IMMIGRATION: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
More logic and less emotion is needed in the immigration debate
The late Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's always entertainingly scandalous, outspoken, playboy, populist politician - the Italian Boris Johnson, in fact - was speaking some years ago to journalists after holding talks with the prime minister of Albania, Sali Berisha. Mr Berlusconi, at the time in his fourth stint as Italian prime minister, said an accord had been reached between Italy and Albania to clamp down on the trafficking of illegal immigrants across the Adriatic Sea by people smugglers. He then joked: "I said to Sali – we'd make exceptions for anyone bringing over beautiful girls!"
Perhaps he had been inspired by this clip of very funny 2002 film, Ali G Indahouse:
THE GOOD
Big-breasted girls aside, are there any other good immigrants? Yes, of course. Britain has a history of benefiting from foreign scientists, for instance, from the Italian Marconi who came to Britain in 1896, developed the radio and set up the Marconi company, to the Russian-born duo Novoselov and Geim who received the Nobel prize for their production of graphene while working at Manchester University in 2004. Or take the Huguenots, the 50,000 protestant refugees fleeing persecution in catholic France, who came here in the 16th and 17th centuries. They were middle class and highly skilled, and contributed greatly to developing a number of important industries in Britain, from wool and silk weaving to glass and cutlery making. They were loyal to Britain, settled and assimilated here, joined the military, invested money, grew our economy and even helped establish the Bank of England.
I could give many other examples, but the point is that men who are highly-skilled, be it in science or medicine, engineering or computing, will always benefit this country. That is why an immigration policy that admits those who genuinely offer the UK something of value is the right one. Businessmen should also be valued - successful companies boost our economy. Which is why I find it so bizarre and depressing that our government of morons and traitors deliberately drove away dozens of billionaire businessmen who had settled, and were investing money, here – just because they happened to be Russian.
These so-called 'oligarchs' are not doing anything different now to what they were doing before the Ukraine war, when they were not sanctioned. So the sanctions are not because of actions they personally have committed. The sanctions are the direct result of the invasion of Ukraine, but this is something that Putin has done, not them. So this is a collective punishment, which is itself a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, article 33 of which states: "No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited".
The government says these oligarchs 'support' Putin, but the truth is the opposite: they are in fear of Putin, who can sequester all their assets and send them to a prison camp in Siberia at the stroke of a pen (as he has done to those who have opposed him), or even have them killed. The government says that Putin is a war criminal – and he probably is – but then so are our own prime ministers, for their collective punishment of innocent Russian billionaires. You might laugh at the idea of having sympathy for 'unfortunate' foreign billionaires, but that is what I meant when I said we need more logic and less emotion. Think about it: if the UK had been the one western country not to penalise Russian billionaires they would all have flocked here from the whole of Europe, pumping literally hundreds of billions of pounds into our economy! That would have been the best outcome for the UK – and if you are a patriot then that is all that matters.
Another category of 'good migrant' is students. Some may baulk at this, but I'm talking about genuine overseas students – not the frauds (mainly from Nigeria and India) who come here only in order to bring their families over (claiming they are dependents), or those who stay here after their studies are over, doing low-paid jobs unrelated to their worthless degrees. When you went to university, did you have any dependents? No? I thought not, and nor did I. Because we were genuine students, not fraudulent ones. And decent, genuine overseas students are not only vital to fund our universities, but more than that - students who come to Britain and who enjoy their time here and the quality of their education, will go home with a strongly positive and favourable impression of the UK, and when they become successful in either business or politics (as many do) their appreciation of the UK will be to our advantage. So ban any foreign students bringing their family with them, stop them extending their stay with bogus jobs, and welcome the rest.
It's usually pretty easy to spot the good migrants: they mostly come from Europe, North America, Australia/New Zealand and Japan, they come here legally, are law-abiding, do highly-skilled and well-paid work, and express their appreciation and gratitude for the UK. These migrants make Britain a better, wealthier country and we should welcome them wholeheartedly.
THE BAD
Immigrants, we are told, make us richer. They increase our GDP, we are told. But consider this: between 1961 and 2004 the incomes of working households grew by an average 2.3% a year. But between 2004 and 2019 that growth slowed to just 0.7% - and the average incomes of the poorest fifth of the population did not increase at all. So what on earth happened in 2004 to put a stop to our growing household wealth? The accession of eastern European countries into the EU and the decision by Labour to let them all come to Britain, that's what!
