Illegal immigration - what to do?

Thanks Eleothan, I remember it. I usually read Michele Hanson and thought this was one of her outstanding columns.

Of course people are anti immigration for all sorts of reasons. If it is true that several areas that voted for anti-immigration candidates were 'not that affected', then I'm not surprised.

I suppose there are a number of explanations for it. People in relatively unaffected areas might have relatives in affected areas. Or they may fear their own area will become affected. Or they might want to 'keep Britain British'.

Who knows?

My concern about unrestricted EU immigration is that people already struggling to find jobs and housing will have an even harder time as numbers swell.

I am not affected myself. I live in a leafy South East town. But I've always voted Labour because I want the very poor of this country to be less poor and I think there should be more social mobility.

The part of Michele Hanson's column that you refer to went like this:

"What luck that the poor are often more generous than the very wealthy, because they're the ones who are going to have to do all the sharing. I suspect that the nasty shit-stirrers, such as our current leaders and anti-foreigner upstarts, are doing their best to whip up hatred among the lower orders, so that they'll do the fighting and the dirty work for them, while they retire to their fortresses in Kensington, Brooklyn Heights, Mosman NSW and Östermalm, and everybody else scrabbles around battling for the few crumbs that are left."

I think there is evidence to demonstrate that several of the areas that voted for anti-immigration candidates were not that affected by immigration.

Yes grannyactivist I thought of you as I made the comment . It is great when somebody walks the talk as you put it. But how many of us are?

I would be more impressed by those with high minded ideas about unrestricted immigration from poor EU countries if they were living in areas which were adversely affected by such policies or if they opened up their homes to EU immigrants so they would not have to live in the kind of squalor we hear about.

As Michelle Hanson said in the Guardian a week or so ago, when it comes to sharing our wealth with those from poorer EU countries who wish to come here to improve their lot, it is our poor who will have to do the sharing.

I quite like Fay's idea (for Australia I know) and wonder if we should place a limit on people coming in from the EU and take more really desperate people from outside the EU.

I so agree with when that I could have written the exact same posts. And as for petallus' comment: that those who think we should share our wealth with others who are less fortunate could start the ball rolling by opening up their own homes - yes, I am walking the talk. I have given free English lessons to hundreds of immigrants in my own home and am currently giving a home to two teenagers from Afghanistan.

Hopefully the UK doesn't go the route of Australia. I am absolutely disgusted in the way both major parties have used asylum seekers for political gain. They have set up prison camps in poorer countries so anyone arriving by boat are intercepted and therefore cannot arrive on Australian soil and they then say the asylum seekers won't be given refugee status in Australia.

In the meantime any illegal immigrant who arrives by plane and gets through customs is not locked up ie those on holiday visas who arrive on intending illegally to stay in Australia.

Also both sides of the government have informed us that an extra twenty million or more immigrants will be arriving in Australia in the next twenty years or so to drive up our economy.

Australia may be a large country but we don't have an indefinite water supply and droughts are very common. Our infrastructure in the cities are nor keeping up with the increased intake of migrants, our hospitals are overcrowded, our main roads and public transport are also crowded. Our main rivers were dry in places only a few years ago due to a severe drought. We were on water restrictions for many years.

I believe as we can't sustain a huge population we should lower our intake of immigrants. Deport the illegal immigrants and help the desperate people coming from countries such as Iran and Afghanistan.

It is terrible seeing families with children and even unaccompanied minors sent to these prison camps. There are many country towns that would be able to take many families each. Far better to give them unemployment benefits which they will spend in the towns who will also get the benefit of people from different cultures. The current situation is costing Australia billions imprisoning desperate asylum seekers.
Rant over!!

Ana I was just following on from other posts. Sorry if I did not stick to the the original discussion well enough!

My point was if you set a limit on numbers of migrants then does every newcomer count? Are asylum seekers separate from this number? What happens if there is a human tragedy situation? How strict will the limit be?
Who sets the criteria as to who is a permissable migrant?

Also I do think it is important to look at the issue of 'illegal' immigration as part of the wider issue of why people choose to leave their homeland and consider whether countries,who are often the host to immigrants, have any sort of responsibility to prevent or alleviate the issues that can cause some to become a) asylum seekers, b) 'illegal' migrants c) legal migrants.

That was my point..e.g if we decide that 20 others can join our club and 200 want to join do we choose those most like us or those who might need the club the most? Should we help make 'clubs' in their home countries so fewer people want to join existing ones here?

Is there a wider international moral issue here or only an economic one?

No one's saying it can be solved easily, and I don't see why limiting the numbers 'beggars belief'.

This thread started out as a discussion about illegal immigrants but seems to have morphed into the usual for/against economic migrancy with the same opinions expressed by the same people who have voiced them on all the other EU threads.

I'll leave you to it.

Just got back from a holiday in Spain where I could not help but see the UK immigrants with their 'full English breakfast' caffs turning whole areas of Spanish towns British!

I think that the whole picture of demographics and immigration needs to be considered as a whole, in the UK and also within Europe and the 'Western World'.

If there were no border controls /no countries people would settle where a reasonable life was possible: peace/food/health/education etc. We know that many migrants move to a different place for purely economic reasons and a 'better life'. That will all be comparative.

