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When it comes to the debate between ILLEGAL, and LEGAL immigrants, then that rubber stamp is all important.
the question refers to ILLEGAL immigrants.
personally i think we're a soft touch on illegal immigrants.
even on legal ones ! especially from the eastern european countries.
they can come here, get free healthcare, free education, a home, paid for by our benefits system.
many foreigners come here for the free maternity service,because they know they won't be turned away.
there is no consistency among British people with their views on immigration,
for example, a couple of years back, immigration, both legal AND illegal immigration was running at record highs.
the population were grumbling about "all these damn fer'ners ! send 'em all back where they came from !!"
then, in a small village somewhere, IIRC in the highlands of Scotland, was a troubled teenager.
said troubled teenager was an illegal immigrant, as i believe was his entire family.
he was a bit of a hooligan, making a name for himself, and a PITA of himself. culminating in eventually setting fire to a building, (IIRC) and destroying it.
he was eventually tried, and found guilty, and was ordered to be deported.
victory for the British legal system.
ummmmmmmmm. no.
the local people started a campaign, which gained national TV coverage to protest against his deportation !!??
apparently he was a "nice boy" ! NICE ?? what nice boy goes on crime and arson sprees ????
what sort of a message does that send ?
i have no particular grievance about immigrants, or immigration, but i DO think we should be slightly more choosy about who we let in, and who can stay here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hengist
You are an immigrant. They are immigrants. The only difference is a rubber stamp on a piece of paper. If you don't like it, go back to your own country, or vote BNP.
I don't think our 'illegal' immigration issue as as big an issue as is thought by some on the right. Our immigration policies are downright ineffective though, and its frustrating at best to see a family from a foreign country living in a £2m house in Kensington courtesy of the British taxpayer.
Our welfare system will cripple our capability to compete with world powerhouse countries, combined with a new conservative government that only wants to marginalize us more from the rest of the world, is not a recipe for prolonged economic prosperity.
However, our biggest problem with immigration in general is that we do not assimilate new immigrants into British culture well enough. Capitalism relies on an invisible web of trust, institutional practice, and cultural capital in the form of tacit knowlege and norms about market transactions. These don't simply blossom overnight once you remove the legal obstacles to implementing free markets.
America for example has proven able to cope with a high level of immigration, both economically and socially, precisely because it manages to transmit all that cultural capital to the newcomers. Various European nations have had more difficulty assimilating immigrants either economically or socially.
Britian could easily be demographically swamped if even a fraction of the world's five billion other citizens headed for us. The physical infrastructure of buildings and roads is not up to a sudden massive increase in population, much less the government institutions. And there is the danger that admitting too many people from countries lacking the cultural capital of capitalism could overwhelm the local culture's ability to assimilate them, destroying the very prosperity they came to seek.
personally i think we're a soft touch on illegal immigrants.
even on legal ones ! especially from the eastern european countries.
they can come here, get free healthcare, free education, a home, paid for by our benefits system..
Load of horse crap. Go to the nearest Job Centre in your city/town and have a good look around at the demographics of people there. The vast majority are white British. Most Eastern Europeans are usually a hard-working bunch of people, and since they pay their taxes [most of them] they have every right to our NHS and health care, amongst other things.
Immigrants can't win. If they work, they're taking all our jobs. If they don't work, they are lazy dole scrounging benefit thieves.
Last edited by Cornerguy1; 01-08-2010 at 10:05 PM..
However, our biggest problem with immigration in general is that we do not assimilate new immigrants into British culture well enough. Capitalism relies on an invisible web of trust, institutional practice, and cultural capital in the form of tacit knowlege and norms about market transactions. These don't simply blossom overnight once you remove the legal obstacles to implementing free markets. .
You hit the nail on the head. However, I do wish the 'open door' policy regarding immigration was a noble ideal and goal in the eyes of policy-makers - sadly it isn't.
It's used effectively as a way of making the natives lose their voice. When you have Poles, Indians, Italians, Irish, Chinese, Nigerians, Pakistanis, Iraqi's etc etc in a single country, effectively you have so many different interest groups with different goals and aims, that it makes it impossible for a large scale revolt or antipathy towards the policies emanating out of Westminster, and most of the immigrants are apolitical anyway and concern themselves with their everyday business.