Between 2004 and 2020 Germany's population increased by less than 1 million, but in the same period ours increased by over 7 million - without counting the millions who came here illegally! In 2017 there were more Poles in the UK than Brits in the entire EU. Mass, low-skilled immigration makes us poorer: that is an undeniable fact. Even the House of Lords is not impressed! In 2008, the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs conducted a detailed analysis of immigration to the UK. They concluded: “We have found no evidence for the argument, made by the Government, business and many others, that net immigration—immigration minus emigration—generates significant economic benefits for the existing UK population.”
These are the bad immigrants. The low-skilled and low-paid, who come (with their whole families) to do work of little economic benefit to the nation. We are told that migrants have to be brought over because there is nobody here to do the work. We are told that unemployment is only 4%, or 1.4 million - but this is a statistical trick, and you know what they say about lies, damned lies and statistics! Our unemployment rate is low only because increasing numbers of people are dropping out of the labour market altogether.
In other words, it's not that more people are in a job, it’s that fewer people are seeking work: the rate of economic inactivity among all adults is 21%, or 8.6 million. Even excluding the approximately 2 million students and 1 million who've made their money and retired early, we are still left with over 6 million adults who are out of work, but not counted in the statistics, with an ever-increasing number – over 2.5 million! - now claiming long-term sickness. This simply isn't credible. Low pay, high taxes and generous benefits mean that people just don't want to work.
Surely it would make more sense – both financially and in terms of our problem of over-population – to train our own people to do the jobs that are necessary, rather than bring in hundreds of thousands of immigrants each year? Last year (ending June 2022) the number of people coming here hit a new, all-time record: 1.16 million. The government tried to gloss over this by talking about the “net migration” figure (after taking account of those Britons who had left the country), which was 'only' 606,000. But this is a nonsense. According to the government's “net migration” narrative, if one highly-skilled, hard-working, law-abiding Briton leaves and is replaced by an unskilled, unemployed criminal then the net migration is zero and everything is fine. Really? I would count that as a serious loss to the UK! It's about quality, not just quantity!
The other problem is that while the government and the media quote the official figures as if they were definitive, the truth is that the government doesn't actually have a clue as to the real number! I kid you not. If you read the official 2023 report1 you will see that they've just revised the figures for the period March 2012-20, and say: “Across the nine-year period, the new approach estimates that net migration of EU nationals added 1.94 million people to the population, not the 1.10 million as was previously estimated. By comparison, the new estimates suggest that non-EU migration added 1.08 million people to the population, rather than the 1.57 million estimated previously.” These are some pretty major revisions, I would say! But don't worry, the report states with blasé insouciance: “These differences to some extent cancel each other out when combined.” Oh well, that's all right then, isn't it! Why bother with accuracy and getting it right? Let's just rely on pot luck! They really don't care, do they? It does make you wonder how accurate the current figures are.
But one figure the government can be sure of (I hope!) is the number of work visas issued, and here the depressing news is that: “The smallest work visa category is for high skilled or high value migrants, including entrepreneurs, investors and those with exceptional talent (formerly known as Tier 1). Around 4,400 visas were issued in this category in the year ending March 2023”. So of that 1.16 million immigrants, only 4,400 were actually the high value sort that really benefit the country!
Not only is this pattern of mass low-skilled migration deeply damaging to our economy, it is also directly contrary to the Conservative manifesto pledge in 2019, which promised “There will be fewer lower-skilled migrants and overall numbers will come down. And we will ensure that the British people are always in control”. At the time, net migration stood at 226,000 – now it's 606,000! The government has deliberately broken its election promise. Only a complete moron would ever vote Conservative again. Whatever they say, you know that they are lying. You know they will not deliver. You know they will betray you.
Immigration makes us poor
What, you may wonder, is the cost of this ever-increasing number of low-skilled, third-world foreigners in the UK? That's a very good question. The Times recently reported: “Estimates of the economic cost or benefit of UK immigration vary fantastically (the numbers can depend on what the researchers secretly hope to prove). But one pattern emerges across studies: non-European migration, now most of Britain’s influx, is a net economic drain. According to Oxford Economics, in 2018 non-EEA migrants cost the public purse £9 billion; in 2016, Migration Watch put the figure for 2014-15 at £15.6 billion.”
