Doctors read my mind

[hattra]

It is!! you mean that my rough guess of take the number of people who have applied for asylum and multiply it by 10 is how everybody else gets thier figure for illegal immigrants too.....

Says it all really

Migrationwatch gives a figure of c. 270 - 295 thousand net inflow per annum. (I know their figures are open to debate, but as the government ahve admitted they don't have the faintest idea, they are at least a working figure).

As for your assumptions about benefits - you are actually incorrect. A common scenario (one Mrs. Hattra encountered frequently in her former job in the NHS) is: Doctor is recruited from overseas, arrives in this country, takes (free) hospital accomodation (actually intended for junior doctors doing their 6-month stints before moving to the next specialism) - moves family into accomodation. After 6 months, parents arrive. Mrs Hattra gets asked how they apply for pensions, social security, medical care, council house etc. Parents then get aforementioned benefits. They are not illegal immigrants, but they are economic migrants who bring no benefit to this country, being retired people with no personal wealth to support themselves.

[wendigo100]

I worked on immigration a few years ago. In 2003, when Tony Blair promised to reduce the number of "asylum seekers" (economic migrants) coming in, did he tighten border checks?

Did he feck - HMG started reclassifing them as nationality, settlement or general entry cases. Those figures shot up at the same time as asylum cases dropped to 28,000 a year, so that figure is unreal anyway.

[Old Greg]

So are you saying that we do not have millions of illegal immigrants?

I disagree with most immigrants pay taxes. There are hundreds of thousands that do not work and are just here for a free meal ticket. These are the ones that consume our resources but give nothing back.

I disagree that there are: '...millions of illegals...and that is only the ones we know about....', which was your point.

Illegal immigrants are tricky to count - I wouldn't pretend to know how many there are.

There are some legal immigrants who don't work - there are some British citizens / British-born citizens who don't work as well. And there are some incredibly wealthy people who don't pay their share of taxes (all done legally, I'm sure, but it still ain't right).

So I agree that there's a challenge to ensure that everyone contributes to society as well as benefitting from it, but I think immigration is a distraction, and I think we should remember that the people at the top present a challenge as well as the people at the bottom..

[Rantor]

[QUOTE=Old Greg] And there are some incredibly wealthy people who don't pay their share of taxes (all done legally, I'm sure, but it still ain't right)./QUOTE]

Why not if it is legal? Surely if it isn't right the correct course of action would be to make it illegal?

[Old Greg]

[QUOTE=Rantor]

And there are some incredibly wealthy people who don't pay their share of taxes (all done legally, I'm sure, but it still ain't right)./QUOTE]

Why not if it is legal? Surely if it isn't right the correct course of action would be to make it illegal?

I meant not morally 'right' (in my own view of morality). And not everything that is immoral is illegal. So to pick up your point about illegal, I'd like to see the law / tax rules changed.

An example is the way Philip Green / his missus had a 1.1 billion pound dividend in 2004-5 with no tax paid due to residency in Monaco. God knows how the law could be changed to prevent this, but that's what I mean by 'it ain't right'. My point is that this also has an effect on public services because it reduces national tax income. Others may feel that this is justified, as this is a personal moral and political view.

[gingerjedi]

[QUOTE=Rantor]

And there are some incredibly wealthy people who don't pay their share of taxes (all done legally, I'm sure, but it still ain't right)./QUOTE]

Why not if it is legal? Surely if it isn't right the correct course of action would be to make it illegal?

Its pretty obvious to most that the 'middle earner' pays more than their fair share of tax whilst the top end earners are left well alone, I agree with the assumption that its better to have them paying some tax than have them live somewhere else and pay none.

So no they don't pay their fair share but what can you do.

[Old Greg]

[QUOTE=gingerjedi]

Its pretty obvious to most that the 'middle earner' pays more than their fair share of tax whilst the top end earners are left well alone, I agree with the assumption that its better to have them paying some tax than have them live somewhere else and pay none.

So no they don't pay their fair share but what can you do.

I suppose we're not allowed to shoot them and send their families to comuplsory re-education work camps any more, eh? It's political correctness gone mad.

[Rantor]

[QUOTE=Old Greg]

I suppose we're not allowed to shoot them and send their families to comuplsory re-education work camps any more, eh? It's political correctness gone mad.

Exactly, what this country needs is a bit of old fashioned stalinism to sort these whinging captilaist lickspittles out once and for all.

[gingerjedi]

[QUOTE=Old Greg]

I suppose we're not allowed to shoot them and send their families to comuplsory re-education work camps any more, eh? It's political correctness gone mad.

I'm not talking about inherited wealth here, I'm talking taxable earnings of which the gearing is set so the middle earner pays more than both high and low end earners, but its only fair etc etc...

HTH.

[Ardesco]

Ok I admit my figures are way off (I belive I said that in my original post anyway).

I also do not disagree that the middle class have a greater tax burden than anybody else, however the immigrants that come into this country and work pay no less than our lower classes and many of the professional immigrants that come into this country come into the middle class bracket.

So I stand by original statement that most immigrants do pay thier way. As for doctors coming in and then bringing thier family over, this family is not going to get a nice new council house and a bunch of benefits as the doctor earns too much so it's not really the same thing.

I don't disagree that we have a problem with immigration, however I do dispute the fact that immigrants are the source of all our woes.