The unpleasant rhetoric of Theresa May’s speech this morning has given every liberal what we Scots call “the dry boak” Her remarks were not measured, not reasonable and entirely designed to win over that small proportion of the population who are members of the Conservative Party.
Anyone who knows anything about the immigration system will know how difficult it is to actually get into this country. Married couples often have to endure years of separation before (and it’s not inevitable that they will be) they can live together in this country. The strain put on families is intolerable. People who have endured unimaginable hardships and abuse are often turned away when they come here seeking sanctuary.
Tim Farron has spent the day standing up to May’s inaccurate, misleading and shocking speech. He’s written an article for Politics.co.uk in which he says there is someone damaging Britain – and it is not immigrants:
The Home Secretary has apparently forgotten that foreign students enrich our universities, contribute huge sums to local economies and help fund our universities through their fees.
Their positive contribution to our economy is actually around £13bn every year.
Instead of encouraging this contribution, May’s rhetoric and actions are driving wealthy foreign students to look elsewhere to study depriving us of their money and knowledge.
Likewise, the NHS would collapse without immigration Twenty-four per cent of doctors in hospitals are foreign-born and the BMA argues that without immigrants many NHS services would struggle to provide effective care.
At a time when NHS junior doctors are looking at options abroad thanks to the Health Secretary’s policy proposals we cannot afford to drive away those who come here to serve our society.
Put simply without immigration our debts would be bigger, our NHS would have far fewer staff and we would have an even greater deficit.
But then why let facts get in the way, when you can give an anti-immigration speech in an attempt to win back voters lost to UKIP and position yourself as the next Tory leader?
By contrast the Liberal Democrats unashamedly welcome the contribution immigrants make to Britain’s communities, society and the economy.
We are outward looking and believe we are stronger when we work with our international partners and work together – but we are also economically literate.
He makes some very good points about who actually is causing the problems for lower paid workers:
So before Theresa May starts lambasting whole communities with demonstrably false, disingenuous, sound-bite driven claims about immigrants she should look at what is actually threatening lower paid workers. Because it’s not immigrants.
It’s actually her government’s choice to cut working tax credits for the lowest paid, which the IFS estimates will cost 3 million families over £1,000 per year alone
It’s actually her government’s decision to cut Employment Support Allowance- slashing a third of the support given to people with conditions like depression or bipolar disorder.
And it’s actually her government’s decision to force housing authorities to sell off their housing stock, failing to kick start the building of affordable housing and having no plan at all to address Britain’s housing crisis.
Ultimately, if she really wants to understand who is creating division and insecurity in communities up and down the country, she only needs to take a look around the Cabinet table.
And what of the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition? At the time of writing, all he’s tweeted about today is the front cover of Rail magazine. You might have thought Jeremy Corbyn was different, but you have to remember that Labour were selling mugs during the election that said “Control immigration.” Someone needs to speak up for the evidence based benefits of immigration and it’s good that Tim is stepping up to the plate.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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Lord Bonkers: "Something less terrible than the truth"
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54 Comments
Has this been issued as a national press release? If not why not?
In the 21st century mass migration is a bad thing. It is good for the individuals who migrate and succeed in having a better life than they would have had in their home country. It is especially bad for the home country if skilled people are leaving depriving the home country of their skills and experience and possibly holding back the economic development of the home country.
For the host country it can also cause problems. If the migrants are low skilled they will compete with the low skilled and those who employers would rather not employ, leading to some people being unemployed and keeping wages down if there is always a pool of people to replace those in work at the going rate. I think care workers are an example of conditions of work being poor because the employer can recruit from aboard. My mother had a live-in care worker and they mostly were born in Africa. They spent weeks at my Mum’s house away from their family with only a few hours off work a week for a poor wage. It doesn’t surprise me that no UK born people did this job.
If the migrants are high skilled it encourages employers not to invest in training members of the host population because this cost can be saved by employing those trained in another country.
