ASYLUM |
Asylum
New law may give asylum to 22,500 refugees Nick Fagge Daily Express, 29 April 2009 |
Controversial plans will require the
UK to accept one in eight of all migrants who set foot in any of the 27
European Union countries and demand refugee status.
It could mean an estimated 22,500 more
people coming to Britain. Taxpayers will
be expected to foot the bill for their food, accommodation and clothing,
plus legal fees while they apply for international protection.
Asylum seekers must also be given the
right to work within six months of their arrival, enabling them to claim
thousands of pounds in benefits if they cannot find a job. Their children
must also be found school places.
Migrants can only be detained as a last
resort and must not be held in secure accommodation more than 72 hours
without a judge's approval. The
proposals, supported by Labour MEPs, are part of the EU's Common European
Asylum System and will be put to the European Parliament in Strasbourg for
approval. Last night Conservative MEP
Philip Bradbourn said: "Economic migrants posing as asylum seekers would
have an easy ride under these plans.
"Once again, the EU thinks the only
answer to justified immigration concerns is to take control of asylum
policy. Controlling our borders is one of the most important roles of
government. "For more than a decade,
Labour has been unable to form a coherent immigration policy, but that
should not justify handing it to Brussels."
UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage
said: "Brussels will soon be dictating who has the right to live and work
in Britain. The EU is pushing for a common asylum and immigration policy
but it is being pushed through without proper thought."
EU member states will be forced to take
refugees or face huge fines under the proposals outlined on Monday.
Migrants will be rehoused from states
"confronted with a large number of asylum applications" such as Malta,
Greece, Italy and Spain's Canary Islands to larger countries such as the UK
a reversal of the rule that requires applicants to seek sanctuary in
the first safe country. Member states
would be compelled to accept a percentage of applicants in accordance with
their population. This would mean the UK
taking in 13 per cent of all refugees arriving in the EU or 22,500
of the 322,000 average arrivals over the last 10 years.
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Asylum
Failed asylum seekers win right to stay amid hearings 'shambles' Chris Hastings, Alex Ralph and Ian Johnston Sunday Telegraph, 19 April 2009 |
Failed asylum seekers are winning the
right to stay in Britain because of "shambolic" failings in the immigration
hearing system, ... Hundreds of appeal
hearings are going ahead without a representative from the Home Office to
defend its original decision to deny asylum.
Immigration lawyers admitted that the
situation is helping their clients to win cases they might otherwise have
lost. The disclosure could help explain
why the percentage of asylum seekers winning their appeals has risen from
17 per cent in 2005 to 25 per cent for the third quarter of 2008. ...
Over the last two weeks, reporters from
this newspaper attended 25 hearings around the country. At 24 of them, no
Home Office Presenting Officer (Hopo) who is tasked with putting the
department's case before the immigration judge was present.
In the one remaining hearing, the officer
turned up late and admitted that she was unprepared.
Senior sources close to the hearings have
said the Home Office is failing to properly defend about a third of cases
which come to appeal.
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Asylum costs
Failed immigrant loses NHS test case Auslan Cramb Daily Telegraph, 31 March 2009 |
Failed asylum seekers are not
automatically entitled to free treatment on the NHS, one of Britain's most
senior judges has ruled. Individual
hospitals have the discretion to decide whether to treat penniless patients
who are not British residents, and should use it in the most urgent cases,
the judge said. In the case of a
Palestinian man refused free treatment for a liver condition, Lord Justice
Ward ruled that it was not right to say that a failed asylum seeker who had
been in the country for more than a year had "lawfully resided" in Britain
for that period, and thus qualified for NHS care.
The ruling at the Appeal Court in London
was made in a test case brought by a 35-year-old, identified in court only
as YA, who was told he was not eligible for free treatment at West
Middlesex University Hospital and was charged £9,000. He was refused
leave to remain in Britain but had no travel documents, so could not return
to the Middle East.
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Asylum
Asylum magnet Daily Telegraph, 25 March 2009 |
Britain was the third most popular
destination for asylum seekers, the UN said yesterday. Some 159,000 people
claimed asylum in Britain between 2004 and 2008, with the US and France
receiving more out of the top 44 industrialised nations.
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Asylum
Synod votes for asylum amnesty Martin Beckford Daily Telegraph, 14 February 2009 |
More than 300,000 asylum seekers
should be allowed to stay in Britain indefinitely, the Church of England
said. The Church's governing body, the
General Synod, voted overwhelmingly in favour of an amnesty for asylum
seekers whose cases were still being decided. It said all those who wanted
to live in Britain should be allowed to work.
The Synod added that a solution must be
found to the "intolerable" situation of people who were refused the right
to remain but could not return to their home countries, and that children
and families must no longer be detained in immigration removal centres. The
Rev Ruth Worsley, a priest in the diocese of Southwell and Nottingham who
tabled a motion on the issue, said: "The financial cost to our country, as
well as the human cost which leaves people in limbo for years, not knowing
what their future might hold, seems unconscionable.
"The Gospel tells us that we are not a
tribal nation but a global family."
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Asylum deportation
Asylum seekers 'face one in 10 chance of removal' Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 23 January 2009 |
Asylum seekers who were told that
they could not stay in Britain could face just a one in 10 chance of being
removed, the Government's auditors said yesterday.
There was also no system in place to
track those granted asylum, even though their cases were supposed to be
reviewed after five years. Their report
suggested that the Home Office was going to miss its promise of clearing a
backlog of 450,000 asylum cases by 2011.
Tens of thousands could not be dealt with
because of "external factors," either in the person's home country or in
Britain, the National Audit Office said.
The report found that 70 per cent of
escorted removals were cancelled and thousands of emergency documents
obtained to help return failed asylum seekers remained unused. The backlog
of new asylum cases coming to Britain that had not been dealt with doubled
last year. The auditors found that of
those who applied for asylum between January 2007 and February last year
and were refused by new regional teams, between just seven and nine per
cent were removed by August last year. In comparison, about 98 per cent of
those under the detention fast-track system were removed.
A Home Office spokesman said: "This in no
way reflects the total number of failed asylum seekers removed in 2007.
"In fact, we removed more than 13,700
people compared to an intake of 17,500 that's a removal rate that's
closer to eight out of 10."
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Asylum crime
80 foreign murderers welcomed to Britain: Albanian killers allowed to stay despite being on Interpol 'wanted' list Sue Reid and Arthur Martin Daily Mail, 23 January 2009 |
Eighty foreign killers are exploiting
the chaotic asylum system to set up home in Britain, it was revealed
yesterday. The convicted murderers from
Albania have been given British passports despite being officially listed
as 'wanted' by Interpol. Most slipped
across the Channel from Calais to Dover hidden in the back of lorries on
ferries. They used bogus names and false papers to claim asylum, often
pretending to be from the war-torn Balkan republic of Kosovo.
The scandal came to light when Albania's
chief of police complained that 100 criminals from his country have been
granted British citizenship and now live here.
The police chief said the criminals have
been allowed to stay even though the Albanian government has informed the
Home Office of the true identities of the men and their crimes, which also
include rape and robbery. Many of the
convicted criminals have been living in the UK for up to ten years and have
started new families here. As the
revelations exposed the shambles within the asylum system yet again,
campaigners expressed their outrage. Sir
Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch, said: 'It is a real concern that people
accused of, or even convicted of, very serious crimes should apparently
find it so easy to gain asylum in Britain.'
Rose Dixon, of victim group Support After
Murder and Manslaughter, added: 'I'm astounded. If this is correct, I'm
appalled that these people are walking the streets of Britain. I think we
should be told a lot more about this.'
After the Home Office was informed about
the true identity of the asylum seekers, extradition proceedings against
them were lodged by the Albanian Government.
But complex legal arguments and the need
to find interpreters and psychologists has led to lengthy delays.
Albanian criminals use myriad loopholes
in the extradition laws to avoid being sent home.
Their lawyers often claim they will
suffer human rights abuse on their return, or that trials in their absence
were unfair because they could not give their side.
The situation is even more complicated if
they have become British citizens. Under the Human Rights Act 1988, this
gives them further protection against being removed because their family
life would be disrupted. ... Ahmet
Prenci, the Albanian chief of police, said he felt as if all his force's
hard work in tracking down the culprits had been in vain.
'We have made a list of our people who
are hiding in the UK,' he said. 'There are 100 criminals, and more than 80
per cent are wanted for murder and have been convicted in absentia.
'They have been given British citizenship
despite our efforts to extradite them to serve prison sentences in our
country. 'We are working intensively to
identify, locate, and then to arrest wanted Albanian people in Britain.
Unfortunately, many have British passports obtained after they claimed
asylum by pretending to be Kosovans. 'We
are unhappy that the courts repeatedly refuse extradition of these
criminals. There is no reason for an Albanian citizen who has been involved
in a crime not to be punished.'
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Asylum deportation
90% of failed asylum seekers remain in UK... and backlog of undecided cases doubles in a year Matthew Hickley Daily Mail, 23 January 2009 |
As many as nine out of ten failed
asylum seekers are being allowed to stay in Britain despite having no right
to remain, a report from a Government watchdog reveals today.
The backlog of illegal immigrants
awaiting deportation is growing fast as the UK Border Agency fails to keep
pace with the number of rejected applicants. The number of unprocessed
cases is also growing. And Government
rules stating that all successful asylum seekers must have their cases
reviewed after five years - to see if their country is now safe enough to
return to - have descended into farce, because the Border Agency has no way
of tracking those living in Britain and no plans for a review.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling
called the report, from the National Audit Office, a 'shocking indictment
of the shambles that is our immigration and asylum system'. Meanwhile, the
Commons Public Accounts Committee, to which the NAO reports, claimed the
Agency was 'struggling to cope.' ...
Today's report acknowledges that the
£800million-a-year system is now 'better organised than before', but
highlights grave problems which in many cases are getting worse.
A surge in the number of asylum claims
saw the backlog of undecided cases more than double in a year, to almost
9,000. The NAO tracked more than 25,000
claims lodged from January 2007 to February 2008, of which almost 14,000
were refused. But of 10,719 cases
processed in the seven regions around the UK, only 918 - less than 10 per
cent - had actually been deported by the following August.
The rate was higher for 3,000 false
claimants who were fast-tracked in detention. Including these claims, the
overall removal rate was just one in four.
A severe shortage of detention spaces is
making removals harder, the report warned, with much of the available
capacity taken up by foreign criminals who have completed their sentences
and are awaiting deportation. The NAO
also highlighted glaring inefficiencies, including:
Seventy per cent of planned
deportations - where security staff accompany deportees on flights home -
are cancelled, often due to lack of proper coordination, leading to
'additional work and costs'. The
Agency often has to buy emergency travel documents from foreign governments
to deport failed asylum seekers, but 13,000 of these have been wasted
because individuals absconded, or because the papers expired.
Since 2005, Britain has granted
asylum for five years only - after which cases should be reviewed in the
hope that some immigrants will be able to return home.
But astonishingly the Border Agency 'has
no process' to track refugees living in Britain and 'no plans in place to
review these cases'. There are 8,000 due
for review next year. Last night, the
Agency's chief executive Lin Homer confirmed there was 'no requirement' for
asylum seekers to tell officials when they move house.
Sir Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch,
said: 'This is a shameful performance for the expenditure of hundreds of
millions of pounds. It is no surprise that asylum seekers, many of them
bogus, are queuing up in Calais.'
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Asylum
180,000 to stay in asylum fiasco Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 10 December 2008 |
At least 180,000 asylum seekers
caught up in the claims backlog fiasco are likely to be allowed stay in
Britain. More than 50,000 out of 450,000
who were found to have slipped under the net in 2006 have so far been
permitted to stay, Lin Homer, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency,
told MPs. If the 40 per cent approval
rate continues, at least 180,000 will have been freed to stay once the
backlog is cleared. Applicants whose cases have been ignored for up to a
decade or more are now expected to be given the green light because sending
them home would breach their human rights after they have effectively
settled here. Some of the files date back
to the mid-1990s. The list includes
thousands of people from Turkey and Pakistan. Critics said the move was
effectively an amnesty by stealth. ...
The 450,000 files in the Case Resolution
Programme were unearthed in 2006 after the foreign prisoners scandal.
Among them are claimants who should have
been deported years ago. Ministers have
promised to work through all the cases by 2011, while also having to deal
with all fresh asylum claims and those failed cases still awaiting
deportation. ... Normally, just 10 per
cent of asylum claims are granted in the first instance, although more are
approved on appeal. Human rights laws
will be to blame for most cases, either because it is unsafe to return the
asylum seekers or because they have been here so long they now have
families and are protected under the right to family life.
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Asylum border security
Children left at British ports Daily Telegraph, 4 October 2008 |
Children as young as three have been
found abandoned at British ports and airports, it emerged yesterday.
Home Office figures show 3,525
unaccompanied children under 18 applied for asylum in 2007, a two per cent
increase on the previous year. Many of the youngsters were from
Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Children were
abandoned at Southampton docks, airport and service stations, Hampshire
county council reported. The youngest was three years old.