Should we use need as a criteria? Could we prioritise a migrant from a very poor country over a person who is from a similar country to UK? Or do we decide only 'self-sufficient' migrants can come to the UK? Where I lived in Sth London the language heard in the local bars was Afrikaans, followed closely by strong Aussie or NZ accents? Is that a problem or is it better if people are white/'western'? I know of several Sth African couples who came to the UK for free maternity services before moving to Australia.. Is that OK because granny was English?

Such a complex issue that the naive approach of just 'limit the numbers' beggars belief. I am not saying that the UK can sustain unlimited numbers of people but what /who and how is a truly complex issue that even the very talneted and gifted, 'farts rainbows' Farage will not solve easily!

Yes I agree Jess. We had a lot more than a trickle and refugees from very traumatic circumstances, but the point was that you put the support in and it was for the most part repaid by people who learnt English and went on to find employment.
I get the impression that some people just don't want to hear good news stories though.
Yes Jen you are right, the gunboats were a bit hyperbolic.

My husband helped design the swimming pool at Milton Keynes, JessM. We were living in Northumberland at the time.

My experience of immigration is primarily through living in the rapidly growing city of Milton Keynes which became more diverse every year. The number of jobs grew rapidly during this time. My professional experience showed me how hard was to attract UK graduates to move into MK and the economy would have been scuppered without the willingness of immigrants to do so. There was am established Pakistani community at one end of the city and a Bangladeshi community at the other end. Thus providing us with lots of opportunities to eat curry. Without immigrants there would have been nobody working in care homes or driving taxis. There are many roles that just don't attract UK applicants. We had Nigerian next door neighbours.
No significant problems really worth mentioning - a trickle of non-english speakers into schools that had to be helped. That's about it.

Haven't we sold off all our navy gunboats?

To be honest Jen, I don't think it makes much difference. The British have lived in France in large numbers for hundreds of years, as do Americans. There would have to be new arrangements for health cover and we would have to pay more for that without the reciprocal agreement. We pay taxes here anyway (as well as in the UK). We might have to get a Carte de Sejour, but that was only abolished fairly recently anyway. I guess we could also apply for French citizenship and quite a lot of British do this. The unknown would be the effect on the exchange rate. If the pound collapsed (again) then that would impact on pensions, but equally it might go up, especially if France reverted to the franc. I don't really see huge queues of us being evacuated by gunboat with equally large queues of young French coming the other way tbh.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ukips-amjad-bashir-accused-hypocrisy-3549301
Hard to decide which thread to post this on!

So if the UK leaves Europe, like Farage wants, and Cameron pretends to want or not want, depending on what mood he's in, where does that leave all the British who live in Europe?

when, immigration as a whole isn't going to tail off if the EU continues to expand, accepting more and more poor countries as members.

Interesting statistics from the ONS. Between 1995 and 2010 employment of working age immigrants rose by 2.1 million but displacement of British born was only 160,000. This I take to mean that the other jobs were directly aimed at the immigrants. So who is to blame, the immigrants or their employers?

We all have different thresholds as to what the limits are, I guess. I see it gradually tailing off as we accommodate new immigrants, manage borders fairly, get the social housing that has been neglected for so long and integrate new arrivals into our workplaces, neighbourhoods and families, as we have done in the past. There are more urgent things to concentrate on and as long as the media scaremonger about immigration, our government will exploit the opportunity to foist other burdens on us. Why aren't we clamouring for money from the war chest, bankers, tax evaders etc to be paid into the social coffers right now?

My question wasn't actually directed at you, petallus, but thanks for answering anyway!

This thread is becoming confusing as some people's views on immigration as a whole are becoming mixed up with others' views on illegal immigration, that's all.

when surely there are limits though.

I like the suggestion made earlier today that those who think we should share our wealth with others who are less fortunate could start the ball rolling by opening up their own homes.

Ana yes I was talking about all immigration which I probably should not have done on this thread.

Funny how we can have totally different views about sharing the land we live in, yet when it comes to the wealthy and the old boys club, where they all serve their own interests, there are massive objections to such attitudes. This is a relatively wealthy country and we can afford to be generous to those less fortunate than ourselves. It's something the wealthy and powerful could learn - on that there is much more agreement.

Just to be clear, when I refer to 'immigration' I am referring to large numbers of relatively unskilled workers from other parts of the EU who are likely to be taking more from our country, overall, than they are contributing and who will be competing with the poor of this country for jobs and housing.

Controlled immigration of any nationality or ethnic group would be fine with me if people can show that they have the ability to support themselves and skills to offer which are not already available here.

Are we talking about illegal immigration here, as per the OP, or all immigration?

when I agree that some of us, if living in a poor country, would try to get to somewhere else where the standard of living was higher.

However, is it realistic to expect a richer country to allow uncontrolled immigration, especially if it is already over-populated and struggling with unemployment and housing problems itself?

My mind boggles at the suggestion that this should be allowed to happen because eventually our living standards will be as bad as those from poorer countries and then, hopefully, people can be expected to return home!

Incidentally, I am not convinced by the arguments which have been made earlier on this thread that because we are all descended from Africans millions of years ago, or that our grandmothers were German or whatever, we should not complain today about immigrants coming here in large numbers.

Well said, Mamie. Both my sons partners are immigrants, one from Denmark and one from Spain. I have lived in lots of cities where there are immigrants and have taught a good many.
I have no problem with immigrants, and have not met many who do not work hard. I have lived next door to Polish and Ugandans and shared a house with West indians.
The problem I have is with people who exploit immigrants and would deny them their right to live in a decent society because of the accident of their birth.

Excellent and realistic post POGS.