It is a lose, lose outcome. As liberals we need to pursue policies to encourage employers to train new people from the host country. Pursue policies to encourage people to go into areas where employers are recruiting from abroad. Pursue policies to encourage migrants to stay in their home country and improve it, so not only they have a better life but everyone in the home country has a better life.
The battle for public opinion on immigration was lost months ago. Whether is party likes or not there is deep public concern on the present levels of immigration.
This party would be wise to listen to those public concerns, if we just merely reject them without reassuring the public on their nervousness then we are fooling ourselves. Immigration is now a major issue and will play well with the No to Europe campaign. This party needs to spell our core message with much more clarity
“Liberal Democrats believe Britain must be open for business and growth but closed to crooks and cheats. Britain needs more students and more visitors to come to help our economy grow. We will encourage people to visit Britain, learn in Britain and contribute to Britain. We will say yes to doctors, experts, entrepreneurs and investors. But we will say no to crooks, traffickers and those who would damage our country.
By bringing back proper border checks – so we know who’s coming in and leaving the UK – we will identify and deport people who over-stay their visa. We will create visible security and firm control, with real processes to count everyone in and count everyone out. No more guesswork on numbers: real evidence to catch out overstayers. We’ll ensure people can speak English and are willing to work. We’ll ensure that migrants, including from the EU, come to work or study, not to claim benefits. And when it’s time for them to leave, we will make sure they return home”
The facts do not support Theresa May’s delivery today, conference speeches seldom pass scrutiny however the party needs to be much more pro -active and starting pushing our thoughts forward. Please can we keep human emotion outside the room.
Interesting read
https://fullfact.org/immigration/fiscal_impacts_public_finances-42141
“entirely designed to win over that small proportion of the population who are members of the Conservative Party”
Sadly I think you’re wrong. I hear similar things as May said today from people who are far from Tory members, just as Thatcher appealed to working class voters to switch with policies such as right to buy, this is designed to appeal to those who would ordinarily be almost tribally Labour in their historic voting (many of whom may have switched to UKIP) but take issue with immigration. I don’t dispute that it, ad Osbourne’s speech, were opening salvo’s in the next Tory leadership election but don’t underestimate the attraction of anti-immigration rhetoric to a wider audience.
theakes
Yes it has.
May is obligingly digging a hole for herself and we don’t really need to keep bashing her.
More importantly a balance has to be struck between compassion for refugees and integrity of border controls and the visa regime. More time ought to be spent on formulating that and presenting in in a coherent manner to the electorate. Railing against May is not going to get anyone back into office and can be safely left to Labour.
ISIS has the potential to displace tens of millions of people and we ought to devote some effort and resources to halt their advance – thereby reducing the need for people to flee.
Farron is just as guilty of fact-free overblown rhetoric as May is. Case in point:-
“Put simply without immigration our debts would be bigger, our NHS would have far fewer staff and we would have an even greater deficit.”
Glossing over the fact that May was talking about mass immigration rather than immigration per se (note to Lib Dems: there is a difference), Farron’s claim that immigration is saving us from economic catastrophe is pretty spurious. As a spokesman from Fact Check pointed out on Radio 5 earlier, May’s claim that immigration brings a negligible net benefit to the economy is probably much closer to the truth than what Farron is saying. In truth, experts disagree whether the effect is positive or negative, but either way it’s thought to be within 1% of zero.
I despair of an immigration debate which consists mostly of each side parodying the views of the other. Research has shown time and again that the vast majority of people – including immigrants and ethnic minorities themselves – can fully appreciate the benefits of immigration and want it to continue, but in a controlled way that maximises the benefits for all of us. I don’t see any politician talking that kind of language. Instead we get a falsely polarised debate, from both sides, who always present a stark pro- or anti- immigration choice which is worlds away from the sensible middle ground most people actually believe in. This just creates more bad feeling and can ultimately only worsen relations between communities.
It is ridiculous that we should have to build a new city the size of Nottingham every year just to accommodate the number of migrants who come here each year. That includes the funding for the council, the hospitals and health care, the schooling the social housing, the welfare and all the other costs of running a brand new city.