As a scientist I like to do my own research, so that I can guarantee that what I say is always 100% right. So here it is: using the official 2021 census statistics, we are told that the ethnic minority population of England and Wales was 10.9 million; plus there were around 250,000 ethnic minorities in Scotland and almost 66,000 in Northern Ireland. The government's own statistical body, the ONS, itself thought it sensible to look at the economic contribution of different ethnic groups and in 2019 reported that, on average, each ethnic minority individual took £1,295 more out of the economy than they put in2. Of course this varied a lot according to the particular ethnic group, with the ONS stating: “Overall, Black ethnic groups received the most in terms of benefits (£15,500) and paid the least in taxes (£9,100)”. There is, I readily admit, a problem using the ONS data, and that is that it does not differentiate between all the “Asian ethnic groups”, lumping Indians together with Chinese together with Pakistanis together with Japanese. Frankly that's ridiculous, especially in a report that deliberately sets out to look at each ethnic group separately! Nevertheless, this is the best we have, so taking that figure of £1,295 and multiplying it by the ethnic minority population we find that ethnic minorities in the UK cost us over £14.5 billion a year. Some people extol the wonders of multi-culturalism, and this might indeed bring all sorts of benefits, but not economic ones. Economically non-white immigration makes us all poorer.
But wait - this is obviously an under-estimate, since (i) we are told that many ethnic minorities did not complete the census, (ii) the number has grown in the last couple of years anyway, and (iii) while it includes the cost of healthcare and education, it doesn't include social services, policing, court costs, prison detention and the like. Taking just that last item – prisons - in England and Wales around 22% of prisoners are non-white, and given that the cost of the prison system in 2021/22 was £5.4 billion, this means that ethnic minority prisoners cost us around £1.18 billion. This is just a rough calculation which doesn't take into account that the cost of prisoners varies according to their security category, but the point is that these are significant costs which need to be included.
We can safely say that overall ethnic minorities in the UK cost us well over £15 billion a year. This is a number that needs to be publicised and better known! Share this article if you agree! I must stress that I am not for one moment suggesting that all ethnic minorities are a financial burden on the state. Of course not. Many are in good and useful jobs. But while some individual immigrants will undoubtedly be extremely valuable members of society, as a whole immigrants are not, and we need to be much more selective about who we allow to enter the country. Overall, ethnic minority immigration is not good for the economy. That's a fact.
The foreign worker solution:
1. If employers say they cannot find a UK citizen to do the job and they need to bring someone from abroad they should be obliged to train a UK citizen, on full pay, alongside the foreign employee, so that at the end of the visa period the UK citizen can take over and the foreign employee return home. [At the moment an employer can actually pay an overseas worker 20% less than a UK employee would receive, meaning there is a huge financial incentive to recruit foreigners].
2. The salary thresholds for foreign workers should be increased, so that only genuinely skilled workers come here. The minimum should therefore be £40,000 per annum.
3. Foreign workers should not be allowed to bring relatives to the UK other than their spouse and children, and neither the foreign worker nor any of their relatives should have access to any public services, such as health or education.
THE UGLY
The bleeding-heart, pro-migrant, asylum-seeker supporters will tell you that 76% of asylum claims are granted, 'proving' that these people are genuine and need our protection. Actually, it proves nothing of the sort. What it actually proves is that we use the wrong criteria when assessing their claims. Why, for instance was the Home Office (until recently) approving 53% of claims from Albanians? This is a higher proportion that granted by any continental European country, with some, such as Germany and Greece, approving almost none at all. Clearly our criteria are far, far too weak.
And not only are our criteria for granting asylum too weak, but we don't even demand any actual evidence that what the claimants are saying is true! I kid you not – they can apply without providing any proof whatsoever! And that, of course, is why we are being invaded. Because every bogus, fraudulent liar knows that if he gets here he is almost certain to be allowed to remain – and will then be able to bring his whole family over.
Bogus asylum seekers are flooding into this country. In 2022, a total of 45,755 migrants crossed the Channel, a record high - and that's just the ones officially helped across. Many more landed on our beaches undetected and disappeared into the criminal, and possibly terrorist, underworld. Many more came here by other means, and in the year ending June 2023, 97,390 people requested asylum – an increase of almost 20% on the previous year. These asylum seekers are in addition to the legal migration figures, by the way.
