Probably not the best thread for this but I'll bung this in here anyway. Net migration to UK soars by 39% to 243,000:
Net migration to UK soars by 39% to 243,000 | UK news | theguardian.com
If you are going to vow to decrease immigration, then you really have to put measures in place that will achieve it. Under EU rules the government has no way of limiting movement so any vow without changing the terms of our EU membership is simply waffle based on wishful thinking. It's not obvious that the government has done any renegotiation at all. If Cameron could take some time out from his multiple holidays to do some of that, then perhaps his party's vow to decrease immigration substantially could become reality. As it is, he seems happy to sit on a beach - or whatever - and postpone any action whilst hundreds of thousands of migrants flood in.
I'm not terribly exercised by immigration, but I can understand the incredible frustration of those that are. What the government has done is implement lots of micromeasures and they've made a big fuss about them. But it's a bit like shutting the windows of the house whilst leaving the front door wide open. Until theyaddress Britain's EU membership terms, that door will remain open.
Dare I sayconsequence of a government so obsessed with the PR battle of looking tough on immigration and having the right soundbites and slogans and posters but not actually having the competence to, you know..do something about it?
It's similar to crime. A lot of times administrations that like to trumpet how tough they are on crime are in reality quite rubbish at controlling it. It's about time government policy on immigration, crime, prisons and a whole range of other subjects was treated with a view to tackling the issues rather than all the focus going into planning how they can look 'hard' on it.
At least Labour had the common decency to admit it didn't give a crap even at the time.
A spokesman said they had reduced immigration from outside the EU. But that is not the problem. In fact we should be selecting who comes here (including students). In the meantime the EU main gate has been left open for anyone, skilled/ non skilled and the numbers just go up and up.
If you want to stop illegal immigration the only way to do it is to impose tough financial penalities on those that benefit economically from illegal immigrants.So the landlords, the employment agencies, the piecework factories.Hammer them hard to the point of bankruptcy and they won't engage in economic activity with illegal immigrants without checking documentation.What's more this would be self-financing since the financial penalties would pay for the enforcement costs.After a year or two word will spread back home that the UK is not the place to be and the illegal immigrants will go elsewhere.
The thing is all this is well known, has been academically studied, and researched, but labour doesnt want to do anything that might harm the immigrants and the tories don't want to do anything that might harm the business interests that profit (directly or indirectly via lowering wages elsewhere).So nothing happens.
But it does create a festering and growing resentment by the people who will eventually say "enough". The longer it goes on, the more it plays in UKIP's hands.
Add to this that over 50% of babies born are to foreign mothers, the majority being Polish, followed closely by Pakistani and then further back Indian.
Immigration isn't as simple a one in one out policy as long as huge cultural chasm exist in the UK, ghettos are being populated from the inside as well as out.
We need strong robust dare I say even muscular leadership to push through traditional British values or else we will edge ever closer to power grabs in all directions.We already see this in gangs, illicit and violent crime, where effectively we have cultural and ethic violence in both very tribal and turf based incidents, north London for example is a hot bed of this sort of thing, but the recent influx of Romanian and Bulgarian criminals have been quick to make their mark in central London and affluent areas in north and west London.
Then we have the power grabs first through established parties with dodgy activities like postal voting, that then morph into the goings on of Tower Hamlets, where the host is done with the shell of a political party, and much like a hermit crab discards it, or even like a cuckoo starves the host and throws out all its children.
There should be a call for Parliamentary inquiry into immigration. All the old guard labour party grandees should be brought to account to explain why immigration was mismanaged and the UK's population increased way above official estimates.
What it done on purpose? Was there a motive? i.e. boost labour support? Why were the official estimates so wrong. Was there any attempt to increase local service funding to cope with the flood?
How much thought was given to avoiding Ghettos and radicalisation?
The likes of Jack Straw have already admitted they got it wrong, so that's a start.
For once I'd like to see Keith Vaz give up his seat as chairman and sit in the dock with the others.
You'd think a responsibly government when they saw they got the numbers so wrong would have done something about it, instead the flood gates where opened and government acted like any action would be bolting the stable as the horse has already fled.
"This is the new status quo so our hands are tied buddy" seems to be the stock response, it isn't acceptable.
Nobody has yet asked the question why so many British/indigenous people are leaving. I would like to know numbers from which economic and age groups are leaving the shores and their reasons. I suspect hardly any are from the poorer groups. Also, I really do not see a long term problem with integration from other European countries, one generation is usually enough - I grew up with friends with Irish, Italian, Greek parents and they are pretty much indistinguishable from your average Brit today. Cultural similarities are more than the differences when it comes to Europeans - unfortunately the opposite is true with most Asian communities with a religious background becoming the most obvious example. This is not to say that some integration does not happen, earlier waves from the Caribbean and Africa, though still suffering racism, are more or less fully integrated into modern British society - the problem as I see it is that some aspects of this society are not perceived as compatible with the religious and cultural traditions of the more recent Asian and African waves of immigrants. Integration may take significantly longer here, orwith sufficient numbers creating large, more homogenous communities, it may not happen at all as host community are is steadily adapted to reflect the immigrants original home - environmental integration in the other directionas opposed to the expected population integration.
This has pretty much reached a critical mass in some areas and will never be changed .
And the inevitable result will be this-
This sort of behaviour should absolutely not be acceptable or tolerated and measures taken to stamp it out quickly.