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Asylum deportation
Rejected asylum seekers can stay Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 25 July 2008 |
Hundreds of thousands of asylum
seekers whose cases were lost or overlooked by the Home Office and expected
to be allowed to stay in Britain in what critics call an "effective
amnesty". More than 100 foreign prisoners
also remain on the run two years after the Government pledged to deport
them, it was disclosed yesterday. The
Home Office was engulfed in scandal two years ago when a backlog of 450,000
case files were found lying around in boxes, some dating from the mid-1990s
and beyond. They included many would-be
refugees whose cases had been rejected as bogus but who had not been
deported. Figures released yesterday show
that two years later officials have processed only 90,000 of the files, and
almost half 43 per cent of the applicants have been told they
can stay in Britain permanently. Many of the cases are still considered
unfounded, but the asylum seekers and their families have been living in
Britain for so long that the courts are likely to block any efforts to
deport them on human rights grounds. All
those allowed to stay will be able to claim benefits and seek citizenship,
regardless of the merits of their original claims.
The figures also show that only 308 of
the 1,013 criminals who were supposed to have been ejected from the country
have gone.
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Asylum
Asylum refugees' treatment 'inhuman' Patrick Sawer Sunday Telegraph, 29 June 2008 |
An inquiry will tomorrow brand
Britain's asylum system inhumane and urge the Government to improve the
treatment of refugees. The Independent
Asylum Commission, whose members include senior clergy, lawyers and
academics, will make 46 recommendations to the Home Office, including ways
to speed up the handling of claims. The
recommendations, which follow a two-year inquiry, aim to address the
failings of the system from the moment claimants are first interviewed.
The report says a "culture of disbelief"
persists among officials which is stacking the odds against genuine
refugees. The effect of post-traumatic
stress as a result of rape and torture is not considered carefully enough
by those interviewing claimants, say the commissioners.
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Asylum benefits and costs
Judge backs free NHS care for 11,000 asylum seekers Daily Telegraph, 12 April 2008 |
As many as 11,000 failed asylum
seekers could qualify for free NHS treatment after a High Court judge
declared that current regulations were "unlawful".
The ruling by Mr Justice Mitting applies
to asylum seekers who have had their claims turned down but who have become
"ordinarily resident" in Britain because it would be unsafe for them to
return to their native country. It
follows a legally aided case brought by a Palestinian asylum seeker who was
initially refused free treatment for chronic liver disease. ...
The refusal was in line with NHS charges
regulations introduced by the then health minister John Hutton in 2004.
The Department of Health was immediately
given permission to appeal.
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Asylum deportation
Number of asylum deportations falls Daily Telegraph, 27 February 2008 |
The number of failed asylum seekers
being deported has slumped to a six-year low just as the number
arriving in Britain has leapt to its highest level since 2005.
Home Office figures showed that the
number of failed asylum seekers removed from Britain dropped by more than a
quarter in the past year, down to 13,595.
The news came as the number of asylum
seekers arriving in Britain leapt by a fifth last year to the highest level
since 2005. This includes a 40 per cent rise in the second half of 2007.
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Asylum border controls
Now wrongdoers have the grass on their heads to fear Richard Gray Sunday Telegraph, 3 February 2008 |
Criminals who claim they were not at
the scene of a crime can now be betrayed by their hair.
Forensic scientists have developed a
technique that allows them to track a person's movements by analysing
samples of head and body hair. The
technology relies on the distinct chemical "fingerprint" of air and water
in different countries, and even in different regions of the UK.
Each location has a unique cocktail of
atoms known as isotopes in the air and water which get into the body when
we eat, drink and breathe. As hair grows,
it incorporates these isotopes, providing a record of where a person has
been. ... The Home Office is believed to
be interested in using the technique to weed out illegal immigrants who
claim asylum using false documents. By analysing hair and nail clippings,
immigration officers could determine when asylum seekers are telling the
truth about the countries they claim to come from.
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Asylum deportation
Smith admits asylum error Daily Telegraph, 24 December 2007 |
The Home Secretary has admitted that
the number of failed asylum seekers whose deportation flights are postponed
because of their disruptive behaviour is almost double the figure
previously released. Jacqui Smith has
apologised after stating that there had been 1,173 such cases over two
years when the real figure is nearly twice as high.
In a letter to David Davis, the shadow
home secretary, Ms Smith wrote: "It has now come to light that some of this
information was incorrect and the figure is in fact 2,079.
"Please accept my sincere apologies for
the error." A Home Office spokesman said
the mistake was down to an administrative error.
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Asylum repatriation
Asylum returners take cash and stay Ben Leapman Sunday Telegraph, 23 December 2007 |
Failed asylum seekers are drawing
benefits to which they are not entitled by claiming that they are about to
return home only to continue to live in Britain for years.
The scam, which may have cost taxpayers
millions of pounds, has come to light with the cases of four migrants who
signed up for the Home Office's voluntary repatriation programme and who
then went on to live off state handouts worth tens of thousands of pounds.
They took advantage of a scheme that
offers asylum seekers £4,000 to go home and set up in business. Last
week The Sunday Telegraph revealed that £36 million of
taxpayers' money had been spent helping 23,000 asylum seekers to start
enterprises including an ostrich farm in Iran and a vineyard in Albania.
However, millions more has been spent on
supporting those who have signed up for the scheme but are still in the UK,
some with no intention of returning home.
Asylum seekers whose claims have been
rejected, and whose appeal rights have been used up, are given 21 days'
grace before being stripped of benefit entitlements and told to leave the
country. However, if they agree to go
home via the Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme (VARRP),
they become eligible for "Section Four support", an emergency handout
consisting of free food vouchers worth £35 a week, plus free
accommodation, with council tax and utility bills paid, worth about
£100 a week. Most receive the
benefit for two or three weeks until flights home have been arranged by the
International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the agency that runs the
assisted return scheme on behalf of the Home Office. ...
The IOM said it always passed on to the
Home Office the names of applicants who failed to leave the UK.
The Home Office could not say why it had
failed to stop payments in the four cases. It was also unable to say how
many more migrants might be in similar positions or how much it spends on
Section Four support.
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Asylum deportation
Had a bad day? Take it out on an asylum-seeker Alasdair Palmer Sunday Telegraph, 23 December 2007 |
... the Home Office's Border and
Immigration Agency (BIA). They arrived at four in the morning at the foster
home of a 15-year-old Iraqi asylum claimant in order to bundle him onto a
plane out of Britain. ... ... It is an
example of the bungling inefficiency that too often characterises the BIA.
Its officials had known of J's arrival in the UK since April, and had tried
to visit him in May, but J had not been at his address when they called.
They then seem to have forgotten about him for nearly seven months, so that
by the time they went back at 4am on November 8, the six-month time limit
on removals in such cases had expired. That fact alone, said the judge,
made the removal of the boy unlawful. The
BIA's outrageous behaviour was wholly, and foreseeably, counter-productive:
J will now have to be brought back to the UK, and will probably end up
having his claim for asylum here approved. ...
... More than 20,000 children under 18
have arrived in Britain to claim asylum over the past few years: the Home
Office won't say how many of those claims have been refused, still less how
many children have been deported. Other agencies such as social and health
services often refuse to co- operate with the BIA's attempt to identify and
remove failed child asylum seekers. It makes the job of enforcing the law
doubly difficult, and they mostly fail.
There is a backlog of at least 200,000
people whose claims for asylum have been investigated and found to be
without merit, but who have not left Britain. Many of them will not only
never be removed: they will get their families into Britain, under the
"right to family" reunion enshrined in the Human Rights Act. In asylum law,
two wrongs make a right: if you can get here and stay here, you get the
right to bring your family here. ... We
need a tough asylum policy: one that makes sure that the law is enforced
fairly and effectively. But this should not be confused with a brutal,
inhumane 0one enforced by officials who behave in outrageous fashion. At
the moment, however, we are getting the worst of both worlds: a feeble,
ineffective policy, coupled with occasional bouts of outrageous behaviour
from the officials charged with enforcing it.
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Asylum deportation
Immigration 'amnesty' for 160,000 Rosa Prince Daily Telegraph, 18 December 2007 |
More than 160,000 illegal immigrants
due for deportation may be given asylum and allowed to stay in Britain amid
claims that the Government has embarked on a secret "stealth amnesty".
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary,
disclosed last night that more than a third of the backlog of illegal
immigrants reconsidered for deportation had actually been granted leave to
remain since 2006. Over the past 18
months, the Government has reassessed only the cases of 52,000 illegal
immigrants out of a backlog of 450,000. Of that 52,000, 19,000 have been
allowed to stay sparking fears that asylum could finally be granted
to 164,000 previously due to be deported if the present rate of "amnesty"
continues. The Conservatives said that
despite previous Government plans to deport those here illegally, only
16,000 had so far been sent home three per cent of the total
backlog. Miss Smith disclosed the damning
figures in a letter to the Commons home affairs committee, sent on the eve
of MPs' Christmas recess. ... Many
records covered people who had already left the UK, had died or were EU
citizens with a right to reside here. Miss Smith said 900 caseworkers had
been appointed to deal with the backlog.
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Asylum deportation
We can't buy our way out of asylum failure Sunday Telegraph, 16 December 2007 [Leading article] |
So since 1999 the Home Office has
operated a scheme which today hands failed asylum seekers £1,000 to
leave Britain, and then gives them a further £3,000 towards setting up
a business in their own country. The Government may have been proud of the
programme, but it evidently did not feel proud enough to inform the public
of its workings: today, we report the details of some of the scheme's
beneficiaries, and what they did with their money, for the first time. ...
The principal problem with any such
scheme is that it rewards, and therefore provides an incentive for, bogus
asylum claims precisely the behaviour that it was meant to diminish.
... The reward scheme itself has not
worked and should be abandoned, not least because it would send a strong
signal that law-breaking will not be tolerated. The money should be used to
deport failed asylum seekers, not to reward them. Only a small fraction of
those whose asylum claims have been refused since 1997 have actually left
the country. Although the Government deports about 1,000 failed
asylum-seekers every month, there is still a backlog of 240,000 people
whose claims for asylum have been rejected. Because around 1,000 additional
claimants are added to the "rejected" list every month, the Government's
deportations have made no impact on the huge backlog.
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Asylum politics
'Cover-up' over £35m asylum centres that were never built Robert Watts Sunday Telegraph, 4 November 2007 |
Botched plans to detain thousands of
asylum seekers in the depths of the countryside have wasted £35
million of taxpayers' money. Officials at
the Home Office have also been accused of a cover-up after scores of
documents about the proposed centre disappeared.
Labour ministers originally planned to
build four holding centres in rural areas five years ago. But the plans
were shelved three years later after opposition from the Refugee Council,
the Red Cross and thousands of local residents.
A report this week by the National Audit
Office, the public spending watchdog, will for the first time lay bare the
full cost to taxpayers of the ditched policy. It will announce on Thursday
that ministers spent around £35 million on a proposed asylum centre in
Oxfordshire alone - £10 million more than initially thought.
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Asylum
Asylum crisis getting worse say officials Ben Leapman Sunday Telegraph, 14 October 2007 |
The asylum system is in turmoil, and
claimants could now be offered a backdoor amnesty to remain in Britain, a
leaked Home Office memo has revealed. The
document raises fears that a government target to speed up the processing
of new claims could lead to existing cases being given "lower priority",
potentially allowing thousands of claimants to stay in the country
indefinitely. The memo, seen by this
newspaper, says unrest is spreading in detention centres, a growing number
of claimants are going missing before cases are decided and the number of
failed asylum seekers being deported is declining.
The concerns are highlighted in a
"performance report" to ministers from the Border and Immigration Agency
(BIA), which enforces the asylum system. ...
Home Office figures show that only 23,610
people claimed asylum last year, the lowest annual total since 1993.
However, the Government missed its deportation target with only 6,780
failed asylum seekers removed in the first half of this year, down from
10,345 in the same period last year. With
fewer than 3,000 places in immigration detention centres, most asylum
seekers are given free housing while their claims are processed, making it
easy for them to abscond.
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Asylum
Daily Telegraph, 9 October 2007 |
Britain is the top European
destination for asylum seekers, according to figures released by the EU
yesterday. In 2006, Britain received 27,850 applications for asylum, more
than France (26,300), Sweden (24,300) and Germany (21,000).
Britain received 3,000 fewer applications
than in 2005. The greatest number of asylum applicants came from Eritrea,
with 2,725 applying to stay, followed by Iran (2,675) and Afghanistan
(2,650).
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Asylum immigration
Asylum backlog won't be cleared until 2011 Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 22 August 2007 |
In the second quarter of this year,
the number of asylum applicants removed because they were not considered
legitimate refugees fell by more than a third to 3,280, compared to the
same period last year when 5,260 were deported.
This means that the Government's
"priority" target to remove more failed asylum seekers than there are new
applicants has been missed. ... Ministers
said they will clear the backlog of 450,000 cases by 2011. But at current
rates, it would take 30 years. Separate
figures published yesterday showed that the number of eastern Europeans who
have registered to work in Britain since May 2004 is close to 700,000. More
than 50,000 arrived in the three months to June this year, mainly from
Poland. The figures do not include the self-employed or the families of
workers, so the true total could be much higher.
In addition, 9,335 people arrived in the
second quarter of the year from Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the
European Union on January 1. Another 3,980 came under the agricultural
workers scheme.
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Asylum
£10m of Diana fund to help asylum seekers Caroline Davies Daily Telegraph, 20 August 2007 |
The Diana Memorial Fund is marking
the 10th anniversary of the Princess's death by earmarking up to £10
million of its remaining £25 million funds on promoting the rights of
refugees and asylum seekers. The money,
to be spent over the next five years, will help fund organisations that
support the plight of young asylum seekers in particular, and will lobby
for the rights of those under 25. ... "We
have been supporting the cause of refugees and asylum seekers right from
the very start," said Paul Hensby, the fund's campaign manager. ...
