Tightening immigration should constitute part of compassionate Conservatism

MartSharm

This is why we have democracy, and why those that argue that the BNP should be arbitrarily suppressed or are somehow "illegal" are actually suppressing our democracy.

Extreme single-issue parties like the BNP and UKIP are very useful in alerting the mainstream parties where they are ignoring (wilfully or otherwise) strong public feeling on certain issues. The mainstream parties will then make a shift on policy to prevent losing votes to the extremists.

If the BNP help convince the Conservatives to start talking about immigration again, they will, perversely, have been a power of change for the better.

logdon

Seen the response? the genie, at long last, is out of the bottle.

Will Dave (re) bottle it?

BC

"Britain cannot sustain such human and social pressure in the age of austerity."

Errr. How about this. Immigrants are the only conceivable way anyone in this country is going to be paid a pension in a few years time. Otherwise, due to demographic trends, we're going to have a population of old people, with no young workers to pay for them (or to staff their nursing homes)

McKenzie

You see, it's not so bad after all is it? A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down. The pain should ware off after a while and you will develop a level of tolerance, but well done for this effort anyways. Bless.

AngloWelshDragon

The people at the sharp end of mass immigration, working class people living cheek by jowl with ghettoes patrolled by cold-eyed, bearded youths who harass lone women and menace or chase young men, kids who don't hear english spoken in the playgrounds other than by themselves, men and women who don't recognise their home town anymore, let alone their country. Please show us some compassion!

Verity

Don't "tighten" immigration. Stop it, except for people who are going to bring more to the country in expertise, talent or actual wealth than they would take out of it. In other words, discriminate. Positively. On behalf of the owners of these islands.

The concommitant promise would have to be to microchip and deport every "asylum seeker" (regardless of the EHRA), every illegal and every foreigner being held in a British prison. As in France, financial rewards should be offered to legals and those born in Britain those who will agree to be microchipped, have a retinal photo taken and give a sample of their DNA and bugger the hell off.

Saudi Arabia's always looking for workers, and it's big, so that would be a good place to dump them. Or Gordon Brown's favourite country, Libya, which has a lot of space (especially between Ghadaffi's ears). They have a large 'empty quarter'.

They don't have to be repatriated to their country of origin. Any Islamic republic or kingdom is obliged to take in fellow Muslims, so that makes our job simpler.

denis cooper

My view is that a government should not seek to significantly increase the number of citizens through immigration, without first consulting the existing body of citizens to find out whether they want this to happen, and to what extent.

Otherwise it's like the board of a company deciding to issue free shares to people who aren't shareholders, without any authorisation from the existing shareholders.

It would be a simple matter to hold a referendum, say every ten years, in which each citizen could be asked to answer a question like:

"In your opinion, how many people from abroad should be allowed to settle permanently in the United Kingdom each year, with a view to becoming citizens with full rights equal to your own?"

with options ranging in steps from "Zero" to "No limit".

The correct interpretation of the ballots would be to find the median response - ie the rate of immigration which half of the existing citizens thought too low, and half thought too high.

If that was done, and the median response was about a million a year, then I would accept that the majority of my fellow citizens did not agree with my own view - which is that over the past decade or so we've had enough immigration to last us for many decades, and it will take that long just to fully integrate the newcomers who've already been accepted, and their children, and restore some kind of national unity and stability.

Andy

"Britain cannot sustain such human and social pressure in the age of austerity." Or, I would contend, in any age. The sheer pressure on space will cause an eruption. Anglo-Saxon (albeit currently an endangered species) require more space for their comfort zone. If you doubt that, just see how happy you are if someone is talking to you really close and how far away they need to be to make you feel relaxed. Anybody who says we need unlimited immigration to pay the pension bills must think immigrants never grow old - and moreover, never bring extended family with them!

Augustus

This 'sceptred isle...set in a silver sea' obviously won't be able to cope with such a vast influx of those projected millions. Parts of Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium and Germany are already struggling, and the large amount of future Turkish EU nationals
(possibly tens of millions) who want to migrate to Western Europe havn't come yet.