You might think asylum seekers are either granted refugee status or they are not. But it's nowhere near as simple or clear-cut as that! Oh no. In fact, it is only when you start looking down the rabbit hole that you realise quite how deep it goes and how many ways the Home Office has of allowing invaders to remain here. Those few who are refused 'refugee status' can then ask for 'temporary refugee permission', which is given to those who don't qualify as refugees under the Nationality and Borders Act. They can also be considered for 'humanitarian protection', claiming that even if they don't qualify under the rules of the Refugee Convention, they would nevertheless be at risk in their own country. Or they can be given 'discretionary leave', meaning that they don't qualify to remain here but that removal would 'not be appropriate'. And then there's what the Home Office calls 'UASC leave', which you have to root around to find means 'Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Child', granted to anyone under 17½ years old, regardless of whether or not they meet the rules.
And we're not finished there! There's also 'Calais leave', those allowed to come here from Calais to re-unite with their families. And then there's 'leave to remain under family or private life rules', which rewards those illegal immigrants who have lived here (illegally) for many years; in other words it is saying that 'crime pays': get away with it for long enough and we'll just roll over and let you stay. And finally, if – amazingly – none of these apply to you, you can still be allowed to stay here with what is called 'leave outside the rules'. This is granted when the Home office bleeding hearts claim that, even though deportation would not breach either the refugee convention or any other rules, nevertheless it “would result in unjustifiably harsh consequences for the applicant or their family”. And who decides if the consequences would be “unjustifiably harsh”? The Home Office, a quarter of whom are non-white – a higher proportion than in the general population. Anyone else see the danger of bias there? No wonder almost nobody at all is ever deported!
But wait! There are lots more ways people can be allowed to invade the UK. It is too tedious – and depressing - to go into details of each of them, but there are a host of resettlement schemes: the 'Gateway Protection Programme', the 'Mandate Resettlement Scheme', the 'Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme', the 'Vulnerable Children's Resettlement Scheme', the 'UK Resettlement Scheme', the 'Community Sponsorship Scheme', the 'Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme Pathway 1', the 'Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme Pathway 2' (well, one pathway is clearly not enough), the 'Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme Pathway 3' (after all, why stop at just two ways to bring more wonderful Afghan immigrants into Britain?), and finally the 'Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy'. Yes, I kid you not, these are all genuine Home Office ways of either bringing more third-world immigrants into Britain or allowing those who invade us to stay here.
The never-ending flood
Britain just cannot cope with this invasion. We are already one of the most grossly, horrifically over-populated countries in the world. For France to have the same population density as the UK their population would need to increase by over 80,000,000 more – yes, 80 MILLION! That is how insanely over-populated we are. Where are we to house all the people being allowed to come here? At the end of last year it was revealed that spending on hotels – over 450 of them! - for asylum seekers was £7 million per day; now, of course, it will be a lot more. The government also admitted that in 2022-23 it spent £3.97 billion supporting asylum seekers in the UK. This, however, is only a small fraction of their true cost, as it only covers the hotel accommodation and food costs for the first 12 months: it doesn't include their subsequent lifetime costs – not just theirs, but also of their whole families that they will later bring over: their free council housing, free healthcare, free education for their children, the extra costs for social services, the police, the courts, etc. Nor, of course, does it include the £538 million we have given France to stop these fraudulent refugees coming here in the first place! Gosh, that was half a billion pounds well spent, wasn't it? Just as well we don't have anything we need to spend it on in Britain, isn't it Rishi?
The government pretends that it really, really wants to stop the invasion, honest it does, but if this were the case then why does it actually pay its opponents, those who want to help illegal immigrants to stay here? Indeed, they are now going to pay them even more! The Ministry of Justice is proposing a 15% increase in legal aid rates for lawyers representing asylum seekers threatened with removal to Rwanda under new rules in the Illegal Migration Bill. Yes, the government is actually paying lawyers to stop the removal of illegal immigrants!
Insanity doesn't begin to explain this; the only real explanation is that the government is lying to you. They don't really want to deport people, only to pretend to do so in order to con you for your vote. Stop voting Conservative! Just to show you how shamelessly deceitful Scumbag Sunak is, consider this: in a speech on 5 June he said: “our approach is working”. However, subsequent government statistics showed that in reality June was a record month for Channel invasions, with 3,824 people making the trip – more than ever before! By the end of August the number of migrants invading Britain has now passed 20,000 for the year.