You lose that sense of community and the national identity (not in the Xenophobic sense) but that greater cultural and ethnic bind and that's good news if you're a politician or a businessman. You can pass as many laws as you like without much concern for rebuke except from some sections in the media, in effect this Labour party has created more criminal offences in 10 years, than was created in the entire 50 years beforehand combined. Business can freeze or drive down wages because of the competition created.
Nobody should fool themselves into thinking the Tory party will be any different, this immigration policy is something that the leaders in the Western World have realised is very effective in advancing their agendas.
The sad thing in my opinion is that no one wins, the countries I mentioned are losing their young work-force, it becomes a major brain drain on those societies and those seeking a new life become the underclass in their new home. The host society because of the artificial creation of all these new citizens will have to put up and shut up with everything, they cannot unite without coming across as a bunch of Nazi's. There isn't a sense of 'community' anymore. All that's left is self-interest and economic co-operation.
The only problem is that those who understand this issue cannot articulate this valid point without coming across as extreme xenophobes.
I did not say anything about any of the immigrants willingness, or ability to work.
Many of them will do the jobs that lazy British people feel are below them.
Your comments are a seperate issue, and are nothing at all to do with what I said ?
I'm not talking about the working ones who pay taxes, and contribute to society.
Maybe you need to read things better before you jump in with comments.
And, yes, you are correct, the perception of immigrants is that they ARE either taking our jobs, or sponging off us.
Why do the public feel that ?
Is that because it's true ?
Is that because the immigration policy is wrong ?
No matter how much we try to change them, stereotypes always have a grounding in fact.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorrans
Moderator cut: orphaned content removed
Load of horse crap. Go to the nearest Job Centre in your city/town and have a good look around at the demographics of people there. The vast majority are white British. Most Eastern Europeans are usually a hard-working bunch of people, and since they pay their taxes [most of them] they have every right to our NHS and health care, amongst other things.
Immigrants can't win. If they work, they're taking all our jobs. If they don't work, they are lazy dole scrounging benefit thieves.
Reference the highlighted part also, I'd be very surprised if the majority of people in Britain are NOT white, therefore, employing the law of averages, I would expect the majority of people in the jobcentre to be white British.
I'm currently beginning the process of moving to Norway.
on a recent trip to the Norwegian jobcentre, the majority of people there were white Norwegians.
go figure !!
as a side point, look at America's immigration system.
Now, as a legal immmigrant, i could NOT go straight to the US and begin to receive welfare ?
If i want to work in the US, there are all sorts of rules, including one about if an American citizen can do the job i wish to do, then they have priority over me.
I require to ALREADY have a job to go to before I can get my work permit.
i also require to prove i have enough financial resources to be able to support myself if it goes wrong.
i also require an American citizen to sponsor my green card.
in the UK, they can turn up here, use our NHS, they can claim benefits, and be housed by the council until they can find a job.
they will often get more help than British people to actually GET work.
they can get English language courses, help with applications, help with their CV, i believe there's a guaranteed interview scheme.
we have to be unemployed for AGES to get these !!
Our admittance policies for university mean that the system is loaded in favour of foreign students.
The establishment can basically make extra money from students from Korea, japan etc.
To be fair, the students from these countries are VERY hard working, and are less likely to spend their three years at uni getting drunk and pi**ing it up against a wall.
not only are they more dedicated, due to a different attitude to work, they are also proven to be more intelligent than your average british person, so are also likely to add favourably to the uni's pass rate.
however, we have to ask how many of these students take these skills back home when they are finished, meaning that the education does not have any other benefit to the UK, other than a nice healthy round of tuition fees to the uni, and the government.
Please don't get me wrong, i'm not against immigration as such, i just think we're doing it wrong.
It's a worrying trend that we can't speak out against immigration without being basically accused of being racist.
the over legislated, and over protected world we live in has left everyone so afraid of being sued, that we cannot even speak our minds any more.
it puts control with the minority, the meek really ARE begining to inherit the earth.
