Ukip posterboy suspended after claiming 'Miliband not British'

[Mich the Tester]

Certainly border controls could be beefed up and, when you consider costs of tracking down and removing illegals once they are in the UK, it may well be cost effective to do so.

But, as I said, illegal immigration is not the major factor. Illegals in the UK are probably well under 1m compared to about 8m legals. Also, the two are not unrelated. It is the presence of those of their own ethnicity that draws people to the UK and it is mainly those of the same ethnicity who help to bring them in and support them. Most human traffickers and people smugglers are not white chaps called Smith or Jones and it is not some coincidence that, for example, when a Chinese restaurant is raided, the illegals are usually Chinese. Control legal immigration and you reduce illegal immigration.

Indeed, immigration controls can be beefed up further, whether it's cost effective remains to be seen.

But no, illegal immigration is not the major factor in the UK, but isn't that because there are still legal methods to migrate to the UK? As the US virtually closed down the legal channels for Latin Americans, the illegal immigration rose astronomically. In the UK and other European countries, as the EU has made it almost impossible for those from outside to migrate legally, illegal immigration has grown and the asylum channel has become popular. You seal one leak and another bursts open.

Start by looking at some academic work on this;

http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/11307.ch01.pdf

I recommend pages 33,34 and 35 on the efficacy of migration restriction.

Massey makes some interesting suggestions about managing migration on page 40 and 41 and I think his ideas might be quite effective, although I don't like the coercion of holding back wages conditional upon leaving after some stay; I'd prefer fiscal incentives for migrants to invest even more in 'emigration countries' and more to the point businesses in those countries, as they already do, with remittances currently adding up to twice the total amounts of foreign aid and contributing to an economic boom and development progress in some African countries. Massey recognises the 'network factor' of existing migrant populations to the well known push and pull factors; I like that and I think it's a real contribution to thought on these issues.

Another link, perhaps more accessible is; http://www.globalization101.org/uplo.../migration.pdf

I'm not convinced by their central planning approach to solutions, for example with an EU migration fund, but then I'm not really convinced about central planning anyway; indeed I find this work more political than Massey's work. Even though Massey obviously has his own political views, the quality of his arguments is IMO stronger. However the second link does provide quite a good quick overview of the issues.

Sorry to be boring and academicky about this but I studied this stuff and I know it's not all that simple.

[xoggoth]

Start by looking at some academic work on this;

Wow! Another boring person like me who posts (or used to, gave up when it was obvious nobody ever read 'em!) academic type stuff. Respect man! I will have a look at your links.

[Mich the Tester]

Wow! Another boring person like me who posts (or used to, gave up when it was obvious nobody ever read 'em!) academic type stuff. Respect man! I will have a look at your links.

Well you might not find yourself agreeing with them, but yep, I'm a boring git that reads academic articles on this and really, the more I end up knowing about it, the less certain I can be about my opinions; put it this way, I think migration is bringing problems AND benefits, sometimes one side outweighing the other, but I don't think restrictive policies are working well, and certainly not on their own; we need more entrepreneurial policy making to ensure we have a more manageable or beneficial flow, which includes recognising the different forms of migration and the motivations behind them. CIrcular migration is one interesting area that actually offers opportunities for both migrants and recieving countries, and indeed it was quite normal in Europe and the 'near east' until policies started to become much more restrictive in the 70s, thereby locking in many migrants who only intended to spend a few months at a time in western Europe.

It's a very complex issue and personally I didn't think it could be effectively solved until I heard about ideas for getting benefits from circular migration; the trouble is, similar to Massey's points about policy making, that if you want to try new approaches to managing migration, you'll have to do things that wil be very difficult to sell to electorates.

[SaltyLevels]

Wow, all that for little old me.

It's all well and good, but all I did was say, that whilst I didn't agree with his arguments, his point was factually correct, which it is.

That's all, nothing untoward, not anything remotely racist on my part, just the notion than he was born here to a set of parents from a different culture, as such. I know, from experience, that an immigrant household is different from a non immigrant household. I know this, as not only do I have friends who are from different cultures, but I grew up in a foreign country in a household that acted differently from an equivalent native household.

I guess my downfall was bringing facts into the argument and for that I apologise. However, why the need to insult left right and centre, for it doesn't strengthen anyones argument.

[petergriffin]

How many people do you think this country can support?
70 million? 75 million? 100 million?

The Netherlands is by far more densely populated than the UK and this makes it very productive and competitive.

As long as Milliband accepts the main British values like secular society and freedom of choice subject to public interests,

I thought it was "Warm beer, cold women, pickled eggs".

[darmstadt]

And the Sephardic Jews with their bloody battered fish and Flemish merchants with their fried potatoes. Bloody foreigners, comin' over 'ere with tasty things to eat!

Actually I think that was the Portuguese

[darmstadt]

British: https://twitter.com/SoVeryBritish

[Mich the Tester]

Actually I think that was the Portuguese

It was; Sephardic Jews from Portugal!