The fund, which received up to £20
million in donations in the immediate aftermath of the princess's death,
has sponsored Refugee Week for the past three years and intends to do so
next year. ... Fifty unaccompanied
children seeking asylum arrive every week. ...
Critics of the scheme include Lord
Tebbit, the former Conservative cabinet minister, who said: "We spend vast
sums already on asylum seekers and Government figures show that 90 per cent
are not genuine cases. ..."
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Asylum amnesty
Amnesty plan for asylum seekers Ben Leapman Sunday Telegraph, 5 August 2007 |
Hundreds of thousands of failed
asylum seekers may be allowed to settle permanently in Britain under a
"back-door amnesty" scheme. The
Government wants to clear a backlog of 450,000 "legacy" cases of immigrants
turned down for refugee status but never expelled.
A 1,000-strong Home Office team has been
set up to examine cases, giving priority to those who may now qualify for
UK residency because such a long time has passed since their initial
rejection. The first 6,000 families on
the list were sent questionnaires last month asking about their current
circumstances. Insiders close to the scheme said those who gave the "right"
answers would be granted "leave to remain".
Asylum seekers who cannot be traced are
expected to be simply struck off the "legacy" list, giving the impression
that officials have made progress in tackling the backlog. They would no
longer be sought actively for removal, even though they would remain
illegal migrants - liable for deportation if caught. ...
The Borders and Immigration Agency (BIA),
a branch of the Home Office, aims to consider all "legacy" cases by 2011.
It will not say how many it expects to be allowed to remain. Those granted
leave-to-remain status will be able to live and work freely in the UK, and
claim benefits. After five years they can apply for a British passport. ...
Liam Clifford, a former immigration
officer and head of the consultancy globalvisas.com, said: "While the Home
Office talks tough, it is preparing for one of the biggest mass grants of
residency rights to asylum seekers in history. The word is out at street
level that completing the questionnaire will result in the right to stay in
the UK. The BIA simply does not have the resources to investigate each case
properly, so it will grant all the applications it can in order to clear
the backlog." Ministers insist the scheme
does not amount to an amnesty because decisions are being taken on a
case-by-case basis.
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Asylum
450,000 Asylum Seekers to be Allowed to Remain in UK Press Dispensary, 30 July 2007 [Press release] |
It has come to the attention of
leading immigration consultancy www.globalvisas.com that the Home Office is
preparing to grant over 450,000 asylum seekers 'Indefinite Leave to Remain
in the UK (ILR)'. All cases that were
pending in the system before the Immigration and Nationality Directorate
obtained agency status in April 2007 are to be considered for ILR to clear
the backlog. The Home Office will begin with families, many of whom have
had children since arriving in the UK, increasing the exact numbers to an
unknown figure. Director Liam Clifford,
says: "The Borders and Immigration Agency or BIA simply does not have the
resources to tackle the problem and cannot investigate each case properly
so it is going to grant all the applications it can in order to clear the
backlog. "In another admission of its
inability to cope, the Home Office has given current instructions to
prosecute anyone claiming NAS (National Asylum Support) benefits and
working illegally earning over £4,000. However, this cannot be
achieved because of a lack of resources. In our experience, and from what
we are being told, officers now only deal with cases where people are
illegally earning in excess of £20,000 p.a. Even in these cases, the
Home Office and Department of Work and Pensions can only afford to slap the
person on the wrist as no other options are available to them.
"While the UK Home Office talks tough and
claims that biometrics and joint agency co-operation will reduce
immigration of low skilled migrants and terrorists, they are preparing for
one of the UK's biggest mass grants of Leave to Remain for asylum seekers
in history. The Home Office has said that this will not be called an
amnesty as it may create the wrong impression. However, the word is out at
street level that completing the questionnaire which the Home Office is
about to send out to 450,000 people and families will result in the right
to stay in the UK. "With a record number
of people emigrating overseas and UK PLC unable to attract the right skills
it desperately requires, why does the government continue to present
barriers for highly skilled people to come here, while being lenient on
those immigrants who are of no benefit to our economy, and may actually
burden the public purse and local council resources?
"In recent years, many of our corporate
clients have been finding it more difficult to deal with the immigration
process for highly skilled workers and work permits, which is about to get
worse with commercial partnerships, biometrics, compliance audits and
off-shore visa processing. In spite of this asylum seekers can arrive with
no checks or controls and receive benefits and Leave to Remain."
[Site link] |
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Asylum deportation
Big fall in number of deportations Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 23 May 2007 |
The number of failed asylum seekers
removed from the country has fallen by a third in a year - despite a
promise from Tony Blair to speed up deportations, official figures showed
yesterday. In September 2004 he pledged
to accelerate the removal of an estimated 250,000 asylum seekers who had
exhausted all legal processes. There was
a surge in deportations after John Reid took over as home secretary and
demanded better enforcement of the law.
But in the first quarter of this year,
3,370 asylum applicants were removed - 34 per cent fewer than in the same
period last year.
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Asylum Australia, USA
US to swap asylum seekers with Australia Nick Squires Daily Telegraph, 19 April 2007 |
Australia and the United States will
swap asylum seekers under a contentious scheme to deter migrants from
seeking asylum in either country. Under
the exchange scheme, asylum seekers will lose the chance of choosing their
destination. The boat people held by Australia on the remote Pacific island
of Nauru will be sent to the US, while Cuban and Haitian refugees held at
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba will be sent to Australia. ...
Under the agreement, the two countries
would swap 400 asylum seekers - 200 from each country - this year and in
2008. The policy will be reviewed in 2009.
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Asylum immigration
200,000 'lost' asylum seekers may be allowed indefinite stay Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 2 April 2007 |
More than 200,000 failed asylum
seekers may stay in Britain indefinitely because they cannot be traced.
Officials have conceded that nearly half
of the 450,000 "legacy cases" in which the applicants are left in limbo may
never be cleared. Ministers have flatly
ruled out an amnesty and have pledged to remove everyone not entitled to be
here within five years. Some "legacy"
cases date back 15 years and experts believe the Government will not be
able to fulfil its pledge to clear the backlog by July 2011. Officials
attending a recent meeting to discuss the legacy policy were told that half
of the 450,000 are "untraceable". They
were also told that 18,000 foreign nationals who have committed crimes in
Britain were earmarked for deportation, the first time an official figure
has been given.
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Asylum
Failed asylum seekers allowed to reapply Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 19 January 2007 |
Hundreds of failed asylum seekers who
have exhausted all avenues of appeal have been allowed to reapply, new
figures show. They include 80 repeat
applications from Afghanistan and 30 from Turkey.
A Commons written answer disclosed that
in the past two years, 520 applications had been received from people who
had previously been rejected both in the initial stage and at appeal.
Liam Byrne, the immigration minister,
conceded that the figures were not normally published and were based on
"internal management information". Under
the 1951 Refugee Convention, signatory countries are obliged to consider
the asylum application of anyone to assess whether they have a
"well-founded fear of being persecuted", even if the individual had
previously been turned down. ...
According to the National Audit office,
in 2003 the average cost of processing an initial asylum application was
just over £3,000. An appeal costs another £4,500.
This includes support and accommodation
costs of around £147 for each week an application is in process, or
more if the applicant has dependants. The annual cost of running the asylum
system is more than £1.5 billion.
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Asylum Irish Republic
Ireland bars Romanians, other EU nationals from claiming asylum Associated Press, 18 January 2007 |
Ireland will no longer process asylum
applications from citizens of Romania or other European Union members, the
government announced Thursday in a further tightening of the country's
immigration laws. Justice Minister
Michael McDowell said he had decided to end Ireland's practice of
permitting citizens of other EU states to access Ireland's support system
for asylum-seekers because his department received 220 applications from
Romanians over the past week. He said the
Romanian asylum-seekers were all deemed to have been trying to settle in
Ireland in hopes of finding jobs, medical care and housing, not to escape
persecution. "I am taking this firm
action now in order to prevent the institution of asylum and our asylum
determination process being resorted to for purposes other than those for
which they are intended," he said. The
decision means that asylum-seekers who are citizens of the other 26 EU
nations will be refused permission to stay in state accommodation for
asylum seekers. They also will not receive welfare payments specified for
asylum-seekers. Until now, asylum-seekers
from other EU states often were permitted to receive benefits until their
claim could be considered and in almost all cases rejected by
the government-appointed Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner.
... Ireland used to grant citizenship to
any child born in Ireland a policy similar to United States
citizenship law but at odds with the European norm. Irish voters tightened
the right to citizenship in a 2004 referendum, permitting Irish-born
children the right to an Irish passport only if at least one of their
parents has been resident here for a minimum of two years.
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Asylum cost
£40m annual bill for keeping failed asylum seekers here Toby Helm Daily Telegraph, 30 December 2006 |
Taxpayers are footing a £40
million-a-year bill to house and feed almost 6,000 asylum seekers the
courts have ruled should not be allowed to stay in this country, Government
figures show. The admission by ministers
that so many are receiving state help has led to claims that John Reid has
failed to bring the asylum system under control - having promised to get
tough on immigration when he became Home Secretary in the spring.
In a written parliamentary answer to
Damian Green, the Tory immigration spokesman, the Home Office admitted it
cost £129 a week to keep each of 5,980 asylum seekers whose
applications were rejected by the courts but who had subsequently asked for
help. Of these, 2,375 are from Iraq,
which Tony Blair and ministers insist is now largely safe.
Last night the Home Office said those
allowed to stay with state support were either "destitute" or had some
other legitimate reason preventing them returning home. ...
The 5,980 receiving state help form only
a small part of an estimated 280,000 failed asylum seekers in this country.
The vast majority are not in touch with the authorities.
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Asylum Switzerland
Swiss vote to bring in tougher asylum law Kate Connolly Daily Telegraph, 25 September 2006 |
Swiss voters overwhelmingly backed a
law yesterday that will introduce some of the toughest restrictions of any
European country on asylum seekers. Under
new regulations the home of the Red Cross and many international welfare
agencies will severely curtail access for non-European refugees and
migrants. ... Two thirds of Swiss voters
supported the law change which, among other things, requires all those
seeking refugee status to present a passport to authorities within two
days, ... Workers from outside the
European Union and the European Free Trade association will only be
accepted if they have special skills.
Asylum applications in Switzerland have
fallen sharply over the past few years, dropping by more than 50 per cent
over the past two years to 10,000.
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Asylum
A fifth more children in care pushes annual cost to £1.65bn Ben Leapman Sunday Telegraph, 10 September 2006 |
The number of children being taken
into care has risen by 20 per cent in the past decade while the cost of
dealing with youngsters removed from their natural parents has soared to
£1.65 billion a year. ... The
findings were disclosed in a report commissioned by the Department for
Education and Skills, and released on its website this month with no other
publicity. ... Among those in care are
2,900 asylum-seeker children who have been abandoned.
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Asylum amnesty
Up to 80,000 bogus asylum seekers granted 'amnesty' James Slack Daily Mail, 8 September 2006 [In the first sentence, 'it has emerged night' was probably intended to be 'it has emerged' or 'it emerged last
night'] |
Up to 80,000 bogus asylum seekers
have been granted an 'amnesty' to live in Britain, it has emerged night.
They have been in the UK for so long the
Government has decided not to even bother considering their claims.
It is the last shocking indictment of
Home Office incompetence. Officials had
lost track of up to 30,000 of the claimants, or did not even know they were
here in the first place. Sir Andrew
Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said: "This amounts to an amnesty by
default. "It is Home Office inefficiency
that has led to these claims being granted."
The shambles dates back to 2003, when
then Home Secretary David Blunkett announced a desperate plan to clear the
spiralling asylum backlog. He said
families which had applied for refugee status before October 2000 and had
been in the UK for four years could stay and be given full rights to work.
Mr Blunkett asked his officials to trawl
for who might be eligible and made a prediction that 15,000 families, or
50,000 people, would benefit. But the
Daily Mail can reveal that the exercise, which is now on the verge of being
completed, has already led to 24,030 families being given indefinite leave
to remain. It is the equivalent of almost
80,000 people, with another 500 family cases still to be considered.
Most of the clams are likely to have been
bogus - Government statistics show fewer than one in ten applicants whose
claims are actually processed is granted asylum.
But, simply by staying in the country for
long enough without having their claims considered, they will now be
allowed to stay. Equally alarming is the
Government's woeful underestimate of who may be eligible. It follows
revelations of up to 450,000 asylum claims sitting in boxes, waiting to be
dealt with. Almost 10,000 of the families
granted an amnesty, or 30,000 people, were either not known to officials or
had had their paperwork lost. ... The
amnesty, known as the Family Indefinite Leave to Remain exercise, will be
an acute embarrassment to the Home Office.
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Asylum fraud
Inquiry into 'cash for asylum' claims Nicole Martin Daily Telegraph, 28 July 2006 |
The Home Office is to investigate
allegations that an immigration officer helped bogus asylum seekers to
enter Britain in return for cash. Joseph
Dzumbira, 35, who works for the Immigration and Nationality Directorate,
allegedly told an undercover newspaper reporter that he received up to
£2,000 for providing fake documents to foreigners wanting to be
granted refugee status. ... Mr Dzumbira,
31, allegedly told The Sun: "I know Nigerians are claiming to be
Zimbabweans. No one checks." ... Lin
Homer, director-general of the IND, said: "The Home Office will not
tolerate fraud and corruption from its staff. We take these allegations
very seriously and will investigate immediately."
