Foreigners

Some of the kids have been waiting much longer to be reunited with family in the UK. Not just since April.
Run rights of children seem to have been blithely disregarded by May, when Home Secretary and by French authorities.

I agree, Jess. Saying April just puts it slightly in perspective.
I was just reading an article about Lily Allen and how she has been denigrated since she visited Calais.
There was a link in the article to one about Jude Law and Benedict Cumberbatch visiting and saying equally bad things about the government, but the Sun and the Mail did not write nasty articles about them.
That was in February,before the Dubs amendment. There were over 200 child refugees who were going to be allowed in, each one supported by someone like Jude Law, etc.
They are still not here.
The Dubs amendment said as soon as possible. Is this really as soon as possible?
129 child refugees have disappeared since they were registered as suitable to come here.
What's happened to Britain?

By the way, if anyone supports Gary Lineker on what he says about immigrants, you can vote for him on the National Television Awards.
The Sun has criticised him, but it supports the awards.

www.nationaltvawards.com/vote

Get one back on the Sun, and Tory MPs who have also criticised him.

Brilliant! The home office has rejected the criticism of being disorganised about Calais.
You couldn't make it up, could you?
What have they been doing all this time?

www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/22/anger-panicking-home-office-houses-refugee-children-detention-centre-calais

This is how disorganised they have been. More concerned with Brexit than with these child refugees.
It's appalling. What did May and Rudd expect to happen?
Now even those with family here are having to go to foster care or detention centres because they couldn't get their act together.
Must be hoping the rest of them will disappear tomorrow. Then it'll be traffickers faults, not theirs.

Let's face it, whatever the government do will be wrong for some people! Why not just put Corbyn in charge, open our doors, let everyone the world over come here en masse, then when all our systems, the NHS in particular have broken down in chaos perhaps you in particular dj will at last be content!

nig why do you think May has no plans to stop/reduce immigration from the rest of the world? That would take a huge chunk out of the total figure.

She had plenty of time to sort out non eu immigration when she was Home Secretary..did nothing about it.

Well she didn't know all those darned xenophobes and racists would win the referendum did she? Hindsight is a wonderful thing...

But it was government policy to reduce immigration to 10s of thousands, nothing to do with the referendum. She failed miserably.

Exactly Ana! To be honest I give up!!!!

May failed government policy nothing to do with fascists.

Fascists now, are they? Oh, I give up too, nellie!

Oh god! Sorry I didn't proof read.

Nellie you are obviously fortunate enough to live in a parallel universe in which Jeremy Hunt does not exist, or else his benign and rational dopple-ganger is not:
Starving the NHS of money when our raging population is pushing up demand
Upsetting the hard working junior doctors and driving them into moving abroad
Discouraging people from training as nurses by withdrawing bursaries
Don't think our beloved NHS is going to be very far from chaos when he hands it over in 2020.

Raging?
Yes, we are, Jess, at the mess Hunt is making of our NHS.

You giving up again, Nellie?

How many EU and other migrants work in the NHS?
Hunt is telling them they can all go home. Serve him right if they did.
Not that he would take responsibility for it because, hard to believe, the SoS no longer has responsibility for the NHS.
He just interferes in it.

I'm not the only one dj! Wonder why?!!!!!

nigglynellie this is why I don't bother to post on these threads any more. You are trying to reason with some who have a fixed mindset. To enter into debate people have to be willing to 'listen' to any others point of view and then put forward a reasoned arguement which might persuade their fellow debater to move their stance.

What we have here insults such as 'you are obviously fortunate to live in a parallel universe.....' and taunts like 'you giving up again'.

This is why the political threads are avoided by those, of all political persuasions, except a hardy few. In real life you would excuse yourself and just walk away from anyone who talked like that.

but anya I also found nn's post of yesterday 18.27 also unhelpful in contributing to a positive tone on this thread. The sniping comes from both 'sides'

nn's post is the logical outcome of what others are demanding. So how would they have managed to reduce immigration? To improve and increase NHS, education, housing, law and order? Only by taxing everyone to extinction and thus bringing the country to its economic knees. There is no easy way to manage this situation and any government can only do its best.