I don't think our 'illegal' immigration issue as as big an issue as is thought by some on the right. Our immigration policies are downright ineffective though, and its frustrating at best to see a family from a foreign country living in a £2m house in Kensington courtesy of the British taxpayer.
Our welfare system will cripple our capability to compete with world powerhouse countries, combined with a new conservative government that only wants to marginalize us more from the rest of the world, is not a recipe for prolonged economic prosperity.
However, our biggest problem with immigration in general is that we do not assimilate new immigrants into British culture well enough. Capitalism relies on an invisible web of trust, institutional practice, and cultural capital in the form of tacit knowlege and norms about market transactions. These don't simply blossom overnight once you remove the legal obstacles to implementing free markets.
America for example has proven able to cope with a high level of immigration, both economically and socially, precisely because it manages to transmit all that cultural capital to the newcomers. Various European nations have had more difficulty assimilating immigrants either economically or socially.
Britian could easily be demographically swamped if even a fraction of the world's five billion other citizens headed for us. The physical infrastructure of buildings and roads is not up to a sudden massive increase in population, much less the government institutions. And there is the danger that admitting too many people from countries lacking the cultural capital of capitalism could overwhelm the local culture's ability to assimilate them, destroying the very prosperity they came to seek.
Good Post. While I sympathize w/ the desire to improve one's lot in life, what is the first world supposed to do? To take in all 5 billion third world residents, the UK would in theory have a popualtion of 300 million!
And I'm sorry, I don't like the concept of European peoples and culture being washed away either. If that makes be a BNP type (even thou I utterly disagree w/ them), then so be it.
Actually, out of curiousity, and desperation at the ineptitude and unelectability of the main parties, i read the BNP's manifesto at the last few elections.
It's SUCH a shame that they've ruined everything for themselves by giving themselves a reputation as extremists.
Believe it or not, their manifesto actually talks a lot of sense.
Many of their policies actually are realistic, and are maybe more in tune with the general public opinion than the "big two"
They aren't all about "send 'em all home", and "white britain for white people" like they are painted to be.
Sadly, it comes down to a matter of whether anyone could ever trust them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shizzles
And I'm sorry, I don't like the concept of European peoples and culture being washed away either. If that makes be a BNP type (even thou I utterly disagree w/ them), then so be it.
Actually, out of curiousity, and desperation at the ineptitude and unelectability of the main parties, i read the BNP's manifesto at the last few elections.
It's SUCH a shame that they've ruined everything for themselves by giving themselves a reputation as extremists.
Believe it or not, their manifesto actually talks a lot of sense.
Many of their policies actually are realistic, and are maybe more in tune with the general public opinion than the "big two"
They aren't all about "send 'em all home", and "white britain for white people" like they are painted to be.
Sadly, it comes down to a matter of whether anyone could ever trust them.
I think the overwhelming amount of sane and rational people would gladly keep an African/Asian entrepenurer over some Scottish layabout. The issue is what does happen to Britian when it is no longer "British"? Do I think it would be a worse place? No. I'm sure it'll be a wealthy, industrious nation as it always has. However, it won't be the same
However, our biggest problem with immigration in general is that we do not assimilate new immigrants into British culture well enough. Capitalism relies on an invisible web of trust, institutional practice, and cultural capital in the form of tacit knowlege and norms about market transactions. These don't simply blossom overnight once you remove the legal obstacles to implementing free markets.
But this "problem" is fairly recent. In the past, the UK was pretty successful in assimilating Huguenots, Jews, Irish and Italian immigrants. In my view, the main difference is that previous immigrants wanted to become British. I'm not sure that is the case any more. Yes, they want the economic benefits, the freedom, the education and the tolerance but policies of multi-culturalism mean that they do not have to assimilate. Thus, they can continue to live in their "ghettoes" and even be violently opposed to certain aspects of British life and that appears to be "okay". That kind of "freedom" is simply not on offer in France (for example).
Also worth noting the large number of British people who emigrate every year. A little bit churlish to be complaining about immigrants in Britain when we have taken over countries lke Canada, Australia and New Zealand and, effectively, marginalised their original inhabitants.
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