Keith Best, the director of the
Immigration Advisory Service, a charity helping refugees, said: "The system
is set up in a way which allows corruption to take place."
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Asylum deportation
Removal papers Nicky Charles Daily Telegraph, 26 July 2006 [Letter to the Editor] |
John Reid tells us that the asylum
backlog will be cleared in five short years. Among his proposals are
uniforms for border guards and additional staff recruitment (report, July
24). That's all well and good, but until
he tackles the issue of removability, all his bluster will come to naught.
To a greater or lesser extent, Immigration and Nationality Directorate
staff shy away from dealing with removals to China, Iran, Pakistan, India,
Kenya, Jamaica, Ghana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Algeria, Angola, Egypt,
Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Turkey and Nigeria.
This is not because they feel insecure
without a nice shiny uniform, but because the authorities of those
countries refuse to accept their nationals back without a travel document -
which their British representatives won't issue within an acceptable time
scale. Until he resolves this issue, then his promised revolution will go
unnoticed by the public at large. I write
as a serving chief immigration officer.
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Asylum
Who is Mr Reid trying to hoodwink over asylum? Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2006 [Leading article] |
For John Reid, the Home Secretary, to
predict that the backlog of asylum-seekers in this country will be cleared
"within five years and hopefully sooner" suggests he has either lost his
grip on reality or that he is being profoundly cynical. We tend towards the
latter. Only a politician prepared to take the British public for fools
could make such a preposterous promise. Ever since Labour came to office,
its handling of asylum has been negligent in the extreme. At current rates,
it would take more than 40 years to clear the backlog. Nothing that has
come out of Mr Reid's welter of announcements this week instils any
confidence that this rate will improve.
Admittedly New Labour inherited a
fast-growing problem in 1997. The previous Tory government had been forced
to declare an amnesty for 30,000 asylum-seekers because of its inability to
process their claims. But instead of tackling the crisis with rigour, the
incoming Labour Government reacted with torpor. By the end of its first
term in power, the battle was lost. Public disquiet led Labour to promise,
in its 2001 manifesto, to deport 30,000 failed asylum-seekers a year - a
promise it was forced to abandon the following year, by which time 100,000
applications were being received annually. An analysis by the National
Audit Office found that in the decade to May 2004, 363,000 applications for
asylum were turned down, but just 79,500 failed applicants were deported -
that is, barely one in five. ... Labour
seeks to mitigate its shameful record of failure to control the nation's
borders by claiming that it is now removing more failed asylum-seekers than
ever before. Not true. Last year, the figure was 15,055 removals - two
years earlier, it was 17,895.
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Asylum
Reid faces dangers in Home Office shake-up Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 20 July 2006 |
After less than three months on the
bridge of the Home Office, John Reid yesterday tried to steer his rusting
ship of state off the rocks on which it spectacularly foundered a few
months ago. ... The Immigration and
Nationality Directorate is to be hived off to become a quasi-independent
agency where long queues, backlogs and piles of uncompleted case documents
will no longer be tolerated. As an
example of where the IND has lost its way, the Home Office let it be known
that it had "seriously underestimated" the number of failed asylum
applicants still in the country. It now
concedes that there are 450,000 outstanding files whereas in the past it
had acknowledged half that. Mr Reid said this backlog would be dealt with
in five years, although that did not mean that those who were turned down
would be removed. Indeed, no amount of
technical restructuring will enable the Home Office to deport such a large
number of people. Yet after floating the
idea of an amnesty for all illegal overstayers a few weeks ago, that option
was firmly shut off yesterday.
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Asylum fraud
Huge rise in student visas raises fear of asylum fraud Brendan Carlin Daily Telegraph, 14 June 2006 |
Labour's immigration policy was under
fresh attack last night after the Government admitted that it had no firm
data on how many foreign students left the UK after the completion of their
courses. The admission came after Douglas
Carswell, the Conservative MP for Harwich, discovered a huge increase in
the number of student visas issued to people from just five countries.
Separately, the Foreign Office disclosed
yesterday that as many as 180,000 people living in Pakistan and Bangladesh
could be holding British passports and be able to live here - 135,000 more
than official estimates.
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Asylum repatriation
Asylum cheats get £3,000 to go home Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 6 June 2006 |
Thousands of failed asylum seekers
are being paid millions of pounds to return to their home countries because
it is cheaper than trying to deport them.
An offer under which rejected applicants,
or those who agree to withdraw their asylum request, are paid £2,000
in cash and £1,000 "benefits in kind" was taken up by almost 2,000
people in the first four months of the year.
Liam Byrne, the immigration minister,
said yesterday that the scheme had been so successful that it would be
extended for another six months. The £2,000 cash payment was
introduced in January as an addition to a £1,000 resettlement grant in
an effort to encourage more would-be refugees to abandon their attempts to
stay in the country. As a result, the uptake more than doubled.
The £3,000 bill compares with the
£11,000 average cost of a forced deportation.
Only those who applied for asylum before
Jan 1 this year are eligible for the enhanced package and they must leave
the country between July 1 and the end of the year.
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Asylum
Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 18 May 2006 |
The reality is that things are worse
than they were under the Tories, not because they were any better at
managing matters but because the numbers involved are so much higher than
10 years ago. The surge in what became
known as "bogus" asylum seeking and illegal immigration began in the early
1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall made it easier to travel to Western
Europe through the former Eastern Bloc countries.
What had been a manageable trickle of
arrivals became a cascade that the system struggled to deal with. In 1988,
there were 4,200 applications; in 1995, there were 44,000. Rapidly, the
backlog of asylum applications awaiting to be processed shot up to more
than 60,000. The Tories got into such a
pickle that they even introduced an amnesty allowing 30,000 people who had
been in the country a long time to stay even if they were not bona
fide political refugees because it had taken so long to process their
claims. By 2002, the annual number of
applications had risen to more than 100,000. Tough measures have reduced
this figure to below where it was in 1997. ... ...
The Tories also abolished embarkation
controls - the paper check on people leaving the country to go to other
European Union states from sea ports and small airports.
When Labour took office, the remaining
controls to the rest of the world, about 60 per cent of the total, were
also scrapped. Since them it has no longer been an absolute requirement to
show a passport or other travel document to immigration authorities on
leaving. ... The Government says it is
removing more people than ever before. That is just not true. In 2005, the
figure was 15,055 whereas in 2003 it was 17,895. The main reason for this
was the expansion of the EU. However, the current figure is a lower
proportion of the number who are here who should not be than in 1997.
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Asylum
Revealed: How asylum seekers use your taxes to smuggle in relatives Nick Fagge Daily Express, 17 May 2006 |
Taxpayers are unwittingly funding an
illegal people-trafficking scam, allowing waves of immigrants into Britain,
a Daily Express investigation can reveal.
Benefits paid to immigrants in the UK are
being sent to France, where friends and relatives use the cash to pay to be
smuggled on board ships and lorries bound for Britain. ...
Sir Andrew Green, of Migration Watch,
said: "Asylum seekers in Calais are already in a safe country and should
stay there. "The only reason they press
to come to Britain is because we are a soft touch. It's time that changed."
... The problem has also been highlighted
by a five-year inquiry by the French Security Services (DST) into financial
transfer fraud. DST agents have found
that migrants are increasingly appealing to their British "sponsors" for
help after they become stranded on the streets of Calais.
British-based immigrants then send money
to them to allow the next new wave of migrants to complete their journey to
the UK. ... Immigrants in the UK are
entitled to £40 a week from the publicly funded National Asylum
Support Service while their applications to stay are being processed.
Migrants are also provided with a flat, a
room in a shared house or bedsit - at an average cost of £95 a week.
If they are granted refugee status the payout increases to £60 a week
as income support. This is apart from other Government hand-outs, such as
child benefits, housing benefit, council tax rebate and free school meals
as they become entitled to all the trappings of the welfare state. ...
Charity workers in Calais told of a
logjam of migrants currently trying to smuggle themselves into Britain.
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Asylum
Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 16 May 2006 |
Since Labour took office in 1997
Britain has received applications for asylum from more than 500,000 people.
The numbers have fallen in the last three years from a record of more than
100,000 in 2002. ... The number of
illegal immigrants cannot be quantified but the Government recently
estimated that as many as 280,000 failed asylum seekers may be in the
country who should not be. ... The
removal of unsuccessful applicants is in decline, from 17,800, including
dependants, in 2003-4, to 14,250 last year.
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Asylum
How one-tenth of all asylum seekers find a home in Britain Steve Doughty Daily Mail, 19 April 2006 |
Britain took in almost one in ten of
the world's asylum seekers last year, a United Nations report said
yesterday. Over the past five years it
has admitted nearly a third of a million - the highest total in Europe. ...
'Despite a sharp fall, the UK remained
the third largest asylum-seeker receiving country in 2005, accounting for 9
per cent of all requests lodged in the industrialised world,' the analysis
found. Researchers from the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said over the past five years only
America has taken more asylum seekers. ...
Although Britain tops the European toll
over the last five years, Britain slipped into second place behind France
last year. ... But, the report by UN High
Commissioner Antonio Guterres says refugee numbers have been dropping
worldwide and that numbers applying for asylum in EU countries have fallen
by almost 50 per cent over the past five years. ...
The UN figures show that Britain has
accepted more than 325,000 asylum seekers since 2001.
Mr Guterres acknowledged the claims for
help of genuine refugees around the world had been harmed by abuse of
liberal asylum rules by those trying to migrate for economic reasons.
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Asylum
Bungled asylum policy could take 18 years to sort out Daily Telegraph, 14 March 2006 |
More than 400 freed criminals are
among thousands of failed asylum seekers whose whereabouts are unknown to
the Government. A report from a
parliamentary watchdog published today says the Home Office has so bungled
the removal of would-be political refugees who have had their applications
turned down that it could take 18 years to clear the backlog.
The department keeps no figures on how
many failed applicants are still in the country. Its best estimate is
between 155,000 and 283,500. They include 403 foreign nationals released
from prison in the past five years without deportation proceedings being
completed. ... "As time elapsed, the
Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) found it harder to locate and
remove failed asylum seekers," says the report.
"Many applicants evaded removal action or
moved on without informing the directorate of their new address and hence
it knew the addresses of only some 25 per cent of failed asylum
applicants." ... The committee suggests
taking a leaf out of Holland's book by encouraging voluntary resettlement
and adopting a tougher line on deportations. But the policy has caused huge
controversy in the Netherlands which the Government would be reluctant to
provoke here.
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Asylum
Drive to clear asylum backlog 'in chaos' Daily Telegraph, 1 March 2006 |
Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor,
admitted last night that he had abandoned a drive to recruit 100
much-needed asylum judges after a series of errors by Government officials.
The judges were being taken on to deal with a backlog of appeals by
asylum-seekers. ... He told the Commons
constitutional affairs select committee that he ordered officials to
abandon the programme begun at the end of last year after inconsistencies
emerged in the way applicants had been treated. ...
Figures published yesterday confirmed a
continuing fall in applications for political asylum, which are now at
their lowest level for 10 years. There were 25,720 applications in 2005,
not including dependants, a fall of 24 per cent on the previous year.
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Asylum
Judges scathing of efforts to streamline immigration Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2006 |
The Government's efforts to get to
grips with the immigration system were criticised by two leading judges
yesterday. His Honour Henry Hodge, the
chairman of the immigration and asylum tribunal, told MPs that it was often
pointless to order the return of people whose appeals were rejected because
nothing then happened. ... Addressing the
Commons home affairs select committee, Judge Hodge acknowledged the
difficulties that officials faced in trying to arrange repatriation,
especially as many of the migrants' home countries refused to take them
back. ...
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Asylum
Asylum seekers offered £2,000 to return home Daily Telegraph, 13 January 2006 |
Thousands of asylum seekers are to be
offered millions of pounds in cash to return to their home countries under
a scheme announced yesterday by the Home Office.
The Government expects to spend about
£6 million over six months encouraging around 3,000 refugees, who have
been refused permission to stay or are awaiting decisions, to return home.
As an incentive, they will be offered up
to £2,000 cash and a further £1,000 worth of help "in kind" for
reintegration, to fund education or training. A pilot scheme will make the
cash available to those who agree to leave in the six months between this
month and June. The Home Office is
advertising the scheme to 54,000 people receiving benefits and
accommodation from the National Asylum Support Service and will publicise
it in asylum detention and reporting centres.
Tony McNulty, the immigration minister,
said in a written statement to the Commons ...
"It is anticipated that such an offer
could increase the number of predicted returns from about 1,950 to over
3,000 for the six-month period." Mr
McNulty added that the £3,000 cost per person was "good value for
money" compared with the £11,000 average cost of a forced deportation.
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Asylum
Fast-track deportees 'free to abscond' Sunday Telegraph, 8 January 2006 |
Thousands of asylum seekers on the
brink of deportation are to be sent to Liverpool under a secret Home Office
scheme. They include illegal workers
caught in swoops, people who claimed asylum after overstaying visitor
visas, and applicants from "safe" countries with good human rights records.
Their cases will be fast-tracked for a
decision within two weeks, after which many will be sent straight back to
their homelands. Yet despite the
incentive to abscond, they will not be kept in detention centres but will
live rent-free in flats or hotels, coming and going as they please.
The only curb on their movement will be a
request to report regularly to a local immigration office. ...
The Home Office claimed that the
initiative appeared to be working but officials could not say how many
people had been deported, granted asylum, or had simply disappeared.