Rishi 'the traitor' Sunak promised that he would 'Stop the Boats', but now he is admitting that he probably won't achieve this before the next general election. I never thought he would! Although, as the figures I have given show, these make up less than half of the total number of asylum seekers entering the UK, they are the most visible and the most blatant evidence that the government has completely lost control of our borders. Britain is disappearing before our eyes, with invaders taking over everywhere. The government is putting them in all our hotels, new-build luxury homes, student accommodation, barges, army camps … where next? How long will it be before they start asking you to put these invaders up in your own house?
The asylum solution:
1. The government must make it clear that anyone who applies for asylum after travelling through or past a safe country will automatically be deemed to be bogus (and their application will therefore not even be considered).
2. As they are bogus, that means it is safe to immediately (ie. within 24 hours) deport them back to their country of origin.
The legislation will need a strong ‘notwithstanding’ clause making it clear that they have NO right to appeal under ANY domestic law or international agreement – including the Human Rights Act, the Modern Slavery Act and the Equalities Act, together with the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention. This would means that the courts would not be able to stop any deportations.
And that’s it. That’s all the government needs to do. After the first 100 or so have been deported the message will get through and no more will come. And the problem will be over. But will the government do this? Of course not! They are useless, cowardly and far too left-wing to actually take effective action. All they do is pretend to act, to deceive the naive, the ignorant and the blind. The sooner the Conservatives are kicked out the better!
‘But,’ you may be thinking, ‘what about all those who have already been granted asylum - many of whom will have gone on and even obtained British citizenship?’ Well, I’m glad you asked. The solution here is also very simple: the government should ban all those not born in the UK from obtaining any benefits, either cash or in kind (such as healthcare). This will mean that all the parasites who are bleeding us dry will have to either get a job and actually contribute usefully to the country, or bugger off. Which makes this a win-win policy for Britain!
Criminals
The government says that they do have a plan, but it is being blocked by the courts. They say that sending a few illegals to Rwanda (at a cost of £169,000 each!) is the solution, but this is nonsense. Even if the government does end up sending a couple of hundred migrants to Rwanda, this will not be enough to deter the hundreds of thousands coming here. They know that the odds are stacked in their favour, because the government refuses to deport people back to their own countries of origin. Consider this: Between January and June this year, 60,595 asylum claimants were identified as inadmissible for asylum. Of these, only 29,258 were issued with “notices of intent”, informing them that they were being considered for removal, and in the end only 23 ended up being subject to enforced removal. Yes, 23. Not 23,000. Just 23.
Pitiful, isn't it? And that's why Labour's complaint that the government is too slow in processing asylum claims is a complete red herring. Of course it's true that applications take too long to consider, but talk of 'clearing the backlog' is just code for rubber stamping asylum approvals for liars and economic migrants. And that's exactly what is happening. All these people now need to do is complete a form and then they can stay here and bring all their relatives over too! The government is trying to claim credit for speeding up applications, but all they're doing is allowing more liars and criminals to stay here!
And be under no doubt that this is the inevitable result of allowing uncontrolled immigration and asylum. Take Habib Behsodi, the Afghan who came here as an asylum seeker and was granted refugee status. He has now been convicted of being a courier for a criminal cross-Channel operation smuggling Vietnamese illegal immigrants into the UK. The illegals smuggled here by Behsodi are thought to have been charged up to £17,000 which they then had to work off by labouring in places like cannabis farms. According to the judge, Behsodi had “played a significant role” in the operation, had “shown no remorse”, and seemed only to regret having got caught.
So was Behsodi given a long sentence and recommended for deportation, as we would expect for such an appalling foreign criminal? Err, no. Instead the judge let him off with a slap on the wrist - a suspended sentence and a few hours community service - wittering that jailing Behsodi would impact his family. Surely the implications of his crimes on his family were his responsibility, not the judge's, and the best solution would have been to deport the whole lot of them. With hundreds of migrants (mostly young males) flooding across the Channel daily, it is imperative that they are made to respect the law so they are deterred from committing crimes here, but with judges like this one, who seem to care more about foreign criminals than enforcing the law in the best interests of the British people, it is clear that the only way of achieving this is to make the deportation of ALL foreign criminals mandatory, together with any dependents they may have.
You sometimes have to wonder who are the worst criminals – the foreigners who commit crimes, the judges who let them get away with it, or the government who allow them to come and stay here in the first place? Frankly, I believe they are all the enemies of the British people!