Brussels, the capital of the EU, is now also the criminal capital of Europe. It's become a super Mecca for thieves, gang bosses, robbers and murderers. 50% of young immigrants are unemployed, and look for money by other means. The authorities aren't interested in combating crime. The police simply aren't interested in the public places and what goes on there after dark. Brussels is a real showpiece for the dhimmi-ruling equality-minded lefties. Brussels, the capital of Belgium
and the EU. Seat of NATO and numerous international organizations. Where 35,000 EU administrators live, and 2,500 diplomats,
all possessing laptops, i-phones, Blackberrys and fat wallets. A paradise for criminals.

Chris

No. The Conservatives should be the party of free markets and that means free markets in where to live. No-one should be guaranteed privilege because of where they live or who they are and that applies just as much to the idle racists demanding special treatment in this country. Just because Labour's determined to create a wall round Britain that's like East Germany before its wall came down, there's no reason for the tories to copy them.

luke

You would almost think from the throw-away remark made in this article that everyone or even most people coming off benefits faced a 96% tax rate, rather than it being a total exception to the experience of nearly everyone.

DavidDP

I wonder if people here know how easy or hard it actually is to immigrate to the UK?

A couple of friends who married abroad have had tremendous difficulties, not to mention expense.

Rhoda Klapp

Chris, I don't think the wall round East Germany was to keep the rest of us out.

Let others create the free market in where to live (this concept is just so wrong..) and then we can all go to the places we might prefer. As long as we cannot, we should exert our right to deny entry.

It's like, I have a spare bedroom. Do I have to let anyone who fancies it move in, and share the rest of the house I thought was my own? No, and I don't care to do so even if the incomer offers to pay his share of the bills. It's mine. Mine.

TrevorsDen

BC - "Immigrants are the only conceivable way anyone in this country is going to be paid a pension in a few years time."

And who pays the pension of these new people a few years after that - oh MORE immigration! I geddit.

The other issue is that we face an increase of 10 million in our population over the next few years, coming from the children of immigrants - how do we support the infrastructure of NHS and education for that? And housing and water and sewage?

The costs of congestion seem to have passed you by. Your assertion is patently fallacious.

Pensions can and should be paid by peoples contributions over the years with some govt intervention and support. We do not need immigrants. Instead this cock-eyed incompetent govt have destroyed our pensions.

Peter From Maidstone

Looking at the article in the Times on the cost of 'Benefits' to the Middle Class it seems just wrong, deceptive even, to include the cost of pensions, for which the Middle Class elderly have paid over 40 years. Their pensions are not a benefit in any sense but something they are entitled to in a contractual sense. Therefore that takes 58% off the 31 billion.

Likewise it is disingenuous to point out that 80% of statutory maternity pay goes to Middle Class mothers when a large proportion of working class mothers - though that term probably does not apply - do not work and therefore are not entitled to support while pregnant.

The whole report is not the wonderfully intelligent document it is presented here, but seems deeply anti-Middle Class, deeply anti-those who actually pay for society, and based on lumping together as many people as possible into the Middle Class, and as many receipts as possible into the catchall category of 'Benefits'. If I had paid 40 years of NI I would not consider my pension a benefit, it would be something I was absolutely entitled to. And if I am paying National INSURANCE then I would also expect to receive benefit when unemployed and care when I am sick, since I have been paying for it as INSURANCE.

If you don't want the Middle Class to receive anything from society, while paying out 50%+ of income on taxes, then don't expect the Middle Class to carry on bearing the burden of those on benefits, apart from by way of charity.

When I was recently unemployed for a couple of months, I found I was liable to only £64 a week in support, after my wife and I have paid probably £400,000 in taxes. There is something not right there.

General Zod

If we didn't have a white underclass of two generations who have attended (occasionally), but not been educated at sink schools and who are unwilling and unable to work, thanks to their lack of education and the availability of benefits, the economy would not need immigrants to fill jobs and pay taxes to pay for the benefits of this NEET underclass.

Dorothy Wilson

BC. The argument you put forward is one churned out by the left. Someone from the Institute of Public Policy Research trotted it out on the news last night.

We can pay for a more equitable pension provision by doing something about the £1 trillion bill facing us for public sector pensions. We can then invest for public sector pensions rather than pay them out of current income.

And, when we have decided on a figure for a sustainable population in this country, we can do our strategic planning accordingly. And that may mean having a plan to reduce population. It might also mean cutting our coats according to the cloth.