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Asylum
Asylum case backlog costs taxpayer £500m Daily Telegraph, 8 February 2005 |
The taxpayer could have saved
£500 million if the Home Office had put proper procedures in place to
speed up asylum applications, a Commons committee says today.
A surge in applications in 1999 and 2000
overwhelmed the staff and infrastructure at the immigration and nationality
department, allowing huge backlogs to build up. ...
In recent years the number of asylum
applications has fluctuated from a peak of 84,130 applications in 2002 -
not including dependants - to just under 50,000 in 2003.
In 2002/3 the cost of running the system
was £1.86 billion, half of which was spent on supporting applicants.
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Asylum
Sandy Bruce-Lockhart Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2005 |
The rising number of asylum seekers
in Kent ... In 1996 ... we had just 50 asylum seekers a year arriving. By
2000, this had escalated to 15,000 a year coming into Kent alone.
Our council's budget on asylum - covering
everything from housing to education - was less than £250,000 in 1996,
and rose last year to £53 million. ...
Over the past five years, we have also
seen an unprecedented increase in children arriving into Kent without their
parents, entirely on their own, either as asylum seekers or as potentially
illegal immigrants. The first thing that these bemused children do, when
arriving in Kent County Council's children's reception centres, is to phone
home so that the second half of the fee owed to traffickers for their
passage can be released ... A few years ago, we were receiving just three
or four a year of these unaccompanied children, typically aged between 12
and 17, but last year the figure rose to about 100 a month.
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Asylum
Brussels: We'll halt Howard's curb on migrants Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2005 |
The European Commission threatened
last night to block Michael Howard's programme of tough immigration
controls if the Tories win the election.
These would include setting an annual
limit on the number of asylum seekers. ...
Europe's intervention on what has become
a major issue in the election campaign took Westminster aback. MPs and
officials were unaware of how much national sovereignty on immigration and
asylum had been transferred to Brussels. ...
A rolling wave of protocols and
directives - one in force, one coming next month, a third next year and a
fourth in 2007 - have overridden national laws on where governments keep
asylum seekers, how they treat them, and how many appeals they are allowed.
If a future British government were to
enact laws that contravened EU regulations, the commission would begin
"infringement proceedings". These would be followed, if resistance
continued, by legal action in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
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Asylum
Sunday Telegraph, 15 August 2004 |
The Department for Constitutional
Affairs is spending £10,000 offering advice on how to claim asylum.
The leaflets are in Welsh. - Daily Express
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Asylum fraud
Alleged asylum fraud linked to Mugabe regime Daily Telegraph, 21 June 2004 |
Police and immigration officers are
investigating an organisation, set up with National Lottery money to help
immigrants, after claims that it forged documents and provided false life
histories for 1,000 Zimbabwean asylum seekers. ...
Among those who have abandoned Zimbabwe
is Stalin Mau Mau, once a Zanu-PF parliamentary candidate, and the leader
of a gang accused of forcing white farmers off their land.
He says he entered Britain legally, but
his status is now being investigated by the Home Office, as are his
businesses, which include a supermarket in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.
... Like most Zanu-PF candidates, he
roused his supporters at campaign rallies with one consistent chant: "Down
with the whites!" ... About 1.1 million
Zimbabweans live in Britain, according to an official estimate from the
Harare regime.
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Asylum legal aid
Solicitors hand out gifts to grab lucrative asylum jobs Sunday Telegraph, 6 July 2003 |
Solicitors and immigration advisers
are offering newly arrived asylum seekers free gifts, including video
recorders and mobile telephones, as an inducement to sign up with them.
The gifts - which are against the law -
are being handed out because of the intense competition between lawyers to
secure the extremely lucrative work. Last year, more than £175 million
of taxpayers' money was spent on legal aid for asylum seekers, with most of
it going to solicitors. The practice has
been uncovered by John Scampion, the official Immigration Service
Commissioner, ... ... Each asylum seeker
is entitled to full free legal aid throughout the asylum process, which can
drag on for years through countless hearings and appeals.
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Asylum
Lawyers accused of 'milking asylum law' Daily Telegraph, 22 February 2003 |
Human rights lawyers are "cynically
milking" the legal aid system to fight hopeless cases on behalf of asylum
seekers, a judge said yesterday. They
have been running up thousands of pounds in court costs, paid by the
taxpayer, said Mr Justice Maurice Kay, despite having no chance of success.
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Asylum
We're a job centre, not a safe haven Alasdair Palmer Sunday Telegraph, 1 December 2002 |
Only about one in eight of those
whose claims for asylum are rejected by the courts are actually deported.
The message has gone out that if you can get to Britain, you can stay here.
The Lords Committee that reported on the issue last week concluded that
there was "no prospect" of reducing, or even controlling, illegal
immigration without a radical re-think of asylum policy. ...
Even though illegal immigrants are not
officially allowed to work, they do so.
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Asylum
Asylum seekers reach record 100,000 a year Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2002 |
Record numbers of asylum seekers are
arriving in Britain despite intensified ministerial efforts to stop them.
... When dependants are added, there were
nearly 30,000 applications between July and September. The total for the
year, including children, seems certain to pass 100,000 for the first time
- easily the highest in the EU. ...
Beverley Hughes, the immigration
minister, said the system known as exceptional leave to remain, which
allows people to stay even when they are not judged to be genuine refugees,
was being scrapped. It will be replaced by "humanitarian protection" to be
granted only in cases of genuine hardship.
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Asylum finance
Asylum seekers' group will get lottery cash Sunday Telegraph, 20 October 2002 |
A controversial grant of
£340,000 from the National Lottery for a group campaigning against the
deportation of asylum seekers will be given the go- ahead this week despite
fierce public protests. The Community
Fund has been told that there are no legal grounds for rescinding the grant
to the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns.
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Asylum
42,000 asylum seekers win right to stay The Times, 1 August 2002 |
Record numbers of asylum-seekers are
being allowed to stay in the UK ... The
number of refugees remaining legally in the country increased to a record
42,000 last year. The new figures reveal that thousands are successfully
appealing against the initial rejection of their claims for asylum. ...
Mr Blunkett ... His department is facing
an overspend on the asylum system of almost £600 million, bringing the
total annual bill for dealing with asylum to more than £1 billion. ...
Mr Blunkett has already abandoned a
pledge to remove 30,000 failed asylum- seekers and their dependents from
the country after being told by officials that the figure was unrealistic.
He dropped the target, set by his
predecessor Jack Straw before the last general election, after the Home
Office admitted it had been able to remove only 1,000 failed applicants a
month. ... The figures show that 92,000
asylum-seekers and their dependents arrived in the UK compared with 88,300
in Germany, the second most popular destination. The UK figure was a drop
of 7,000 on the previous year. ... The
overall proportion of applications resulting in an asylum-seeker being
allowed to stay in the country legally reached 42 per cent compared with 33
per cent a year earlier.
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BENEFITS AND COSTS |
Benefits and costs
Each illegal immigrant to cost us £1 million Alison Little Daily Express, 4 May 2009 |
An amnesty allowing illegal
immigrants to stay in the UK would cost a staggering £1 million for
each newcomer. For the first time, the
"huge, unnecessary burden" of letting up to 950,000 foreign nationals
remain is revealed today by campaign group Migrationwatch.
They say the move would be a "shocking
waste of public money" when the nation is in the depths of recession.
The pressure group also say a similar
cost, based on people having children and earning low wages, could apply to
many people who have already been granted asylum.
And they warn that such an amnesty would
only tempt more illegal immigrants into Britain as has happened in
Italy and Spain where migrants have been allowed to stay.
A coalition of churches, unions and
others are holding church services and a mass rally today in support of an
"earned amnesty" for an estimated 450,000 long-term illegal immigrants if
they meet certain conditions. The
Institute for Public Policy Research, Labour's favourite think-tank,
claimed the move could bring in more than £1 billion of tax a year.
And Conservative London Mayor Boris
Johnson has argued for an amnesty for long-term illegal immigrants of good
character who can support themselves so that they contribute to tax
revenues. A study for Mr Johnson by the London School of Economics has
estimated that there were between 524,000 and 947,000 "irregular residents"
and their children in Britain at the end of 2007, with a "central estimate"
of 725,000. But Migrationwatch today
publishes what it says is the first estimate of the "lifetime cost" to
taxpayers of letting people stay in the UK.
It is based on a 25-year-old, married
with two children, who earned the minimum wage and lived in private rented
housing, retired at 65 and lived until 80.
Setting the tax and National Insurance
paid against their demands on the public purse, including housing and
council tax benefit and pension credit, brings their lifetime cost to
taxpayers to some £900,000, with a bill of £1.1 million in
London. Migrationwatch chairman Sir
Andrew Green said last night: "The numbers are truly enormous, adding an
unacceptable, and entirely unnecessary, burden to the nation's balance
sheet at a time when Boris Johnson himself is writing about 'the horrific
state of the nation's finances'." Sir
Andrew acknowledged that some immigrants would earn over the minimum wage
and thus take lower welfare payments, but some may have more than two
children and so get higher benefit. "Or
they may be unemployed. Immigrants are, on average, more likely to be
economically inactive than the UK as a whole," he added.
The report says the cost of granting
settlement to an asylum seeker who did not achieve higher earnings,
although many would do so, would be similar.
The campaign group says this makes Home
Office failure to appear at up to a third of asylum appeals
"reprehensible". Sir Andrew added: "It is also a shocking waste of public
money at a time when we can least afford it."
In Italy an amnesty in 1988 let 119,000
foreigners settle, but when the exercise was repeated in 2002 the figure
soared to 700,000. In Spain the figure rose from 44,000 in 1985 to 700,000
in 2005.
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Benefits and costs USA
Schwarzenegger: Immigrants not cause of budget woe Michael R. Blood Associated Press, 15 April 2009 |
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said
Wednesday that health care and other services for illegal immigrants cost
California taxpayers as much as $6 billion a year, but that's not the
reason for the state's financial mess. ...
At an appearance at the Los Angeles
Times, the Republican governor estimated that education and other services
for illegal immigrants could carry a $4 billion to $6 billion price tag
each year. But to place blame there for
the ongoing budget mess or any other single factor "would be
the wrong thing," he said.
[Site link] |
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Benefits and costs
Arrival tax of £50 for all non-EU migrants Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 19 March 2009 |
A new "tax" for all non-European
Union migrants arriving to work or study in Britain will be announced today
by Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary.
The fee, thought to be about £50 per
arrival, is to cover the extra burden on public services, and is expected
to raise £35 million a year. The
"migrant tax" will be levied on the hundreds of thousands of migrants who
apply for work or study visas each year, from Australian bar staff to
Rhodes scholars and Premier League footballers.
The funds are earmarked for councils
struggling to cope with the impact of mass immigration on services such as
GPs' surgeries and schools. But critics
have said that the money generated will be a "drop in the ocean", based on
figures that show taxpayers provide £500 million a year for
immigration-related costs. Sir Andrew
Green, chairman of the pressure group MigrationWatch UK, said: "A rough
estimate shows that, for every £1 the Government spends on schemes
specifically to help migrants, its new tax will only raise about 7p.
"And that spending does not allow for the
fact that one new home will have to be built every six minutes for new
immigrants, nor the additional costs to the NHS and education services, nor
the countless other costs to local services that large-scale immigration
brings."
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Benefits and costs politics
Non-EU immigrants to pay £50 tax Rosa Prince Daily Telegraph, 16 March 2009 |
Foreign workers and students from
outside the European Union will have to pay £50 when they arrive in
Britain to help ease their impact on public services.
The new "migrant tax", to be announced
this week, will be levied on the thousands of immigrants from non-EU states
applying for work or study visas, from Australian bar staff to Rhodes
scholars and Premiership footballers. It
is expected to raise £70 million over the next few years, with the
funds earmarked for councils struggling to cope with the impact of mass
immigration on services such as doctors' surgeries and schools. Ministers
hope that acknowledging the strain caused by immigration in some areas will
stop voters being tempted by the British National Party at the European
elections in May.
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Benefits and costs education
EU students fail to repay study loans Graeme Paton Daily Telegraph, 27 February 2009 |
Almost three quarters of EU students
graduating from British universities fail to pay back their loans, leaving
taxpayers with a multi-million-pound bill.
Figures showed that 1,580 of the 2,240
students from outside Britain who should have started repaying had failed
to do so. The Conservatives said the
system used to track them down was "shockingly ineffective". The Student
Loans Company relies on students to give correct information about their
earnings and make their own arrangements to pay.
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Benefits and costs healthcare
700 organs given to foreigners despite long waiting list Patrick Sawer Sunday Telegraph, 25 January 2009 |
The organs of nearly 700 British
donors have been given to foreign patients in a controversial practice
going back more than 10 years. It has led
to patients from as far afield as China flying in for operations at NHS
hospitals. The procedures have taken
place despite a severe shortage of organs for transplant in Britain. Nearly
8,000 people are currently on NHS waiting lists for a transplant.
Patient groups and politicians condemned
the practice of making organs available to foreigners while so many British
patients remained on waiting lists. ...
The figures, obtained ... through a
parliamentary question, show that about 70 British organs were transplanted
into foreign nationals every year between 1998 and 2008. At the same time,
only 140 foreign organs were brought into Britain to be transplanted into
British patients. Among the foreigners
given British organs in the past two years were 40 from Greece and Cyprus,
as well as a number from Libya, the United Arab Emirates, China and Israel.
Most of the operations took place at
Leeds Teaching Hospital, King's College Hospital and the Royal Free
Hospital, both in London. The Healthcare
Commission investigated the matter last year after being alerted to the
number of operations being carried out at King's College Hospital but found
that no rules were being broken. However,
the British Transplantation Society criticised the practice.
