Body & Soul1 min ago
Worse Net Migration Figures For A Decade
Have the Tories given up on this? The door is open wider than when Labour were power.
Ten years ago the economy was booming and there were plenty of vacancies. Now the economy is virtually stagnant. Can we afford our population to rise at this alarming amount?
Ten years ago the economy was booming and there were plenty of vacancies. Now the economy is virtually stagnant. Can we afford our population to rise at this alarming amount?
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40% are from the EU so we all knowcwhat needs to happen firvthus to stop.
And have tgey given up? Clearly you did not bother to read other News articles which show tgat after acperiod of beingshackled by limp wristed liberals they are starting to tackle ut.
No doubt you wil be amonst tge first to slam them firdoing so though.
And have tgey given up? Clearly you did not bother to read other News articles which show tgat after acperiod of beingshackled by limp wristed liberals they are starting to tackle ut.
No doubt you wil be amonst tge first to slam them firdoing so though.
It doesn't really work to blame it on the EU -- take that 40% away and you would still be left with a net migration close to twice the intended target of "tens of thousands" rather than hundreds.
Whatever it is that the current government are trying to do clearly hasn't worked. Perhaps we'll see some changes in the next few years, though. On the other hand, all those cuts to the UK Border Agency (of order 20% at the level of staffing alone) just makes it harder to keep control of our borders at the same time as we want to increase it. Apparently, this is a lesson the Conservatives have yet to learn when it comes to cutting public services.
Whatever it is that the current government are trying to do clearly hasn't worked. Perhaps we'll see some changes in the next few years, though. On the other hand, all those cuts to the UK Border Agency (of order 20% at the level of staffing alone) just makes it harder to keep control of our borders at the same time as we want to increase it. Apparently, this is a lesson the Conservatives have yet to learn when it comes to cutting public services.
That just won't do, though. The Liberal Democrats may be more relaxed about immigration but they were not responsible for the cuts to the UKBA, nor for making the promise of reaching tens of thousands net that was a Conservative pledge. This didn't change just because of a Coalition -- Cameron stuck to it. He must have felt that it was achievable, regardless of the presence of his Coalition partners.
It can't be blamed on the EU, either, as removing those figures still leaves net migration far too high. This is a failure of policy, or at least of promise -- and that is Cameron's responsibility alone.
For all that, I wouldn't expect the figures to be lower under a Labour government either. But the Conservative party will seriously need to stop passing the buck. It was Labour for the last five years -- are they now about to engage in kicking the Lib Dems when they're already down for the next five years? Pretty pathetic if so, as the Lib Dems got very little of their own policies into the Coalition agreement and the Conservatives were always the senior partner.
Whether or not the figures will reduce in the next few years we'll have to see. My suspicion is that they won't, as the two main methods of controlling the figure are leaving the EU and a strong border agency. But the first is far from guaranteed, as Cameron is likely to campaign to stay in, and the second one the Conservatives have been busy dismantling for the last five years.
It can't be blamed on the EU, either, as removing those figures still leaves net migration far too high. This is a failure of policy, or at least of promise -- and that is Cameron's responsibility alone.
For all that, I wouldn't expect the figures to be lower under a Labour government either. But the Conservative party will seriously need to stop passing the buck. It was Labour for the last five years -- are they now about to engage in kicking the Lib Dems when they're already down for the next five years? Pretty pathetic if so, as the Lib Dems got very little of their own policies into the Coalition agreement and the Conservatives were always the senior partner.
Whether or not the figures will reduce in the next few years we'll have to see. My suspicion is that they won't, as the two main methods of controlling the figure are leaving the EU and a strong border agency. But the first is far from guaranteed, as Cameron is likely to campaign to stay in, and the second one the Conservatives have been busy dismantling for the last five years.
What I'm saying is that the levels of immigration from the EU in themselves do not account for the failure to meet the target. Obviously they don't help, but even if you were to eliminate all EU migration (not that this is desirable, we'd still want some amount of it surely?) then you still wouldn't be close to the target. If Cameron is serious about wanting to meet tens of thousands net then he has much more to do than just to negotiate a better EU settlement.
It is, then, a problem, but not the whole problem.
It is, then, a problem, but not the whole problem.
This must be the first time that the Government can blame the last Government, when that was largely themselves.
They were insisting last month that tens of thousands a year was still the target, though it never made it into the manifesto.
If the economy does pick up, the annual migration figure will only go one way, up. Perhaps they are banking on another 5 years of nil economic growth.
They were insisting last month that tens of thousands a year was still the target, though it never made it into the manifesto.
If the economy does pick up, the annual migration figure will only go one way, up. Perhaps they are banking on another 5 years of nil economic growth.
-- answer removed --
In a recent BBC news feature about Lampedusa, one Italian official described how a migrant implored her to make up a convincing asylum story for him. So they know they have to say the right things to get into the EU but some don't have the details down pat.
After hearing that, I think we should declare a moratorium on asylum claims and treat them all as economic migrants and tell new arrivals this is so because there are so many of them that we simply can't tell them apart any more.
I'm not sure if economic migrant status necessarily means instant deportation but we could have it such that they get an N.I. number in exchange for full disclosure of where they they've been told the job is (full follow-up if the same address crops up more than 10 times, say). No job details = sent back.
When the influx has returned to a manageable trickle, we can resume processing asylum claims. In the interim, we can deal with the current backlog of claims.
Can we cope with the population influx? In absolute terms, yes. But can we build a new city the size of Birmingham overnight? No. Can we expand 20,000 named UK settlements (hamlet and up) by 1 each? Yes, but probably not simultaneously. Can we force a migrant to settle in a rural backwater which is no better for their earning/career prospects than the village they left behind? No. They'll gravitate to the cities to "take the jobs" which our own rural poor have convinced themselves are too far away, or they don't have contacts in the city (and other excuses). Let's face it, if you're prepared to move a few thousand miles, what's another 300, at the end of the trip?
After hearing that, I think we should declare a moratorium on asylum claims and treat them all as economic migrants and tell new arrivals this is so because there are so many of them that we simply can't tell them apart any more.
I'm not sure if economic migrant status necessarily means instant deportation but we could have it such that they get an N.I. number in exchange for full disclosure of where they they've been told the job is (full follow-up if the same address crops up more than 10 times, say). No job details = sent back.
When the influx has returned to a manageable trickle, we can resume processing asylum claims. In the interim, we can deal with the current backlog of claims.
Can we cope with the population influx? In absolute terms, yes. But can we build a new city the size of Birmingham overnight? No. Can we expand 20,000 named UK settlements (hamlet and up) by 1 each? Yes, but probably not simultaneously. Can we force a migrant to settle in a rural backwater which is no better for their earning/career prospects than the village they left behind? No. They'll gravitate to the cities to "take the jobs" which our own rural poor have convinced themselves are too far away, or they don't have contacts in the city (and other excuses). Let's face it, if you're prepared to move a few thousand miles, what's another 300, at the end of the trip?
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