office quits.

    Home Office’s immigration boss quit ‘after run-ins with Priti Patel’
    Pressure grows on home secretary accused of bullying senior civil servants
    22 Feb 2020

    Priti Patel ‘presided over an atmosphere of fear’ at home office.

    Bullying allegations engulfing the home secretary, Priti Patel, have intensified as it emerged that “major run-ins” had forced the resignation of one of her department’s most senior civil servants on immigration.

    Union sources have revealed that “uncomfortable” demands by Patel had prompted Mark Thomson, the director general of UK Visas and Immigration and HM Passport Office, to announce his departure just weeks after her appointment.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/22/home-office-immigration-head-quits-row-patel

    What is Johnson going to do about it? He’s probably scared of her.

  • Kim Sanders-Fisher

    “Scavenge – Exploit – Deport!” That is the sad reality of our new immigration system. As someone who has sailed to, lived and worked all over the world, I do not resent people from any other nation coming here to the UK. But, there are hidden consequences; I have witnessed the impact of our morally bankrupt policy of scavenging medical professionals from countries that could not afford to train them. In 2009 I did a ten country overseas tour a, “Needs assessment of Anaesthesia care in Sub-Saharan Africa.” The conclusion I reached was that we must stop decimating overseas healthcare provision by designing a system that was mutually beneficial.

    Craig at one point I sent you the documents on my proposals that focused on what I refer to as “Collaborative Circular Migration,” but I realize you are preoccupied with far more important issues right now. I believe that if the offer to the British people had embraced these concepts to fully democratize “Freedom of Movement” the whole anti-migrate furore would have dissipated. Under such a policy, that no longer myopically focused on targeting just the cheap labour needs of corporations, that instead offered genuinely equal opportunities for both young and old, the impoverished and underprivileged as well as the rich we could help rebalance to eliminate the unjust disparities within the EU.

    Another glaring reality that you have not touched on is the practicality of policing the new system. Many EU citizens who are living and working here dutifully paying their taxes may not be able to corral the right paperwork or afford the extortionate fees to remain here legally. A significant number of them will not leave, especially if they have family, friends and strong connections here; they will probably move into the illegal job market. The real issue here is whether the Tories actually care about this impending exponential expansion of the cheap, expendable, illegal labour force who will be stripped of all their rights by next January?

    The simple answer is no; the loss in lower level taxes from this group is of very little concern as they provide a massive benefit to businesses who can seriously exploit them. Just like tax credits that facilitate poverty wages this is another benefit for the wealthy and it will be greatly appreciated by the most unscrupulous business owners who support the Tory Party. Instead of our UK workers fairly competing for jobs against those who once earned equal pay, entitled to the same workers rights and job protections as us, they will lose jobs or be forced to accept far lower pay due to the glut of undocumented workers.

    Those caught working illegally will have their wages garnered, but paltry company fines will be written off as an expense of doing business. With the level playing field destroyed the unions are doomed as the ability to strike is also set to be restricted still further. The high profile headlines surrounding deportations give a false impression of the size and strength of the enforcement services that have suffered just as many cuts as other Government departments. Once this large volume of EU citizens becomes part of the immigration removal remit it will be entirely overwhelmed. It will rely on the bigotry of informants Neighbour against Neighbour!

    Within my latest comment #50367, regarding the dire consequences of not challenging the rigged 2019 Election including the Assange extradition, posted on the Forum, Elections Aftermath: Was our 2019 Vote & the EU Referendum Rigged?

    I warn that: “The social safety-net will be completely dismantled; fight for survival or die in destitution. There is no need for the Tories to invest in training as the new immigration policy of “Scavenge, Exploit, Deport” is a much cheaper option for their race to the bottom. Who will take the low paid jobs of our current migrant workforce? The pension age will climb while the state takes a lot less responsibility with regard to paying for it. The “Economically Inactive” will be forced into all types of menial labour; this will include the disabled and pensioners who will no longer be able to cover the soaring cost of their medications or pay for privatized healthcare under the new US model.”

    In some sectors the new immigration system will import dirt cheap labour on short term contracts to work in the UK for less than a year. Those jobs will go to workers from impoverished countries in the developing world who can be paid a lot less that anyone coming here from the EU under Freedom of Movement. These workers will have no job security a very long way from home, they are more likely to be hard working, compliant and put up with extremely poor conditions in violation of EU standards that will be ditched in December. The key to this immigration policy is facilitating exploitation, driving down wages and breaking the unions. In exchange for this “Nirvana” our travel on the continent will be more restricted than it was before we joined the EU!

    The Titanic Brexit Crash-Out is not fully implemented yet; there is still time to challenge this injustice: Pease read, sign, share and Link to this Petition: 2019 TORY LANDSLIDE VICTORY DEMANDS URGENT NATIONWIDE INVESTIGATION.

  • michael norton

    Having an extra quarter of a million people in the U.K. each and every year is so obviously not sustainable.
    We are now no longer expected to burn wet logs or coal at home.
    We are expecting to no longer install gas central heating at home.
    So, we might expect that we will need more electricity supply.
    Will the increase in electricity supply go on for ever.
    Will new road building go on for ever.
    Will swamps be drained for new housing – 100 thousand plus per annum for ever.
    Will the training of extra medical staff increase forever.
    The size of the country is not increasing it is decreasing as the seas get higher and more land is erroded into the sea.
    It does not matter where these new people come from or how talented they may feel themselves to be
    we are full up.

  • michael norton

    The number of people moving to Britain from outside the European Union is now at its highest level on record, official figures revealed today.

    Some 379,000 people came to the UK from non-EU countries, according to the latest Office for National Statistics estimates for the year to September 2019.

    At the same time there has been a year-on-year rise in estimated non-EU net migration from 26,000 to 250,000 – which is at its highest level since 2004.

    The number of non-EU citizens leaving Britain over the same period has remained broadly stable for about six years now and is now at 129,000.

    It is just not sustainable.
    Today we learn that the court has stopped runway three of Heathrow because we cannot
    just expanding on our little island,
    we are full up and over-built

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