Logically Reckless over Immigration

I don’t support UKIP or its attitude to foreigners (expressed or implicit), but (logically) I can’t see how Mark Reckless “misspoke” last night.

Twice last night Mark Reckless was asked whether a Polish plumber who lives in Rochester would be able to stay in the country if Britain decided to leave the EU.

First he said the Polish plumber might be allowed to stay for a fixed period then he said UKIP would look sympathetically at the cases of people who’d been here for a long time.
BBC News Website 19 November 2014 : UKIP: Should Polish plumbers be deported? (Nick Robinson’s blog)

How is that view at variance with UKIP’s desire to leave the EU and reduce immigration “because the country is full up”?

Rate of return on Immigrants

Today we have seen Sir Nicholas Winton honoured by the Czech Republic for his work on the kindertransport which was responsible for about 10,000 children escaping to Britain from the Nazis. Sir Nicholas personally found homes for 690 of these immigrants.

Migration and the Greater South East

An infographic about migration into the Greater South East republished on Julian’s Musings Blog claims:

Polls show that on average people think there are far more immigrants than there really are. – 31%

Meaning?
– 31% of people polled thought there were far more immigrants, or
– on average people thought there were 31% more immigrants than there really were?
Presumably the latter, but that probably says something about people’s willingness to assume that someone who speaks with a foreign accent or who is not white is an immigrant.

These sort of facts provoke so many other questions.

Borderline considerations

“No we won’t need passports and there won’t be border controls”

“Will people face border checks?” “What a daft idea!”

How come? If Scotland has a more permissive immigration policy* than residual UK, will migrants continue to squat at Calais awaiting a chance to cross illegally into England, or will they hop on a ferry to Scotland and then just drift across the “open” England – Scotland border?

Let’s be nasty to foreigners (part 1 of too many)

We seem to be determined to be nasty to foreigners – particularly any that put a foot out of line, or appear to put a foot out of line, or might just possibly be predisposed to put a foot out of line.

We have a criminal justice system and an immigration system that at times staggers, fails and produces anomalous looking results, but surely the answer is to fix the system rather than persecute one group.

Immigration Hysteria has got the weather-vane spinning

We (the United Kingdom) are a member of a club called the European Union. Now UKIP and some Tory backbenchers do not like this and have been shit-stirring now that we are a few weeks away from the lifting of restrictions on free-movement of Bulgarian and Romanian labour within the whole of the EU. The Europhobic press have also jumped on this band-waggon (and given it a good push). Anyone would think that the entire population of those two countries are at this very moment packing ready to come the whole way across the continent to the UK in January.

The weather-vane that is our Prime Minister feels that he has to comment on this – and a bit more substantially than the twits that “he” puts out about breaking news stories. Basically, he wants to ignore or break the rules of the club. As a “club” man, he should know better.

Nastiness (part 3 of many) KensalNacht

The Independent Reports:

Home Office officials have conducted a series of “racist and intimidatory” spot checks to search for illegal immigrants in the wake of the Government’s “go home or face arrest” campaign.

Officers wearing stab vests have conducted random stop-and-check operations near stations in the London suburbs of Walthamstow, Kensal Green, Stratford and Cricklewood over the past three days,. …

Onlookers described their shock at the operations, with one member of the public saying it was akin to “Nazi Germany”. The Labour MP Barry Gardiner has now written to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, demanding an investigation into the checks which he said violated “fundamental freedoms”. The raids come just a few months after Ms May took direct responsibility for immigration from the disbanded UK Border Agency.

“We do not yet live in a society where the police or any other officers of the law are entitled to detain people without reasonable justification and demand their papers,” Mr Gardiner wrote. “The actions of your department would however appear to be hastening us in that direction.”

Witnesses who saw the operations in London claimed the officers stopped only non-white individuals, and in Kensal Green said that when questioned, the immigration officials became aggressive.

Independent Website 1 August 2013 Exclusive: The new stop-and-search – spot checks near stations in hunt for illegal immigrants 

Why am I not surprised?

Nastiness (part 1 of many)

A council leader has said he is “absolutely horrified” over government plans to drive vans through his borough with adverts calling on illegal immigrants to leave.

Brent’s Muhammed Butt said the plan was an “act of desperation” and that more needed to be done to process people’s claims.

He added it would “just drive people underground”.
BBC News Website 23 July 2013 Council ‘horrified’ over scheme for immigrants to go

The Government (Immigration minister Mark Harper) says:

This pilot is just another part of the reforms of the immigration system that have cut out abuse.
ibid

The council leader heard about the Daily Mail catching initiative on Twitter.

UKIP and their attitude to migrants

There is a furor about some children being removed from a foster family in Rotherham (where there happens to be a by-election pending) because the foster parents are UKIP members. (BBC News 26 November 2012)

Because we are dealing with issues of child welfare we do not know all the facts, but I am disturbed by the almost universal condemnation of this removal.

Why do we hate migrants?

The latest attempts to reduce immigration by our coalition government raises some interesting questions.  They are “committed” to reducing the number of immigrants, but with immigration, it’s not the numbers that are the issue (unless you just hate foreigners); it’s the country’s ability to cope with them.