Seventy percent of immigrants into the UK come from the EU. As long as we are in the EU we cannot stop these people coming to the UK to live and work. We can however change our benefit rules to stop these immigrants claiming benefits health care etc which are available to the indigenous population which immigrants have not paid into but you have to do this whilst obeying EU rules. The French show how to do this but it involves a rewriting of our benefits rules along French lines which roughly are if you have not paid in you don't get, social housing, dole, health care etc. If however you simply discriminate on the grounds of nationality as the UK government you are in breach of EU rules. Cast Iron Dave can huff and puff for public consumption but he wellknows he will lose. If you are in a club you use the rules to get what you want. If you ignore the rules you won't get what you want but you will suffer endless humiliation at the hands of the European court.
The remaing thirty percent coming from outside the EU we can refuse entry to those we don't want and take those we do. Those coming know this and the unwanted, the great majority, claim they are asylum seekers. There are different rules for asylum seekers but if they are not found after due process to be genuine then they are asked to leave. The problem is they don't!
On last Sunday's Politics Show, West region, we had the incredible sight of a failed asylum seeker who had had 5 appeals heard and rejected appearing with the immigration minister Mark Harper. All Mr Harper coould do was to ask him to leave!
It is an endemic problem in the UK. We have rules and regulations but we don't enforce them. This is what happened with bankers. If the banking regualatory authorities had applied the rules there would have never been such a huge banking crisis. For why? Lack of political support. Politicians wanting money from bankers.
If it is not the business of the immigration minister to enforce the rules on illegal failed asylum seekers continuing to live in the UK whose business is it?
For why? Sordid politicians wanting ethnic votes.
That is the core problem in the UK. Politicians make .rules but won't enforce them. They treat rules as political promises, to be forgotten when they are no longer convenient.
1 comment:
I always talk about immigration in terms of its ability to integrate incomers into society.
Canada had a sensible policy of only allowing in people with useful skills that Canadians lacked, and has vast resources.
Australia is similar and has vast resources. New Zealand is similar.
There is absolutely no sense in allowing free flow of poor people with nothing to contribute to society into a country with vast debts, insufficient land and a language they do not understand.
It remains to be see whether the opening of doors to Rumanians and Bulgarians is the straw which breaks the camel's back.
By that I mean that the foment of reaction to immigration from the EU has been fairly muted from the population at large. Will the new incomers escalate the reaction to a new level ?
Will UKIP benefit from being proved right ?
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