The reality is that there is no new city every year. Nor should there be. The existing cities cannot cope. The problem is not new cities, it is too many migrants.
Get real.
@stuart: James Kirkup has cleverly debunked almost everything Theresa May was saying. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11913927/Theresa-Mays-immigration-speech-is-dangerous-and-factually-wrong.html
The way to counter May’s anti-immigrant ranting is not to go over the top in the opposite direction, and lose the confidence of most of your audience, who will simply stop listening.
Immigration is a class issue. The well-off get the economic benefits that immigration brings. The less well-off get their wages driven downwards and lose their jobs to cheaper competition.
If Liberals don’t understand that, they might as well go and join Emily Thornberry, sneer at White Van Man, and stop contesting half our nation.
The Tories can put their money where their mouths are and stop bringing in foreign political strategists.
I agree with those who think Tim and Theresa May are both wide of the mark. There’s no point arguing with it though, because it seems on immigration people are happy to cheer it no matter how many votes it loses.
So may as well just let Tim continue and when Lib Dems plateau he will wonder why and by then not many more will be listening.
It is astonishing that Lib Dems welcome infinite immigration. Total wipe out at the next election is fully deserved.
David Allen ” Immigration is a class issue. The well-off get the economic benefits that immigration brings. The less well-off get their wages driven downwards and lose their jobs to cheaper competition.”
Nigel Farage made the same point on LBC the other day. Alas, you are both right.
Throughout history migration has been used as a proxy issue. Sometimes local communities do face pressures arising out of immigration. They can face all sorts of other pressures, some more easily dealt with than others. When Governments fail on various fronts it is easier to look for scapegoats than admit that your vote at the last General Election was a mistake! Economic hardship has always been a breeding ground for xenophobia and racism. I fear that we may live in a time when we do well to revisit the history of the failure of German liberals to stand up to the Nazis.
For most of my political life (more than 50 years a paid up party member), Governments in the UK were unwilling to trust people with a grown up conversation about immigration – why it happens, what the advantages and disadvantages are for our society , our culture and our economy. It is only in recent years, perhaps since the turn of the century, that mainstream politicians have been prepared to speak more openly for good and ill about immigration issues. There is something of a parallel time lapse in our public conversations about ethnicity. And think about the vitriol that Ann Cryer had to put up with when she broke silence about forced marriages in her Keighley constituency. “Trusting the people” on these matters has never been easy – or at least that has been the general assumption. Sometimes Governments have done good by stealth, sometimes they have simply lied in the face of the facts. Once again we have much to learn from some of our European neighbours who have managed to have more open, more mature public debates on migration matters.
Yesterday I took my daughter and her friend (originally from the Baltic states) shopping. The shops they most wanted to browse round were Polish or Nepalese. We did not have time to visit the Chinese restaurant recommended by my Filipino in-laws. I said hello to some local residents who were running a stall for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. This was not in London but in not very diverse North Hampshire. Britain has changed and this nasty speech helps no-one.
@ Ruth Bright
I think that you may have lost sight of the fact that this is supposed to be Britain.
@Peter, do you want the Brits in Oz and the Costas to come back to Britain? Or from France or Germany? Its a fact that whilst many foreigners benefit from living here, many Brits benefit from living and working abroad. Britain is a trading nation with an international outlook. Its a shame there seem to be votes in going full little englander, but not all the votes are to be found doing this.
This is what Theresa May wants to do to British Universities (article from May 2015, but she is obviously intent on more of the same… How exactly are universities supposed to ensure that students leave Britain after they are no longer registered at the University??
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/jul/22/teresa-mays-hard-line-on-international-students-will-rob-us-of-income-and-talent
I would add that it is these British-educated students who go and work for overseas companies and governments and help secure contracts for British industry… You cant have too many friends in this word (unless you are Theresa May)
And when it is the Institute of Directors slamming her speech so strongly you have to ask whether she is listening to anyone sensible!