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Benefits and costs
Outrage over organs 'sold to foreigners' Sarah-Kate Templeton The Sunday Times, 4 January 2009 |
The organs of 50 British National
Health Service donors have been given to foreign patients who have paid
about £75,000 each for private transplant operations in the past two
years, freedom of information documents show.
The liver transplants took place at NHS
hospitals, despite severe shortages that mean many British patients die
while waiting for an organ that could save their lives.
The documents disclose that 40 patients
from Greece and Cyprus received liver transplants in the UK paid for by
their governments. Donated livers were also given to people from
non-European Union countries including Libya, the United Arab Emirates,
China and Israel. The surgeons who carry
out the transplants receive a share of the operation fee believed to
be about £20,000 as all the work is done privately in NHS
hospitals. It comes as a record 8,000
Britons are on NHS lists waiting for transplant organs. About 260 British
patients are waiting for a liver. Last
week leading transplant surgeons and patient groups called for an end to
the practice. Professor Peter Friend, president of the British
Transplantation Society, said it was unethical to give organs to people
from abroad while British patients were dying.
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Benefits and costs health service
Costly NHS interpreters Dr Charles Gauci Daily Telegraph, 29 December 2008 [Letter to the Editor] |
As a consultant in the NHS, my staff
and I are faced, virtually on a daily basis, with patients who cannot speak
English and for whom an interpreter has to be hired, at considerable
expense to the NHS. Interpreters are
provided for every conceivable language (except, apparently, for my own
native tongue, Maltese). No other country
in the world provides such a service. Surely, if someone has been living
here for five years and cannot speak English, they should be expected to
pay for an interpreter themselves?
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Benefits and costs
Cost in translation Daily Telegraph, 19 December 2008 |
The cost of providing translators for
benefits claimants has risen by more than 40 per cent in four years, the
Conservatives have disclosed. In 2004, the bill for translation at the
Department for Work and Pensions stood at £2.5 million. By this year,
it had risen to nearly £4 million.
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Benefits and costs health services
Thousands of Polish women come to Britain for abortions Daily Telegraph, 16 December 2008 |
Ten thousand Polish women had
abortions in Britain last year, it was reported. The procedures, illegal in
Poland, were thought to have cost the NHS between £5 million and
£10 million. People coming to
Britain as temporary workers are given a National Insurance number and can
then register with a doctor and have NHS treatment. Britain is thought to
be popular because abortions can be carried out up to 24 weeks into a
pregnancy. The figures were disclosed by
the Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning.
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Benefits and costs
Polish pay-outs Sunday Telegraph, 14 December 2008 |
British taxpayers are paying £35
million a year in child benefit to support 42,759 children living in
Eastern Europe, the majority in Poland, Government figures show.
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Benefits and costs
Benefits of migrant labour 'overstated' Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 15 November 2008 |
The benefits of mass immigration have
been "wildly overstated" and there should be a cap on the numbers coming
into the country, a group of peers has said.
The warning was given during a debate
over a scathing report on the Government's open door policy by the Lords
economic affairs committee. The committee, which includes two former
chancellors Lord Lawson and Lord Lamont and several former
cabinet ministers, said that the Government must set an "explicit target
range" for immigration and make rules to keep within that limit.
Lord Wakeham, who chaired the committee,
rejected as "fundamentally flawed" the claim that immigration is necessary
to prevent labour shortages.
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Benefits and costs housing
Moving up. Family on benefits lives in £800,000 home at taxpayers' expense Stephen Adams Daily Telegraph, 11 November 2008 |
A mother of five children who lives
on benefits is being housed in a home worth up to £800,000 at
taxpayers' expense. Nigerian-born
Omowunmi Odia moved into the mock-Tudor executive home in Edgware, north
London, after she was forced out of her previous property by court order.
The property reportedly costs £25,000 a year to rent.
Mrs Odia said that Barnet council had
tried to house her in Enfield but she had stuck out for the home in
Edgware, because it was closer to her children's school.
Mrs Odia said that she and her children
much preferred their new home, which has two sitting rooms and a double
garage, as their old two-bedroom flat was too small.
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Benefits and costs unemployment benefits
Returning Poles claim British dole Daily Telegraph, 5 November 2008 |
Returning Polish workers are
continuing to claim hundreds of pounds in benefits from British taxpayers.
Job centre staff in Poland say increasing
numbers of peopleare coming back to their home country after losing work in
Britain and Ireland. They are advising
them that rather than signing on for Polish benefit, which pays just
£120 a month, they should use a European Union loophole to continue
claiming Jobseeker's Allowance from Britain at a rate of about £260 a
month for up to three months.
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Benefits and costs police, NHS
Translators for foreign criminals cost £22m Andrew Porter Daily Telegraph, 30 October 2008 |
Police forces are having to spend
more than £22 million a year on hiring interpreters for foreign
criminals, new figures show. The overall
cost has risen by two thirds in the past five years, but for some
individual forces the amount paid to translators has increased by 400 per
cent. ... In total the costs have risen
from £13,580,599 in 2004 to £22,178,040 this year a rise
of 63 per cent. ... Of the 51 forces in
Britain, 43 responded to the Freedom of Information request ...
Meanwhile, it emerged that the NHS is
spending millions on interpreters for patients who cannot speak English.
At least 200 trusts spent £25
million on interpreters last year, figures released under Freedom of
Information laws show. If this is representative of the 557 trusts in
England and Wales, the total translation bill would be well in excess of
£50 million.
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Benefits and costs
Staff sacked over £170,000 benefits Daily Telegraph, 10 October 2008 |
Three council officials have been
sacked after an Afghan woman was given £170,000 a year in benefits to
live in a £1.2 million home. Ealing
council in west London was paying Toorpakai Saiedi, a mother of seven, a
monthly housing allowance of £12,458, nearly five times the rent for a
similar property nearby. She also received £400 a week in benefits.
The sacked housing officers claim they
have been made scapegoats by the council.
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Benefits and costs
The £1.2m council house tenants Urmee Khan Daily Telegraph, 9 October 2008 [See also "Staff sacked over £170,000 benefits" (10 October)] |
A mother is receiving £170,000 a
year in benefits so that she and her family can live in a seven-bedroom
house worth £1.2 million. Toorpakai
Saindi, who has four sons and three daughters aged eight to 22, has been
granted an estimated £400 a week in benefits. Her landlord is paid
£12,458 a month because there is no other property suitable for her
family. Mr Saindi, who came to Britain
from Afghanistan seven years ago, approached Ealing council in west London
in July after being made homeless. The authority has a legal obligation to
find her a seven-bedroom house. ... The
council says the benefit and rent payouts are set by central government.
... The Local Housing Allowance (LHA),
introduced in England on April 7, enables landlords to find out the maximum
rent available for a property before a price is agreed.
Foxtons, the estate agents, said similar
houses are let for about £6,000 a month.
The landlord, Ajit Panesar, who is acting
within his rights, fixed a value for his Acton property so that the Rent
Service an executive agency of the Department for Work and Pensions
could advise the council what it should pay. It came up with
£12,458 a month.
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Benefits and costs
Overseas lorry eight times more likely to be in a crash David Millward Daily Telegraph, 22 September 2008 |
Foreign lorry drivers are eight times
more likely to be involved in a serious or fatal accident than their
British counterparts, figures show. ...
With foreign lorries accounting for one
per cent of the total in the country, the proportion of accidents in which
they are involved is far greater.
Campaigners say foreign lorries are not
maintained to the same safety levels as British ones.
More than one in five trucks operated by
overseas hauliers have been found to be unroadworthy.
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Benefits and costs housing
Government funded website telling immigrants how to get free housing Martin Beckford Daily Telegraph, 9 September 2008 |
The Housing Rights site offers advice
to new arrivals in Britain on what welfare assistance they qualify for and
how to claim it. It also tells them how
to take legal action if they think they have been denied a home on the
grounds of their race. ... It is part of
a three-year project called Opening Doors run by the Chartered Institute of
Housing and the Housing Associations' Charitable Trust, which has been
given £120,000 by the Department for Communities and Local Government
to help migrants settle in Britain. ...
Mark Wallace, campaign director for the
TaxPayers' Alliance pressure group, said: "This sends out a deplorable
message to migrants about Britain as a whole, and also about what we would
hope they would contribute to the country.
"We should be welcoming people with
assistance on how to get a job swiftly and join the hard-working majority
of people, not on the quickest and easiest way to tap into benefits."
He added: "I'm not aware of a special
website for people who have paid taxes here their whole lives."
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Benefits and costs
Immigration is 'big boost for economy' Daily Telegraph, 26 August 2008 |
The economic benefits of immigration
have been underestimated by the Government, according to an influential
think-tank. Immigrant workers fill gaps
and do jobs British workers do not want, says a report by the Institute for
Public Policy Research (IPPR). But it found that employers and local
economies were not reaping the full benefits because many migrants were
staying for short periods instead of settling in Britain.
The IPPR said local economies benefited
because might have different skills that could lead to the establishment of
new types of businesses and they tended to be more entrepreneurial.
Immigrants could also expand the market
for local businesses by establishing links to their countries of origin.
IPPR analysis of statistics showed that
more than a million immigrants came to Britain from the eight countries
that joined the EU in May 2004 but about half of those had now returned
home. The report recommends that local councils and the Government ensure
they are doing enough to attract and retain immigrants.
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism, housing, education
Britons who feel they are losing out to immigrants Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2008 |
Immigrants raise fears of limited
prospects among the British Many Britons
fear their prospects are being limited because of the pressure put on
housing and schools by immigrants arriving in the UK, a new report warns.
The claims come as it emerged that
£1 billion is being spent on putting up foreigners in council houses
despite two million people waiting for a home.
The report, titled Immigration and Social
Cohesion in the UK, uncovered a stark divide in how parts of the UK adapt
to new migrants. While many people value
their children growing up with cultural diversity, some feel their
opportunities are reduced because of immigration.
There was particular concern around the
competition for social housing, soaring house prices and school places.
Report author Mary Hickman, a Professor
at London Metropolitan University, said: "We found that although many
British people value the UK for being multi-ethnic and multicultural,
poverty and lack of opportunities undermine social cohesion especially in
certain parts of our towns and cities. "A
key factor influencing whether new migrants are accepted is the dominant
story in each locality about who belongs there."
The report also suggested that Gordon
Brown should spend focus on tackling poverty rather than a "fixed notion"
of Britishness to improve social cohesion.
Since taking over as Prime Minister last
July, Mr Brown has consistently emphasised the importance of Britishness to
bind the nation together. However the
Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggested that his time might be better spent
dealing with "deprivation and how people connect".
The competition for a limited supply of
council housing has been one of the areas of key concern in the debate
about immigration. Since Labour came to
power in 1997 the number of people on the waiting list for a council house
has soared by 650,000 to 1.67 million households.
Figures obtained by the Conservative MP
James Clappison show that nearly £1 billion is being spent on putting
up foreigners in council houses despite nearly two million households
waiting for a new home. Parliamentary
answers show that 7,000 council houses were rented to foreigners from both
inside and outside the European Union in 2006/7.
Given that it costs £134,000 to
provide a council house, this means that £938 million including
£430 million of grants is spent on providing social housing for
foreigners. Mr Clappison, a member of the
Commons home affairs select committee, said: "This is one more example of
the pressure placed upon housing and services by the present very high
level of immigration permitted by the Government.
"The Government is completely failing to
take into account the consequences of its policies".
[Site link] |
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism, housing
Immigration: 'Britishness' will not help integration, say researchers Sara Gaines The Guardian, 21 July 2008 |
Tackling deprivation and boosting
social interaction would do more to reduce hostility to immigrants than
trying to create a sense of Britishness, a report said today.
Concerns over limited housing and school
places in some parts of the UK are undermining attempts to ensure new
migrants are well received, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
It found a stark divide between places
well equipped to adapt to new migrants and those that are not.
In areas people perceived as homogeneous
and settled, there were more fears about the effects of immigration.
Tensions were far lower in areas where there was a long history of
immigration. "There is no simple
relationship between high levels of diversity and poor cohesion,"
researchers concluded. "What many people
welcome is the opportunity to meet people in their area at social
occasions, or at cultural events and festivals, and to exercise the choice
of, selectively, getting to know people better."
The research, Immigration and Social
Cohesion in the UK, found many people welcomed cultural diversity, but
tensions arose where people felt their prospects were reduced because of
immigration. "Although many British
people value the UK for being multi-ethnic and multicultural, poverty and
lack of opportunities undermine social cohesion especially in certain parts
of our towns and cities," said the lead researcher, professor Mary Hickman.
Residents across England, Scotland and
Northern Ireland were interviewed for the study between 2005 and 2007.
It found diverse feelings on Britishness,
with minority ethnic long-term residents and new arrivals the most positive
about Britain.
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Benefits and costs unpaid fines
Foreign drivers speed off without paying £10m fines Ben Leach Sunday Telegraph, 29 June 2008 |
Foreign drivers get away with not
paying 180,000 speeding and parking fines every year because British
authorities cannot trace them. The
Sunday Telegraph used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain speeding
ticket figures from 15 police forces. They showed that foreign drivers in
those areas fail to pay 27,000 speeding fines annually pointing to a
nationwide total of about 80,000 unpaid speeding fines a year.
