Reply to: Ukip posterboy suspended after claiming 'Miliband not British'

[Mich the Tester]

Actually I think that was the Portuguese

It was; Sephardic Jews from Portugal!

[darmstadt]

British: https://twitter.com/SoVeryBritish

[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

[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".

[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.

[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.

[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]

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]

Isn't all this immigration malarkey a distraction from the real issues that face Britain though:
etc

Wouldn't say its a distraction, it is a significant factor but, as you point out, it is just one of several issues.

But then, if you look at the UKIP posters and major speeches, they are just as concerned with imposition of EU laws, regulations on business etc. and are not solely focused on immigration. It is those who oppose them that keep raising the profile of this one issue in order to brand UKIP as xenophobic etc.

Look at CUK. Over and over again we get threads on immigration and UKIP and who is posting most of them? It isn't me or the other righties on here. Bored with the whole thing TBH.

[Hardgrafter]

The problem with that comparison is that some of the recent groups you mention, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Afro Caribbeans, are now among the lowest performers in our society.

What do you define as 'lowest performers'?

Do you mean economically? If so why is that a marker of 'performance in society?'

Are you attributing your defined 'low performance' as an inherent trait of said migrants or do you believe that environmental factors are in some part responsible?

It can be argued for example that the Windrush generation of Afro Caribbeans were instrumental in carrying Britain into post war prosperity by providing invaluable labour as porters, cleaners, drivers and nurses whilst facing low wages, high living costs and of course decades of continued racism & xenophobia.

My original post was a joke just to illustrate that for better or worse Britain is a country of migrants and our culture, language and everyday existence is born from thousands of years of immigration. The delusion of 'Englishness' or self entitlement just because you were born in a country is ever more confusing to me as we enter a globalised 21st century.

There was mass migration to Britain for thousands of years before you lived and there no doubt will be for thousands more after you're dead & forgotten so deal with it and enjoy being lucky enough to be born in a modern developed country where you can enjoy the food, drink, music, art, language and culture of others in a standard of living unequaled by any society in human history...

[sasguru]

Isn't all this immigration malarkey a distraction from the real issues that face Britain though:

- an over powerful financial sector that has crippled the country with debts due to its bailout
- an unbalanced economy
- an overly socialistic approach to health, education and housing that lowers standards in all three to the lowest common denominator

I doubt that the number of immigrants, which is still below the European average, even after the 1 million Eastern Europeans, is causing the real problems we have.
However they are easy to blame for just about everybody from the current political establishment who have failed and newcomers who want to replace them.

[evilagent]

Of course, going back a bit, the other slightly more obvious problem with this oft repeated tale of a "Britain of migrants" is that some major migrations you mention were disasters in terms of wars and conflicts. Do people who keep repeating this claptrap think that the Romans, Ancient Britons, Saxons, Normans, Vikings etc etc got along famously? Even the influx of Huguenots, a very successful and integrating group, was not without tensions.

Anyone looking impartially at the history of mass migration, in The UK or elsewhere, would conclude that we should stop doing it.

Thats a very convenient standpoint, considering the mass migrations to North America (depriving the native americans of land and resources) and Australia (ditto aboriginals), as well as spanish migrations/invasions/conquests to south america.

Even so, it doesnt factor in the exploitation on foreign resources.
If the total UK population had to live on the UKs natural resources within its boundaries, well thats fine.
But it isnt fine to plunder poorer nations of minerals to give us our standard of living, whilst keeping them in poverty.

Equally, if we didnt import electricity, oil, gas, food from abroad, we wouldnt have much of a standard of living.

Anyway, all you lot came here from Mars on a piece of rock, so you can all bog off back to Mars, you freeloading immigrants.

[xoggoth]

As for the English channel; tourists arrive on ships and trains and planes every day; are you going to question every single one of them about their intentions? Do you think every single car, truck, container or bus needs to be opened up and inspected?

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.

[BigTime]

HD Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle S03E02 'England' - YouTube

From Peter Schiff's book, "blaming immigrants for unemployment is a distraction from the real drags on employment, which are regulations, taxes, and our messed-up monetary policy."

[Mich the Tester]

What are you talking about Mich? They may not be perfect but of course proper controls work. Illegals are only a small percentage of our total immigration. I don't recall we had current levels of EU migration until Labour stupidity/EU rules forced us to change the laws.

Labour's stupidity led to a big increase; not the stupidity of agreeing to free movement of workers (which the Tories had already done), but the utterly crass stupidity of removing the distinction between residence based and contribution based benefits, meaning that the UK has an extra pull factor; a social security system that is more accessible than those of other EU countries. This was not imposed by the EU, and indeed that distinction remains in most other EU countries; the Belgian government have just ordered 2000 Dutch citizens to leave because they're attempting to claim benefits for which they have not contributed.

Arguably they could have chosen to delay the free movement as Germany and France did, but they may have calculated that that would give them less negotiating room in the EU; I don't know.

But 'proper controls' are interesting; Britain has spent a lot of money on beefing up border checks in the last 20 years, including building bloody great barriers around the railway lines in northern France, and yet still the immigants come. The US has a great big wall along the border with Mexico, and still they've gone from an estimated 3 million undocumented Latin American migrants in the early 80s to 8 to 10 million now.

As for the English channel; tourists arrive on ships and trains and planes every day; are you going to question every single one of them about their intentions? Do you think every single car, truck, container or bus needs to be opened up and inspected?