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/seamus-nevin/facts-and-fiction-in-the-_b_8251234.html?1444141597&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067
It is amusing that Ruth Bright so eloquently articulated the consequence of too much immigration. We are losing our national culture.
@Alistair
I refer you to my comment of 6:42 pm. The current level of immigration is not sustainable. It is not affordable. It is degrading the services available to all residents of our small country. It is changing our culture and identity. It has to stop.
You may have some misguided reason for welcoming infinite immigration but be aware that most voters in the UK will completely reject that position. I support them.
“Research has shown time and again that the vast majority of people – including immigrants and ethnic minorities themselves – can fully appreciate the benefits of immigration and want it to continue, but in a controlled way that maximises the benefits for all of us.”
** waves ** “Hi!”
To which I would also add that there be an expectation of integration, rather than continuing the rush to parallel communities. I didn’t like the tone of May’s speech either, but she remains essentially correct in saying that mass immigration (combined with the normative doctrine of multiculturalism), is antithetical to a cohesive society.
This isn’t so much of a problem for me as i quite like my atomised life, but if you (collectively) would prefer a society geared more towards collective action for the common good then you need to understand that cohesiveness is your friend. Speaking personally, I am pro immigration from an economic and self interested pov, but then I am skilled and experienced in a technical discipline within an isolated part of the UK. In short; i do not fear immigration, but then I am not the person(s) you need to convince.
Personally, i’m rather hoping that immigration is kept well out of the EU referendum debate, but the more the matter is ignored by mainstream politics the more the margins will hijack the issue.
Your call.
Theresa May was aiming this at 2 audiences .The right of the Conservative party where she believes she is the heir apparent of Thatcherism and the Labour facing /UKIP voters in blue collar jobs caught in the low wage economy who blame migrants but not the agencies that recruited them to undercut wage levels .This is cold ,calculating and fuels divisions that were beginning to heal .Lets not knee jerk but remind her that places like London and the South East benefited from that labour force and that we agree with Boris more harm will be done to families on low incomes by loss of tax credits than EU migrants .
Peter
I think you have lost sight of the fact we are no longer living in the 1950s.
Lots of Britons live in Spain and other EU countries as they are entitled to under EU free movement.
Not many Britons lived in Spain at the time of Franco. I do know someone who did.
In fact from outside the EU, immigration is heavily restricted to the point that a foreign spouse married
to a British national maybe refused entry. There is no mass immigration. Few refugees have been allowed in recently.
What has happened in the last few years is the rate of emigration has fallen due to a global recession.
May made an as yet unanswered point by her critics, that the majority of migrants who pitch up in Britain are either young, male, or rich, or sometimes all three.
The weak and the vulnerable never get here.
What are we to do about them?
‘In fact from outside the EU, immigration is heavily restricted to the point that a foreign spouse married
to a British national maybe refused entry.’
As happened to a friend of mine, although she nows lives here legally, without assurance of permanent residence or the right to paid work, this interim state was only achieved after prolonged legal proceedings and a lot of moral and financial support from his family.
A similar situation arose for another friend, whose fiancee first came to the UK as a student, but was placed under restrictions (no work, frequent reporting to Croydon). Both of this couple are health professionals.
The bottom line for such couples can be that either the family is split up or the British citizen spouse may be forced into emigration.
‘we are no longer living in the 1950s.’
A time when Australia was subsidising white, especially Anglophone, immigrants from Europe and substantial numbers of British and Irish people took the opprortunity to emigrate. (“Ten Pound Pom”)
@Neil Sandison “This is cold ,calculating and fuels divisions that were beginning to heal ”
I agree that it is “cold” and “calculating” and would expect little else from a senior (Tory) politician, but I am not convinced that divisions over immigration were beginning to heal.
As well as pandering to straightforward bigots, May’s message is also an appeal to those with genuine fears that their livelihoods are threatened by immigration. All too often it seems that the political classes represent those who benefit from a supply of cheap labour and do not empathise with people who fear losing their jobs. Politicians need to put forward a message that will reassure those people directly, not make platitudes about rich cultural diversity or benefits to the economy as a whole, or those people will feel they are being sacrificed for some greater good and they will oppose it.