Also, TrevorsDen is quite right to raise the question of as to how we are going to support the infrastructure of the NHS and the utilities.

denis cooper

Chris @ 3:00 pm -

You're entitled to your personal view, just as others are entitled to theirs - and without you immediately condemning those who disagree with you as "idle racists".

If we had the kind of referendum I suggest, you could put your own cross in the box next to "No Limit". What could be fairer, and more democratic, than that?

However if you think that the Conservatives should share your view then I'd like some clarification - when Cameron comes out with his current mantra, "We are all in it together", who do you think he includes in that "we"?

Is he talking just about the 60 million or so citizens in the UK, or all of the approximately 6707 million people in the world?

Because it would make a difference.

Not least to me, as there are limits to my altruism, and I would have to decide how far I was willing to sacrifice my own interests and those of my family for the sake of whichever "we" he meant.

If it was the wrong "we", then I wouldn't want him to become Prime Minister.

Tiberius

I'm afraid that the preservation of traditional British culture and the payment of future pensions can only be addressed if those who espouse British culture are prepared to give up welfarism and the self-obsession that has developed over years, and have more children. (And that is only a a part of the solution).

Otherwise the demographics don't stack up, and "Eurabia" is a condition that would then be hard to avoid. In such a scenario, there wouldn't be anyone strong enough to enforce immigration controls.

Beer Moth

BC

Err perhaps we might try that other radical solution of encouraging our own young people to have babies? It's not new technology you know.

But further, how can these immigrant saviours benefit us in the long term? Surely they themselves must become old, infirm and a drain on society?

Just keep opening boxes of newcomers shall we?

Alun Reynolds

Tsk! Tsk! David, You'll have Mr Seacole on your back like a ton of bricks calling the BNP Hard Left :o) Don't you know that all monsters are on the right? The left extends only to the serene uplands of Marxist Utopia :o)

emil

BC - simple, you take away the benefits addiction that allow our own citizens to thumb their noses at the type of work we then need immigrants to do. Which bit of this equation are you having trouble understanding?

Victor Southern

Did anybody mention that our resources of power, water and transport are decidedly finite?

This prating about globalism ignores simple facts. There are too many people in the world. All of those who don't like it in their country of birth simply cannot come here.

All of those who allegedly or actually flee bad rulers cannot come here and try to destabilise our system of government.

We had a go at being the world's policeman, the world's educator, the world's missionaries, the world's doctors. They hated us so much that they now clamour to come and live with us.

Fergus Pickering

I have two daughters. They plan to have four middle-class children each. Come on the rest of you, do your duty!

... ..

Peter From Maidstone.4.16.
Spot on

BC

I'm not saying that relying on immigrants to pay (and work) for pensioners is a good long term solution. Just that its one of the only ones.

Demographic transition has meant there are "too many" old people and the number is growing. That is a simple fact. For over a hundred years governments have tried to encourage people to have more children - it doesn't seem to work.

Again, I'm not saying more immigration is automatically a wonderful sustainable solution. I'm just saying that the argument about strains on public services cuts both ways - and the role immigrants play in propping up the elderly population should always be at least part of the debate.

Noa Zrk

Tighten immigration? With our density of population and millions of unemployed please explain why should we have any immigrants at all?

TGF UKIP

Denis Cooper makes a valid point about immigration only taking place with the consent of the native inhabitants. However, in none of their manifestos did Labour indicate their intention to encourage large inflows of immigrants. What is even worse, though, is the refusal of the Tories to make a political point of that.

As to David Blackburn's point - no chance. Even if Dave wished to do a complete volte face on immigration, neither Mrs Cameron nor The Mekon would let him.

JohnAnt

David, if the Tories wanted to address this issue, surely they would have done so already, even after moving out of London to Sussex and Bucks?

JohnAnt

We have an excellent model for our immigration policy: the US. No shirkers, no-hopers, dopers, idiots, crims, and certainly not the tired and huddled masses. You need money or a very important skill to get in.
Doesn't always work perfectly, of course, even with these strictures a few unsuitables crawl through the net.
But it's a hell of a good place to start.

Jon Smith

I think you will find that the BNP are looking to gain from the Tory vote, not the Labour one as they realise there is little currency there.