I don't think the post is a logical extension, it's a reductio ad absurdum which does not contribute to helpful debate. Is clear that immigration policies are not clear, well thought through or working. Is Corbyn really saying anyone should be able to come in? Really?

One issue of course is our complete failure to train sufficient people to be our nurses, doctors, technicians, engineers, plumbers?. Who remembers the Industrial Training Boards and the Infustrial Training Levy? Who abolished them? It's much cheaper for firms/companies/organisations to poach from abroad through immigration than to have to contribute towards making us self sufficient in skills and training by growing our own. That's an example of a policy that would eventually impact on our being able to reduce immigration and at least I've tried to contribute to the debate by putting forward an idea- anyone else care to join me?

Bit lost here. Which of nn's posts is a logical outcome of which others?

Over half of the total number of immigrants come from non-EU countries. The UK has always had total control of the number of immigrants from those countries, but we haven't, because we need the people.

People wouldn't need to be taxed to extinction. Immigrants are not a homogenous group. Many of them are highly skilled, filling skills gaps, paying taxes and contributing towards products whioh are then exported. The UK earns billions from foreign students, which is why Hammond wanted to exclude them from immigration caps.

Other immigrants are doing low paid work, often below their skill level, because the UK has an ageing population and needs younger people to support society and the economy. And so it goes on....

The government(s) should never have made empty promises to bring the net immigration figure down to below 100,000, because it was never going to happen and it won't in the foreseeable future. There are far more than 100,000 immigrants from non-EU countries, despite the tightening of eligibility criteris. There are over 30,000 immigrants from Ireland alone, eligible since an agreement from the 1920s. It would be a very foolish government which tried to change that.

Even with Brexit, it's highly unlikely that immigration could ever be brought down to the kind of figure people have been promised, unless there's a total collapse of the economy and I don't suppose many people want that.

You're right, Rigby, but that would require a long-term, joined up strategy .

It's likely to be decades before we could get the balance right. For a start, we'd have to train hundreds of teachers/lecturers/mentors...or import them. Then we'd have to get industry working in sync with training. There's no pint training loads of builders if investors won't invest in building and planning laws won't let people build. There's no pint in having loads of doctors, if people are expected to diagnose themselves online etc etc.

We need to be flexible about training, because people are likely to have to retrain at least once in their lives, which means rethinking benefits for middle-aged people. They can't take time out to train, if they have a family to support.

PS. I remember the Construction Industry Training Board, because I have a relative who worked for it. I never really knew what it did.

I think the problem with your idea, Rigby, is that it doesn't sit well with the Conservative's cherished policy of 'shrinking the state' and ending regulation for business. It leaves the country with no strategy for rectifying skills shortages as individual businesses see no further than their own concerns and a levy on business is seen as interfering with their freedom to spend their money in the way they think best. Companies seem to prioritise maximising dividends to shareholders (a 'rational' choice as it makes the company more attractive for investors)which doesn't lead to investment in training; particularly if, as has been pointed out, it is cheaper to bring in trained people from abroad.

Some companies do invest in training; I was listening to an interesting programme about apprenticeships tha other day; companies run these not only at a basic training level but also at degree level. One of the interviewees was an apprentice with a bank. She entered at post A level as an alternative to University and is in a management position and working for a degree funded by the bank.

But it seems to me to be foolish to rely on all companies having a farsighted strategy for training.

I recall there was a lot to be said for Sandwich courses.Are they still in existence? My ex-DH did his degree via a Sandwich course and was told by one of his 'sandwich' employers that they much preferred to employ ex-sandwich course people as they had had hands on as well as theoretical experience.

Of course, a weakness of Training boards was that there were always stories about incomptence and misdirection of funds attached to them. People much prefer to lambast an organisation for its faults that to look at the good work it is doing. Of course, if it isn't doing good work it does need to be exposed but media analysis rarely goes as far as a thorough investigation of a story.