The motorists can escape justice over the
fines, which total more than £10 million, because police, councils and
speed camera authorities are not able to obtain their details. Statistics
released by 36 local authorities also show that foreign drivers got away
without paying 54,000 parking fines a year, pointing to a nationwide total
of 105,000 unpaid fines. ... There are
140,000 foreign-registered vehicles on Britain's roads at any one time and
three million enter the country each year.
The largest group are Polish-registered
vehicles, which account for 36 per cent of those in Britain, followed by
French vehicles at 10 per cent and German vehicles at 9 per cent.
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Benefits and costs births, health services
Shortage of nurses and cots a threat to babies, claim MPs Rebecca Smith Daily Telegraph, 17 June 2008 |
The lives of newborn babies are being
put at risk by understaffed and overstretched neo-natal units, a report by
a group of MPs has disclosed. ... Infant
mortality figures are nearly three times as high in the Midlands as in
parts of the South. The Department of Health admits that the target to
close the gap by 10 per cent by 2010 is unlikely to be met, the report from
the Public Accounts Committee says. A third of units are overcrowded and on
average each unit has three vacancies for qualified nurses.
Edward Leigh, MP, chairman of the public
accounts committee, said: "Constraints in capacity mean that the Department
of Health is still struggling to meet the demand for neo-natal services
which has risen year on year. ..." ...
The PAC report says obesity among
mothers, older women having babies, deprivation, increasing use of
fertility treatment and rising numbers of babies born to ethnic minority
mothers is putting pressure on services.
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Benefits and costs
£33m child benefit paid to foreign children who live abroad Glen Owen Daily Mail, 1 June 2008 |
British child benefit paid to foreign
children living abroad has rocketed by an astonishing 72 per cent in just
nine months, to £33million a year.
Most of the money is going on 36,000
children still in Poland whose parents are cashing in on European rules
that let them claim benefits in the UK after working and paying taxes here
for a year. Ministers were plunged into a
new immigration row last night by the figures, only shortly after proposed
tax rises for low-income British families sparked intense controversy.
The huge bill for British taxpayers began
with the EU's enlargement in 2004, leading to 800,000 workers from the new
member countries moving to the UK. But it
has escalated dramatically as word has spread among Polish communities in
Britain, coupled with Polish-language newspapers publishing guides on how
to claim the benefit. The new figures,
released to Conservative Treasury spokesman Philip Hammond, reveal that in
the nine months to March this year the number of workers from EU accession
states claiming child benefit rose from 14,000 to 24,000.
For Poland, the rise in six months was 43
per cent. Even larger amounts are paid
out to East European workers in child tax credits, but the Government has
refused to put a figure on that liability.
The UK benefit is so attractive because
it is £977 a year for the first child and £652 for young siblings
as opposed to £160 for each child in Poland.
But the reciprocal agreement under
European law means Britons working in that country get only the £160
from the Warsaw government. Mr Hammond
said: "At a time when child poverty is rising, child-benefit money is being
siphoned off to children who don't even live here.
"The Government has no way of checking if
these claims are genuine. ..." ... Sir
Andrew Green, chairman of pressure group MigrationWatch, said: "It is
ridiculous that we pay child benefit at British rates to be claimed in
countries where the cost of living is one quarter of ours.
"Having failed to foresee this, the
Government should now renegotiate the requirement so that this benefit is
tied to the cost of living."
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Benefits and costs
James Kirkup Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2008 |
More than 100,000 of the eastern
Europeans who have come to Britain in recent years are claiming benefits,
official figures showed yesterday. Some
102,029 are receiving child benefit and an estimated 58,000 are receiving
tax credits, Home Office data disclosed.
The figures also showed that the number
of eastern Europeans who have applied to work in Britain since their
countries joined the EU in 2004 has reached 845,000.
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Benefits and costs business
UK 'reaping benefit' of immigration The Press Association, 7 May 2008 |
Eastern European immigrants to the UK
have a higher employment rate than British citizens, a report reveals.
An average 84% of workers from eight
countries that joined the EU in 2004 have jobs - 9% higher than the UK-born
average, according to Business for New Europe (BNE).
Its report suggests the impact of the
EU's biggest-ever expansion four years ago has benefited the UK and Eastern
Europe equally. Since 2004 just over one
million migrant workers have come to Britain from Poland, Hungary, the
Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia.
But nearly half have already emigrated
again, leaving an estimated 665,000 people from the eight nations currently
living in the UK. The BNE report contains
articles from 22 business leaders in companies including ArcelorMittal,
Tesco, Sainsbury, BT Group and Microsoft.
They collectively hail EU expansion as a
good thing. Roland Rudd, BNE chairman, said: "This expansion has
transformed the accession countries, galvanised the European Union and also
presented fresh opportunities for existing member states.
"Britain, and businesses here, are
reaping the benefits of an enlarged EU which has created a single market of
500 million consumers." The report said
very few of the Eastern European migrants claimed state benefits - only
2.4% of those registering for NI numbers since 2004 did so to claim
benefits. And, on average, immigrant
workers put in 46 hours a week - four hours longer each week than UK-born
workers.
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Benefits and costs healthcare
Health tourist checks 'not done' Phil Kemp BBC, 3 May 2008 |
About a third of hospitals in England
and Wales are ignoring government advice to charge foreign visitors for NHS
treatment. ... But a third of overseas
visitor managers polled by their association admitted patients were not
routinely asked about their entitlement. ...
Tunde, not his real name, lives in Lagos
in Nigeria and has been suffering with heart trouble for the past three
years. But, instead of paying for
treatment at home, he travels to the UK for free care on the NHS.
"I have an NHS card. I registered it
through the GP. I book an appointment with a GP and I am referred to the
hospital," he said. Tunde has been making
the trip as a health tourist twice a year for the last three years and says
that he will continue doing it until he is better. ...
For most non-EU nationals, treatment on
the NHS which is not urgently necessary is chargeable.
The government was so concerned about
reports of foreign nationals receiving free treatment when they should be
paying that it introduced tough new guidelines in 2004, designed to ensure
that all hospitals checked the status of patients being admitted.
But, four years on, the Donal MacIntyre
programme on Radio 5 Live has learned the rules are widely ignored.
Some overseas visitor managers in
hospitals told the BBC that they found the guidelines confusing and
described how some staff are uncomfortable checking patients' immigration
status. One told the programme: "Staff
are anxious of possible abuse not only by overseas visitors but also from
people who feel it is unjust to be asked."
A confidential report for the Department
of Health released under the Freedom of Information Act last year estimated
that £30m was lost in un-recovered debts from foreign visitors in
2004. ... The Department of Health is
currently reviewing access to primary and secondary care for all foreign
nationals and several hospitals are running pilot schemes where patients
who are not eligible for free treatment have to pay at their bedside.
Andy Finlay is the income generation
manager at West Middlesex University Hospital, which is one of the
hospitals involved in the scheme. He
explained that one particularly blatant example of a health tourist
prompted their involvement. "He said 'you
have to treat me until I'm well and I'm not paying and there's nothing you
can do about it'. "He came with a
pre-existing heart condition and he knew it's free at the point of delivery
in the UK. He abused us - he was a 100% bona fide health tourist."
Since introducing their new policy, 20%
of all patients admitted to A&E self-discharge before they are asked to pay
for treatment, whereas before no patients left of their own accord.
The hospital says they now recover 75% of
debt from foreign visitors paying all fees, a much higher proportion that
most other hospitals. Andy Finlay is
hoping that the Department of Health will extend his idea across all
hospitals.
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Benefits and costs healthcare
Health tourists must pay, says hospital Daily Telegraph, 1 May 2008 |
A hospital is refusing to provide
anything other than basic treatment for "health tourists" unless they pay
first. West Middlesex University
Hospital, which is near Heathrow airport, has started taking action
such as discharging heart attack patients after as little as 48 hours and
taking credit card details and hopes to save up to £500,000 a
year. Patients were discharged only after being signed off by three
consultants. Visitors from non-EU
countries are not eligible for free treatment and are estimated to cost the
NHS more than £50 million a year.
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Benefits and costs
Migrant benefits Daily Telegraph, 24 April 2008 |
The British economy has been boosted
by high levels of immigration over the past 10 years, a report has claimed.
The Work Foundation think-tank said
inflation and interest rates have been kept lower as a result of mass
migration. It also suggested that skills and labour shortages had been
avoided and the economy had been kept on a "stable growth path".
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Benefits and costs
The Media's Delusional take on Multiculturalism [1] Tim Murray Canada Free Press, 11 April 2008 |
According to the Edmonton Journal's
editorial of April 4/08, "Prosperity in Diversity", Canadians are just
loving the transformation of their cities.
...
You know the old song. There is a labour
shortage. Repeat that undocumented myth often enough and it becomes
conventional wisdom and no inventory is taken of our national needs. So
instead of training our own people we must reach out to the far corners of
the world to solve it. The people we reach out to, naturally, must be
people of colour, who will enrich us both culturally and economically
because, you guessed it, they will solve the labour shortage that is
alleged to exist. Much of it is the famous "they do work our own people
won't do" kind. That is, our own people won't do it unless they are paid
decent wages for it. Now, according to
the Edmonton Journal, anyone who doesn't want their city bulging with
people of colour is a bigot who belongs in the past. The rest of us are
"celebrating" the new Canada. Celebrating higher density living, traffic
jams, more pollution, more sprawl, loss of farmland, loss of wetlands, and
species loss. About 70% of species at risk exist at the boundaries of the
very cities that the Edmonton Journal is excited to report are bursting
with ethnic minority growth. Canadians are exchanging treasured biological
diversity for this vaunted "cultural diversity".
One conspicuous feature of cultural
diversity is ethnic gang warfare which, to borrow a phrase from the
Edmonton Journal, has made "the cities of this country vastly more
interesting." Multiculturalism has not only enriched our palates with its
fine range of ethnic restaurants, it has enriched our crime scene, forcing
our phlegmatic and unimaginative home- grown thugs to either shape up or
find a new line of work. I know I was enriched, until I fled, along with
tens of thousands of other WASPS to the hinterlands in search of respite
from the lawlessness that diversity had wrought. But now diversity is
following us. Last summer Asian gangs were reported to be hounding the
formerly sleepy retirement city of Kelowna, B.C.
The Edmonton Journal speaks of "changing
realities and changing attitudes." Interesting. A poll conducted by CTV and
the Globe and Mail between August 3-7 of 2005 found that 69% of Canadians
opposed multiculturalism and favoured assimilation, and 55% thought
immigration levels were too high. They were not asked if they wanted the
country's ethnic composition changed, but of course, they were the ordinary
people of Canada and journalists and parliamentarians know better anyway. A
democrat would turn the question around: Name a federal government that had
a mandate to change the ethnic profile of the nation? I think it is clear
the Edmonton Journal does not have its finger on the pulse of public
opinion anymore than the social engineers at the CBC. There has been no sea
change in attitudes toward "diversity" since August 2005.
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Benefits and costs
The Media's Delusional take on Multiculturalism [2] Tim Murray Canada Free Press, 11 April 2008 |
Why is there such subterranean
discontent with multiculturalism in Canada, and elsewhere? Of course there
is resentment with the concept of our own government requiring us to
accommodate to the customs and sensibilities of newcomers rather than the
reverse. But the perception of there being rampant, disproportionate ethnic
crime is a common denominator of much antagonism to the multicultural
nature of immigrant populations in Europe, Australia and North America. In
the United States 27% of all inmates of federal prisons are illegal aliens
and their violent crime statistics are appalling. In the United Kingdom 60%
of London's muggings are committed by blacks and 31% of all street
robberies are committed by West Indians. Ethnic crimes don't happen in
Canada because the federal government won't collect ethnic crime
statistics. ... ... There is something
about diversity which is less tangible but more corrosive to society than
violence. That is its apparent role as an agency of fragmentation and the
loss of a sense of civic duty. Dr. Ernest Healy's study, in concert with
others by Harvard's Robert Putnam, Irenaus-Eibesfeldt and Pierre van den
Berghe would contest the notion of "unity in diversity". A senior research
fellow at the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash
University, Healy challenges the idea that ethnic diversity leads to a
stronger, more cohesive society. In fact, it can hasten a withdrawal from
collective life as manifested in Australia by lower rates of volunteerism
by even second-generation immigrant residents. "When you create societies
from mixed backgrounds it may lead to withdrawal from the civic sphere,"
Dr. Healy said, "a feeling of less connectedness." As one commentator
remarked, "Few cultures actually put the nation ahead of their own
families. The Civic Culture of Northern Europe and North/East Asia is the
exception, not the rule. If the people of the Civic Culture are replaced by
people without those values, the Civic Culture ceases to exist." ...
And what of the economic benefits of
multicultural immigration? How much prosperity is there in "diversity"? The
problem with boastful pro-immigration claims is that they never take
account of the enormous costs that migrants incur in social services, costs
borne by resident taxpayers. In early April 2008, for example the British
Peers economics affairs committee made a mockery of long-standing
government claims that foreign workers added 6 billion pounds each year to
the wealth of the nation. On the contrary, they concluded that the benefits
of immigration to the resident population were close to zero in the long
run. And the Lords report never even touched the horrendous environmental
impacts of Tony Blair's demographic onslaught upon water, food production,
greenspace, farmland, GHG emissions, pollution and quiet. Britons might
ask, what price diversity? In America the
price is $152 billion lost each year to American workers in job
displacement and wages to immigration, according to Harvard's Dr. George
Borjas. Each immigrant legal or illegal costs American taxpayers $9,000
annually, according to the Manhattan Institute while each unskilled
immigrant and his family costs the treasury $22,000 annually according to a
2007 study done by the Heritage Foundation. The Grubel study done for the
Fraser Institute reached similar conclusions for Canada. $18 billion more
was paid out in services to unskilled presumably third world immigrants
than was recovered in taxes from them - annually. So I hope you enjoyed
your goat curry, you paid through the nose for it.