@TCO “The weak and the vulnerable never get here. What are we to do about them?”
Excellent point. Difficult, but important, to answer.
The UK cannot afford to do without immigration, much of our economy and the services provided would be unsustainable without immigration. Reaching out beyond our borders has been ingrained in the British culture for more than a millenium. It is our culture that has reached around the globe and assimilated other cultures into our own
If immigration were stopped our culture and identity would be lost and our services degraded.
The British way has been to assimilate immigrants into our culture, there are problems when this process has failed, but by demonising the issue May is only contributing to failure. She is un-British.
>”James Kirkup has cleverly debunked almost everything Theresa May was saying.”
Except he doesn’t… Past performance is no guarantee of future performance… and it is the future we need to be concerned about, particularly as we are struggling to house and integrate the circa 7m who have arrived and stayed since 2000 (take 7m people out of the country and suddenly you no longer have a housing shortage!).
Hence what we need to be concerned about, and Tim and others don’t get is the future! If immigration continues at current levels by 2020 there will potentially be a further 3m or so people living in the UK who have no connection with the country prior to 2015, plus as the ONS forecasts show there is significant population growth in the sector that can trace its presence in this country to post 1997. So Tim and others, rather than joining the debate about our population in an mature way, continues to whip up emotions. Yes it is Tim and others of his ilk who by their emotionally charged rhetoric are actually stoking the fires of division…
TCO
They are given assistance in refugee camps is what usually happens by the Red Cross, Oxfam, and the like.
Peter, I never said I supported infinite immigration. Im fairly sure that my career is more impacted by immigration than most as a former government changed the visa system to make it very easy to bring people into the UK and also to offshore jobs. May has been home secretary for 6 years, that is a long time to indentify “unfairness” and make progress to tackling it. What has actually happened is that the Tories have made it harder for people to study here, that is all. They have done nothing to address firms profitting from illegal workers. They have cut border staff. They made zero progress in the EU to building a consensus around the rights to relocate, instead they have picked and mainly lost pointless fights and lost allies. They did make it a bit harder for a Brit to live in the UK with a foreign spouse. So, mainly what May does is make noise, she has about as much control over immigration as I do over the weather.
Stuart
Farron is just as guilty of fact-free overblown rhetoric as May is. Case in point:-
“Put simply without immigration our debts would be bigger, our NHS would have far fewer staff and we would have an even greater deficit.”
Glossing over the fact that May was talking about mass immigration rather than immigration per se (note to Lib Dems: there is a difference), Farron’s claim that immigration is saving us from economic catastrophe is pretty spurious.
Indeed. The problem with us is that we want to be nice, and we don’t want to stir up racist attitudes even inadvertently, so we tend to say things like this and don’t want to think too deeply about it.
If our economy cannot work without keep bringing in immigrants, that’s a problem, it’s unsustainable, it means we are not living within our means. Why is it that every generation we are told we have to bring in more people from overseas to work in the NHS? If our country cannot look after itself health-wise, that’s a big problem. So what Tim Farron ought to be doing is asking why this is the case. Why is it that we can’t train enough people in this country to do the jobs?
The answer seems to be that it’s cheaper to bring in people from overseas than train our own people. Cheaper to bring in people who are young and desperate and so will live in overcrowded squalor than to pay wages enough for people here to afford to live in decent housing. Cheaper to throw millions of British people on the scrap-heap, complaining that they are too lazy, or lacking in skills, or not clever enough, than to put in the hard effort of building a better society where there is a role for everyone. And, funnily enough, a good many of those thrown on the scrap-heap are the children and grandchildren of immigrants brought over previously with exactly the same excuse.
Peter – why not use your full name when making comments as I do? Also why “amusing”. I said it was a nasty speech. I did not say that all the immigration I allude to is an unalloyed positive.
