Today's Rivers of Blood? (Immigration and asylum)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Immigration and asylum
Date:	27/08/06 (273 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cultural diversity is good, Britain PLC is prospering

Disadvantages: Sad indictment of our eduation policy and approach to work

In a speech in Birmingham on Saturday, Mr Enoch Powell said Britain must be mad to allow the inflow of some 50,000 dependants of immigrants every year. "In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office. There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population." You could be forgiven for thinking that these words were spoken in the last few weeks, such is the current focus on mass immigration in this country, but Enoch Powell actually made this speech way back in 1968 and it became known as his "Rivers of Blood" speech with his apocalyptic view that the country would flow with rivers of blood if the current tide of immigration wasn’t stopped. Since then, we have seen race riots, racial tension and a very different Britain but not as different as one would imagine and not for the reasons you might consider obvious.

38 years on and immigration and asylum are very much in the spotlight although for different reasons. Asylum is the ability of an individual to seek safe haven from a country where their life is under threat. As a first world nation, we feel a morale obligation to maintain our commitments to the rest of the world to help those in need. This is underscored by a series of laws and treaties that bind us legally to help others flee those countries that threaten their own people with violence. It’s difficult to imagine anybody denying someone safe haven from regimes like The Taliban and many others but what causes media attention and a growing resentment is those that blur the concept of asylum and make false claims. There’s no doubting the rise and rise of the legal industry that deals solely with negating the labyrinthian legalities of asylum laws that make it so difficult to repatriate false claimants. The solicitors involved in these dubious practices generate a good living off the back of taxpayers money as they navigate the Legal Aid process to keep people in the country that shouldn’t be here and, at the same time, make money for themselves under false pretences. Of course, the solution lies in realigning the rules and regulations in which they continue to prosper but bearing in mind that it’s the legal community that have drafted the regulations in the first place then we have a circular problem that looks almost impossible to unpick.

Within this subject, much was made of the asylum seekers who hijacked a plane to escape certain death in their own country. Fleeing the Taliban, they took passengers and crew hostage and flew to Britain and claimed asylum. The cost of making the plane safe and subsequent court cases cost the taxpayer £10million and it now looks like those involved will be granted indefinite stay in the country. My own problem with this is that if you follow the logic then anybody, anywhere in the world could hijack a plane and put people’s lives at risk to escape an evil regime. How can this be sanctioned even if the perpetrators feared for their own lives? Surely this is a criminal act that must be punished accordingly regardless of the motives involved. Alternatively, watch out for a sky full of re-directed flights of people fleeing the numerous dodgy regimes that spread out across the globe.

At the heart of the current furore is the wave of immigration from Eastern Europe. A recent survey suggested that as many as 3 in 4 people are now very uncomfortable with the vast numbers of people coming into the country and want better controls. Nobody, it seems, is actually opposed to immigration per se but there is genuine concern that the country can’t cope with such large numbers of people arriving in so short a period of time. At the same time, Britain PLC is delighted with the impact of the latest wave of immigrant workers as it provides a source of cheap labour from a hard working, well-mannered section of people. An article in The Sunday Times today indicates that Business for New Europe, a pro-Europe group of business leaders, estimates that the new immigrants are contributing £2.5billion a year to the economy. Business leaders are made up that people that are happy to take work at a relatively low wage and have plugged the holes in the present employment market. In the same article, apparently approximately 80% of the new arrivals that have registered for work earn an hourly rate of between £4.50 and £6. By contrast, less than 20% of the total working population earn less that £6. Herein lies the rub. We are happy to see people working in our cafes and building trade earning close to the minimum wage but not so happy when it has a knock on effect on our work and conditions. For those in the building trade that are already established in this country, this aspect of being savagely undercut means that work is increasingly difficult to find. You could argue that this is simply in line with our predominantly capitalist principles but is it also in line with the balances and checks established by trade unions over much of the last century to ensure that workers aren’t exploited by their bosses? It’s an age-old problem now being further complicated by this large group of work-hungry people who can earn so much more than they could have by staying in countries like Poland.

Essentially, the central debate is around how much is immigration actually planned and controlled in this country and the answer at the moment is it isn’t. With an open door approach, government forecasts suggested around 13,000 people a year would travel to Britain from countries like Poland when it joined the EU in 2004. In actual fact, nearly 600,000 hardy souls arrived when you include the self-employed and whilst very few signed on to claim benefits, the impact on the infrastructure of the country has been huge. For every person that has arrived, there has been a probable impact on schools, hospitals, dentists and so on (i.e. social services in general) that just hadn’t been planned for. With Alistair Darling, the Trade Secretary, hinting that this open door approach may not be applied in the case of Romania and Bulgaria’s accession to the EU next year, it seems that the government is now starting to see the impact of its negligence in a lack of proper planning for such a mass event. Furthermore, the policies of successive governments towards education have simply added fuel to the present massive anomalies in the current labour market. In the 1970’s, the fact was that only 5% or so of the student population would expect to gain a university education and go into the labour market looking for a suitably high powered job to match their degree qualification. Since then, the nanny state has created the illusion that more and more of us can expect to gain a degree and hence a better life by raising expectations so much that nobody wants to do the raft of jobs now routinely done by immigrants. As the concept of failing either a GSE O or A-Level becomes a distant memory and more than 50% of the student population expecting to go to University, then we’ve created a monster where pretty much nobody expects to be a plumber, painter or even pick crops in a field any more. Universities are no longer able to identify which students are cleverer than others are and employers are finding it harder and harder to choose those most suitable to do the jobs that a higher intellect requires. Like it or not, there is a natural pecking order driven by a finite labour market and by trying to suggest that everybody is equal and that we can all become rocket scientists is plain lunacy and simply unnecessary as there will only ever be a need for so many rocket scientists any way! Cast your memory back and try to remember the last time you met a plumber, who wasn’t overworked or underpaid, such is the strain on numbers in this vital industry. Isn’t it strange that over 1million people are out of work at the moment and yet 600,000 people have come into the country over the last couple of years and nearly all found jobs. Something doesn’t add up and my fear is that we’ve created a culture where it’s more acceptable to sign on and claim benefits that it is to do certain jobs and this underpins much of the problem we have with our employment market.

The biggest and most powerful economy of the world is founded and built on mass immigration. Take a look at the United States and you will see the world’s economic powerhouse reliant on people from all across the globe. You will also find a culture that has a problem with crime, pollution and a foreign policy that is tearing the world apart and generating a conflict that touches us every day in the UK. This is the example that we presently aspire to with our capitalist culture and never-ending desire to accumulate more and more material wealth. When we have over a million people claiming benefits and a society that is happy to accept that hard-working folks from other countries can come and do the jobs that we aren’t happy to do anymore, all to continue to fuel our present economic growth, then something doesn’t add up somewhere.

Perhaps, ultimately, we need to decide what is important in life and do the right thing. If that starts with re-evaluating our approach to education and realising that not everyone can become a brain surgeon then at least that’s a start. In the meantime, the government needs to finally get it sums right, plan properly and tell its voters what it plans to do and why. If this means that we can carry on with our daily lives and know that our kids will work hard and lead happy lives, regardless of colour, race, creed or religion then I, for one, will feel a little happier. I do wonder what Mr Powell would say now and whether he felt that his prophesy had actually come true or was simply an over-reaction to the situation back then. Whatever his thoughts are, we continue to hope that whoever the government in power is, that they manage the economy in the right way and that we all feel happier with our lives in general.

I’d love your thoughts.

Thanks for reading

Mara

Summary: My thoughts