In the Guardian letters columns recently, there were good letters from Michael Meadowcroft, Mike Cashman, Malcolm Pim, and Guri Singh on the new points based system for migrants.
All expressed views on those that the Government is saying it would welcome, such as doctors and highly skilled people, but however making points that we do need to think about encouraging them to leave countries where their skills are needed.
Another issue is that we have many asylum seekers in the UK, who are not welcome in their own countries, to put it mildly, and have fled here for sanctuary and safety. A lot of them are highly skilled and qualified; all that can work are very keen to do so in whatever way they can. They want to contribute to our society.
However our Government does not allow them to work whilst waiting for a decision, making them live on a meagre allowance instead. Even after 6 months the level that they can learn English at is basic, and for most there is little help in transferring professional qualifications when they do eventually get the right to remain, and therefore to work here.
It is a waste of skills, waste of enthusiasm, waste of years of life, and even a waste of money. We all lose, and our Government should be ashamed.
* Suzanne Fletcher was a councillor for nearly 30 years and a voluntary advice worker with the CAB for 40 years. Now retired, she is active as a campaigner in the community both as a Lib Dem and with local organisations. She is Liberal Democrat Seekers of Sanctuary's parliamentary and external relations officer.
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2 Comments
We need a pragmatic as well as a compassionate integrated immigration and asylum system. This will not be devised while a xenophobic culture remains. Allowing people who want to to work is a start as is conditional entry. I favour a period of some years in which significant demeanour leads to deportation for all recently arrived immigrants.
An organisation to which I belong, Global Justice Now (the former world Development Movement) produced a booklet by Alsah Dodwell and Ed Lewis a few years ago which advocated the abandonment of border controls on people. Unfortunately I’ve lost my copy and GJN aren’t answering their phone, but I found the arguments very persuasive.
I think we should start from the principle that everyone is welcome. Against that we should need some way of identifying people guilty of heinous crimes or likely to be of evil intent or carry diseases, but there would need to be concrete reasons for keeping people our rather than letting them in. Yes, there would be a number who come simply for a free ride on our NHS or welfare system (they’d find this more difficult than the tabloids pretend to think) but we should not let this tiny tail wag the wholesome dog.
The overwhelming majority would come to enjoy our culture and contribute to our society
I recently ddi a personal inventory and found that migrants, or the offspring of recent migrants:
sell me my daily Guardian;
drill and maintain what’s left of my teeth
clean my car;
provide about 3/5th of my treatments on the NHS;
dispense my medical prescriptions;
provide the vicar of my church, gifted organist and most of our adventurous choir;
and probably lots more that I can’t bring to mind at the moment.
Migration is going to happen whether we like it or not, and there’s going to be more and more of it as world inequality increases and and more and more areas become inhospitable because of the climate crisis.
Frankly I’m jolly grateful to belong to a country to which people want to come, rather that ane desperate to leave.
This will be a difficult attitude and policy to sell politically, but are ones on which Liberal Democrats should take the lead.