Matthew Huntbach 7th Oct ’15 – 9:53am ……………………..If our economy cannot work without keep bringing in immigrants, that’s a problem, it’s unsustainable, it means we are not living within our means. Why is it that every generation we are told we have to bring in more people from overseas to work in the NHS? If our country cannot look after itself health-wise, that’s a big problem. So what Tim Farron ought to be doing is asking why this is the case. Why is it that we can’t train enough people in this country to do the jobs?
The answer seems to be that it’s cheaper to bring in people from overseas than train our own people. Cheaper to bring in people who are young and desperate and so will live in overcrowded squalor than to pay wages enough for people here to afford to live in decent housing. Cheaper to throw millions of British people on the scrap-heap, complaining that they are too lazy, or lacking in skills, or not clever enough, than to put in the hard effort of building a better society where there is a role for everyone. And, funnily enough, a good many of those thrown on the scrap-heap are the children and grandchildren of immigrants brought over previously with exactly the same excuse………
. Not just the NHS….Once upon a time in the 1960s and 1970s there was as Engineering Industrial Training Board. The EITB levied a charge on employers, but those employers who provided good training were exempted. The result was manufacturing companies that had good training policies, proper apprenticeships, and in turn this provided a skilled national labour pool.
In the 1980s Mrs Thatcher decided that it was a ‘burden on businesses and abolished it! Result? Manufacturing companies began to wind down and/or get rid of their training facilities as it was ‘cheaper’ to poach skilled labour from competitors.
Result? A dwindling/aging skilled national labour pool, and 20+ years later employers bemoaning the lack of these skills and importing them from abroad…
Matthew
“The answer seems to be that it’s cheaper to bring in people from overseas than train our own people. Cheaper to bring in people who are young and desperate and so will live in overcrowded squalor than to pay wages enough for people here to afford to live in decent housing. Cheaper to throw millions of British people on the scrap-heap, complaining that they are too lazy, or lacking in skills, or not clever enough, than to put in the hard effort of building a better society where there is a role for everyone. And, funnily enough, a good many of those thrown on the scrap-heap are the children and grandchildren of immigrants brought over previously with exactly the same excuse.”
My problem is that I just don’t seem to think like a proper Nationalistic British person should…. I just don’t have it in me to think that British people are more “entitled” than foreigners just because of where they are born…
You see when I read the above I think how much worse it must be for these “people from overseas” in their home countries if they are prepared to live in “overcrowded squalor” in Britain.
And then I think how much worse the “scrapheap” must be for people we send back to their home countries when they fail their asylum applications
Perhaps I should be sent to some other country for not being sufficiently in line with British cultural attitudes to foreigners…
Well I do accept that my views raise some problems but it just shows the gulf that exists between me and “Peter” with his “British good, everyone else bad” world view
Andrew McCaig
My problem is that I just don’t seem to think like a proper Nationalistic British person should…. I just don’t have it in me to think that British people are more “entitled” than foreigners just because of where they are born…
No, your problem is that you are so anxious not to be seen to be “nationalistic British” that you have entirely missed the actual point I was making – and so have demonstrated what I was saying very well.
Ruth, I live in a beautiful city ‘up north’. Apart from University students we are not very diverse up here. I always feel so happy when I get off the train at Kings Cross and see the diversity of people, the beautiful clothes, the chatter of different languages, the mouthwatering food. It makes me long to live somewhere more cosmopolitan where you can walk along a street and see the rich tapestry of humanity. We’re all people and we should celebrate our differences. I find it very enriching just to be part of the amazing mix. I’m making a mental note to explore North Hampshire.
(Sorry Eddie Sammon, I know there is another side to multiculturalism but I really do feel that way)
Phyllis – a day out in Aldershot is yours! Anytime 😊
A note of optimism – Ordinary Lib Dems now really get this! Ruth Bright’s celebration of the benefits of diversity, Matthew Huntbach’s analysis of the economic nonsense and harmful consequences of relying on immigrants to do all our nastiest jobs, Geoff Reid’s call for a mature debate, and many of the other posts on this thread all add up to a valid, rounded view of the immigation issues.
A note of pessimism – Tim still doesn’t get this. His view is too one-sided. And of course, Theresa May’s views are far too one-sided.
Hi Phyllis, I’m not arguing against multiculturalism, I’m just saying whilst Theresa May went too far the principle of reducing immigration is a popular one.
I’ve not even read the full speech, but I don’t think I need to. I’ve read reports and from what I’ve seen Theresa May has said some offensive things about immigration and the neoliberal right and the left have erupted in outrage, but what policies do these groups have on immigration? Practically none that would resonate with the public.
It’s not just about winning votes either, what’s wrong with background checks for refugees? Or tightening up EU free movement rules slightly?
“do you want the Brits in Oz and the Costas to come back to Britain? Or from France or Germany?” (Alistair 6th Oct ’15 – 10:14pm)
There is a big assumption under this question, namely that the vast majority of the few million Brits currently living abroad will remain abroad for the rest of their lives. and aren’t intending to return at some stage, regardless of politics…
Alistair and others (such as Manfarang) need to get a grip on things, the issue is the continuing mass migration of people into the UK (where ‘mass’ is more than a few tens of thousands each year), resulting in sustained high levels of net inward migration; not some form of ethnic cleansing to return the country to some golden age that never actually existed. Although, in terms of purging people from our society, we do need to ensure that immigrants don’t accidentally become ‘residents’, because this would mean all those studies praising the positive economic benefits of ‘migrants’ will have put these people in the wrong category and thus invalidate their data analysis and conclusions.
Roland
“we do need to ensure that immigrants don’t accidentally become ‘residents’”
Those given indefinite leave to remain are residents. In the figures overseas students are classified as migrants whereas they are not immigrants in the proper sense of the word. Japanese executives and those similar in the UK will return to their own countries once their tour of duty is over.(they are aliens) Many of the Britons working in the Gulf will return to Britain when their contracts are over.
I grew up in 1950s Britain in a neighbourhood that had Anglo-Indian families and now live in a country with a large migrant population. None of the locals have lost jobs to the migrants where I am, in fact there is full employment here.
It is clear from the posts of David Allen and Matthew Huntbach that there can be disadvantaged groups from mass immigration. Expats identifies that the government could as in the past encourage companies to train people, by having a levy on those who don’t. And I suggest using the money from the levy to finance and encourage training. Andrew McCaig identifies that the living conditions in the home countries of some migrates are worse than in the UK. His solution is to allow those with the most get up and go to move here, while my solution and I hope others would agree the liberal solution would be to improve the living conditions for everyone in the home country. Andrew doesn’t suggest what should be done with those in this country who are “thrown on the scrap-heap” (to use Matthew’s words), but doing nothing to improve their lives is not liberal.
I am unclear where liberalism states that it is the role of a nation’s government to allow all foreigners who wish to live in that country to do so. I think that a national government’s first responsibility is to its own citizens and this does not conflict with liberalism. I thing that a liberal foreign policy would aim to improve the well-being and liberty of those people living in foreign countries and not encourage some of foreigners to leave their own country.
MichaelBG
I did not advance any solution. I agree that we should be improving living conditions for all world citizens, but that is a tall order, particularly since most of us who have a comfortable existence here in Britain (and I include myself here) are not prepared to help other people in ways that really make any difference to our own lives.
To describe this in chemical terms, what we are seeing now is diffusion of people down a “poverty gradient” from the 3rd to the 1st world. In most countries there is a high activation energy (culture, family, lack of education) that stops most people moving. Naturally we get the few people with high energy from these places, and always have done (young educated men…). In countries like Syria the activation energy has been overcome by death and destruction on a massive scale. I don’t think most Syrians would be better off in Britain if Syria was a peaceful country however – they showed little or no inclination to come here before the war.
Anyway my point was that Theresa May and her ilk are expressing an essentially racist policy that values British people above foreign people. I think we should be careful in our language about this and whatever Mathew Huntbach meant to say I found the language he used unfortunate. Whatever “scrapheap” we may cast people onto here in Britain it is far better than a ruined city with bombs falling in Syria, or a part of Africa ravaged by Ebola or drought.
Overseas students are not immigrants and should not be counted as migrants as they are now. From outside the EU there are heavy restrictions on immigation.There is no open door.
Britain should help refugees
Millions of Britons live in other EU countries under EU free movement. Spain would place restrictions on them if Britain left the EU.
Britons married to foreigners should be allowed to bring their foreign spouse to Britain without financial restrictions .At one time the foreign spouse automatically received a British passport.
MichaelBG – “I think that a national government’s first responsibility is to its own citizens and this does not conflict with liberalism.”
Very much agreed.
AndrewMcCaig – “Theresa May and her ilk are expressing an essentially racist policy that values British people above foreign people.”
Hmmm, i don’t see this.
Either way, do people recognise the essentially different world view that informs these two very different interpretations of essentially the same speech?
One point not yet made is that the Tory government is saying one thing and doing another. In the past decade they have let in nearly five million immigrants. If it had been imperative to them to stop that happening, they could have found ways to do so. They have presided over a period of sustained net inward migration. They blame EU regulation, but that is at best a half-truth. The real reason why they have allowed migration to continue is not enlightened liberalism, nor is it because they could not possibly do otherwise. It is because their funders and controllers from business and finance want immigration to continue.
They want it to continue because they get the vaunted “economic benefits”, which mean a cheaper, stronger labour force for themselves. These gains are coupled with a higher benefits bill picked up by the taxpayer as the lower-skilled indigenous workers lose their jobs, with better services and cultural benefits for the comfortably off, and with poorer services and overcrowding in areas of high immigration.
The deception is complete when the party of high immigration claims to be a party of low immigration, and castigates everybody else for an insensitivity to popular concerns which, in reality, begins with themselves.
AndrewMcCaig – “Theresa May and her ilk are expressing an essentially racist policy that values British people above foreign people.”
As Manfarang alluded to in his response to my comment, which reminded me of my 1960’s childhood neighbourhood where we had families from the Carribean, Italy, Russia, China to name a few; the “British people” as known to many in Britian, are not a single ethnic people who share the same DNA going back countless generations (although I accept there are some who would like to impose this level of racial ‘purity’). I should bear this thought in mind when banding around terms such as “racist” and “xenophobic”.
Andrew McCaig
Anyway my point was that Theresa May and her ilk are expressing an essentially racist policy that values British people above foreign people. I think we should be careful in our language about this and whatever Mathew Huntbach meant to say I found the language he used unfortunate≥
So, what is the purpose of the British government? I would say it is to look after the interest of British people, but you say, no, that is racist. So why do we have an NHS? Should we not, according to your logic, scrap it, and use the money instead to help people in poorer countries?
Your line is really the far right line: that the British government is there to look after the interests of the British economy, which in reality means those at the top, those living comfortable lived who have nothing to fear, the social and financial elite. So long as the economy in terms of GDP and those elite types in control of it do well, that’s all that matters, everyone else must join in the scrabble to pick up the scraps that fall from the rich men’s table.
Or, as Bertolt Brecht put it, the people have forfeited the confidence of the government, so you want to dissolve the people and elect another.
Roland
Ah yes the kids I went to school with who had an Italian mother. They often spoke about the civil war in Italy which perplexed me at the time. They were talking about the Republic of Salò of course. There were those mysterious people who ran the draper’s shop in the high street- born in Germany.
One of the Anglo-Indians wanted to emigrate to Australia in the 1960s. She was refused.The whites only policy still operating at that time. No Russians but kids asking me from time to time if I was from China.
Manfarang – “Ah yes the kids I went to school with who had an Italian mother. ”
Yes fond memories of visiting a girlfriend at home and feeling very much out of things as the family naturally talked Italian, something that didn’t cross your mind as everyone talked English at school…
Roland
Well no one ever spoke French I’m glad to say.
Roland
I learned my girlfriend’s language.