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Benefits and costs housing, education, health care
Mass immigration raises house prices, say peers Robert Winnett Daily Telegraph, 1 April 2008 |
The unprecedented influx of
immigrants will make houses unaffordable for millions of British people, an
authoritative parliamentary report concludes today.
Immigration is already having a dramatic
impact on house prices but, according to the House of Lords economic
affairs committee, the cost of the average property will rise to more than
10 times the average wage as a result of the influx. ...
Research from the financial firm Goldman
Sachs calculates that a one per cent increase in the number of households
increases house prices by eight per cent in the short term. The increase
falls to six per cent as more houses are built. ...
The committee recommended: "Immigration
is one of many factors contributing to more demand for housing and higher
house prices. Housing matters alone should not dictate immigration policy
but they should be an important consideration when assessing the economic
impacts of immigration on the resident population in the UK."
800,000 pupils who are not
English There are almost 800,000
children in schools who do not speak English as a first language, a rise of
24 per cent in four years, says the report.
Schools are paying for translators and
specialist teaching materials, the committee was told. The rapid turnover
of pupils is regarded as disruptive, with some schools having to set up
specialist centres to deal with the new arrivals. There is also anecdotal
evidence that the NHS is under increased pressure, although the Government
has no information on the trend. One health official described the
situation in social care as a "data desert".
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Benefits and costs transport
Foreign lorries 'pose higher risk' Daily Telegraph, 31 March 2008 |
Foreign lorry drivers are breaking
British safety laws and risking lives, with accident figures rocketing in
the past five years, a television programme warns.
Killer Lorries: Tonight to
be shown on ITV1 this evening says that foreign trucks are three
times more likely to be involved in accidents. In 2006 44 people were
killed and 1,322 injured in collisions with foreign heavy goods vehicles.
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Benefits and costs
Migration has brought 'zero' economic benefit Philip Johnston and Robert Winnett Daily Telegraph, 29 March 2008 |
Ten years of record immigration to
Britain has produced virtually no economic benefits for the country, a
parliamentary inquiry has found. A House
of Lords committee, which is due to report next Tuesday, will call into
question Government claims that foreign workers add £6 billion each
year to the wealth of the nation. It is
expected to say this must be balanced against the increase in population
and their use of local services such as health and education, resulting in
little benefit per head of the population.
"Our overall conclusion is that the
economic benefits of net immigration to the resident population are small
and close to zero in the long run," the report will say.
Thy findings of the Lords economics
committee threaten to demolish the key argument made by ministers to
justify the highest levels of immigration in the country's history.
The inquiry by the committee, which
includes two former chancellors and several former Cabinet ministers, is
the first to try to balance the costs and benefits of large-scale
immigration.
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Benefits and costs employment
Skilled migrants 'will give £77bn boost to UK' Peter Taylor Daily Telegraph, 25 March 2008 |
The number of skilled migrant workers
in the UK will climb 14pc within four years to top 800,000, new research
has indicated. A report by recruitment
consultants Harvey Nash said skilled migrants will account for 2.8pc of the
British workforce by 2012, up from 2.5pc now, with the value of their
output climbing more than a third to almost £50bn.
Harvey Nash chief executive Albert Ellis
said that, in addition, the group supported 650,000 more jobs through
spending on goods and services. The total
contribution of skilled migrants to the UK economy will hit £77bn
annually within four years, the report said, with IT, telecommunications
and transport sectors benefiting most. The majority come from the European
Union, with London the principal destination.
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Benefits and costs
£28m in child benefit is paid to families living in Poland Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 8 March 2008 |
British taxpayers are paying £28
million in child benefit for youngsters living in eastern Europe, it was
disclosed last night. The figures, given
in a Commons written answer, show that by the end of last year about 34,000
children of migrant workers were getting British state handouts, even
though they do not live here. The vast
majority live in Poland and have parents who have come to Britain since
their country was allowed to join the European Union in April 2004.
More than half a million Poles have since
registered for jobs in the UK together with another 300,000 people from
seven other eastern European nations.
This does not include the self-employed
who have probably pushed the numbers of those who have come seeking
work above the one million mark. Once EU
nationals have been working and paying tax in Britain for 12 months, they
are entitled to the same level of state support as any British citizen.
This includes benefit for their children,
even if they are in another EU country.
They can claim benefit worth £941
per year for a first child or £629 per year for younger siblings.
In Poland, the benefits system pays a
maximum of around £160 per year in child benefit.
Philip Hammond, the Conservative treasury
spokesman, said: "There are 3.8 million British children living in poverty.
Yet we are sending £28 million of taxpayers' money abroad every year
because our benefits system is such a shambles."
He added: "When will Gordon Brown get a
grip on this situation? "We know that
billions of pounds are being lost to benefit fraud every year in Britain,
so how on earth is the Government going to check these payments to children
who aren't even here?" Jacqui Smith, the
Home Secretary, recently announced a Whitehall review to see if the EU
rules could be tightened up or reformed.
However, Whitehall officials believe it
would require a new deal among the 27 European Union countries to close the
loophole. HM Revenue and Customs says
claimants have to provide evidence to support claims for children abroad,
such as a birth certificate. It is
thought that even larger sums are being paid out to Eastern European
workers in child tax credits financial support that is provided
through the tax system for those with children or on lower incomes.
This could push the total payouts to more
than £50 million but ministers say these figures are "not available".
... Polish newspapers regularly run
features explaining exactly how to claim benefits in the UK.
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Benefits and costs employment, politics
An immigration policy bought and paid for? [part 1] Tim Murray, director of Immigration Watch Canada (We) Can Do Better [website], 24 February 2008 [Note: all dollar figures given are in US
dollars] |
The numbers are unequivocal. For a
decade polls have consistently recorded a wide discrepancy between the
attitude of ordinary Americans toward immigration and the attitude of those
who govern them. And the gap has been growing. In 2002 a poll conducted by
the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations found that 60% of the public
thought current immigration levels to be a "critical threat to the vital
interests of the United States," as compared to only 14% of the country's
leadership. This 46% gap compared to a 37% gap revealed by a 1998 poll. 70%
felt that reducing illegal immigration should be a "very important" foreign
policy goal compared to only 22% of the political elite.
Polling done by TM, inc. in October 2006
confirmed these results. While the U.S. Senate passed a bill (S2611)
supporting a large increase in legal immigration, 68% of voters thought the
number of immigrants, legal or illegal, was too high, 34 times the number
who said it was too "low". 71% said that low paying jobs could easily be
filled if employers paid American workers decent wages rather than import
low-skill labour. And 62% agreed with a statement that Canadian viewers of
CBC immigration sob stories have frequently observed, "The media coverage
of illegal immigrants is mostly devoted to human interest stories like how
illegals risk their lives (to get here), rather than the costs they create
and the Americans, particularly low-wage American workers, who may be
harmed by their being here." The polling
company Inc./Woman Trend in October of 2006 found 66% in agreement that the
population increase caused by the present level of immigration would
negatively impact the environment. A Zogbylcis poll of April 2006 revealed
that 67% of Americans wanted less immigration to promote the assimilation
of those who were already here. A poll conducted a month earlier by the
same company found that 60% wanted their congressional representative to
support more restrictive immigration policies. ...
The question that these poll results beg
is why? Why the cleavage between leaders and led? The anti-immigration
sentiment of America's middle and working class is easily accounted for.
According to Centre for Immigration Studies data, in the decade preceding
2003, immigration increased the supply of people without a high school
education by 21% and the supply of other workers by 4%. Rudimentary
economic theory suggests that the more poorly skilled workers there are,
the less money they'll make a fact confirmed by the National
Research Council in their findings that about half the drop in real wages
for high school drop-outs from 1980 to 1994 was due to immigration. A
report by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Centre found that Americans and
established immigrants suffer an 11% wage drop when they work alongside new
Hispanic immigrants. Harvard Professor Dr. George Borgias has accumulated
similar data and has made the shocking assertion that American workers lose
an incredible $152 billion per year in wages from immigration.
Immigration provides a ready-made source
of cheap labour, ... it weakens the bargaining power of American-born
workers and reduces the clout of their unions, if they still have them. ...
Writer Rich Lowry made the best assessment: "No wonder corporate America
loves our open borders: they serve as a kind of rolling reverse minimum
wage law." And no wonder the late African-American liberal Congressman
Barbara Jordan called for cutting back immigration in the 1990s. She was
defending her constituency of low-income black workers, the first casualty
of the corporate welfare program of high- level immigration, marketed by
the left as "multicultural enrichment". Cultural diversity is the fig leaf
of naked corporate exploitation.
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Benefits and costs employment, politics
An immigration policy bought and paid for? [part 2] Tim Murray (We) Can Do Better [website], 24 February 2008 |
So blue-collar attitudes to
immigration are easily explained, ordinary people are simply following
their class interests. And class interests can explain the open borders
position taken up by America's opinion leaders and decision makers too.
They are much more affluent and educated than the people they lead and
attempt to influence, and feel no threat from the illegal immigrants they
hire as nannies and gardeners or tip at fine restaurants. One thing is
central to the understanding of the immigration divide in the United
States, and that is to divest oneself of the almost universal and
persistent belief that somehow the Democrats are white knights who
represent the working class, the poor and the environment, while the
Republicans are the incarnation of power, privilege and plutocracy. To
assist you in this task you should be apprised of the following.
A TM Inc poll of 2006 disclosed that
those most apt to be satisfied with the current level of immigration which
is killing American working class living standards were 25-34 year old
liberal college graduates and professionals who identified with the
Democratic Party. The same poll found though that it was 35-44 year old
conservative Republicans who favoured large-scale round-ups of illegal
immigrants. That profiles the supporters of the pro and anti-immigration
positions, but the current party leadership positions could best be
ascertained by the fact that as of the end of January 2008, all Republican
contenders rejected the legalization of "undocumented" immigrants now in
the U. S., while the Democrats continue to support it.
The true alignment of the Democratic
Party with corporate interests can be vividly illustrated by a look at
campaign financing. McCain, Clinton and Obama are, to put it bluntly, Wall
Street candidates. The big banks, the financial firms, corporate law firms
and private equity firms pay the pipers. But, according the Centre for
Responsive Politics (CRP) (www.opensecrets.org), the Democrats are the
clear favourite. Hillary Clinton took in $106.1 million and Barack Obama
$102.1 million for all of 2007. McCain received substantially less at
$41,102,178. Hillary Clinton received $1.3 million from private equity
firms, while Obama received $1 million. McCain finished a distant fourth at
$395,000. Wall Street promotes the candidates who serve its interests and
the Democrats have delivered for them since their November 2006 victory.
Democratic leaders buried a proposal to
tax the massive incomes of hedge fund operators at normal tax rates,
allowing billionaires to claim most of their income as capital gains taxed
at a far lower rate. Clinton and Obama have also refused action on the
subprime meltdown that would have threatened big financial interests.
Corporate law firms gave Clinton over $11 million and Obama over $9
million. McCain only got just over two and a half million dollars, the most
for Republican candidates. As of February 22, 2008, bagmen have raised over
$138 million for Obama, over $134 million for Clinton, and over $53 million
for McCain. Most interesting is the
disposition of "Silicon" money. Between 1998 and 2006 almost $83 million in
political contributions in the form of individuals donations, PAC
contributions, and soft money were made by 40 technology companies.
Amounting on average to just $295,708 per company per year of lobbying, it
was money well spent. The concession Bill Gates wanted, the H-1B Visa
program that allows cheap technology workers into the country, reaped
profits a hundred times that investment. But Microsoft wanted to be more
certain the fix was in. Over that that seven year period they gave
$5,7888,286, with half of Congress on its payroll it would seem. AT+T
donated $3,504,773, Apple $3,620,823, and Vericon $4,237,884. ...
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Benefits and costs employment, politics
An immigration policy bought and paid for? [part 3] Tim Murray (We) Can Do Better [website], 24 February 2008 |
The most revealing fact to be gleaned
from presidential campaign donation statistics is one found when donation
records are subjected to sector analysis. If one studies 12 business or
professional sectors of American society from Agribusiness to Construction
to Health to Labour etc., there is one sector that is clearly salient
the "financial-real estate" sector. It has contributed over $73
million to various campaigns, $25 million more than any other sector.
Real estate interests (including mortgage
brokers, homebuilders and property developers) gave $4.8 million to
Clinton, $2.7 million to Obama and $1.9 million to McCain. The conventional
interpretation of their motive is that they want access to the winner when
an expected crackdown over predatory lending and a troubled housing finance
system reaches the top of the legislative agenda. But there is an
alternative, or at least supplementary explanation. One that has been
advanced by Australian population sociologist Sheila Newman. The land
tenure system that characterizes Anglo-American societies encourages
speculation, and much money is to be made simply by population growth.
Newman has written extensively to demonstrate that real estate developers
are key players in lobbying for mass immigration. US campaign donation
records seem to vindicate her hypothesis, as does the fact that a nation
like France is close to achieving population stability because the real
estate development industry cannot exist as an agent for growth, given that
land cannot consistently be reduced to a speculative commodity largely
because of the way tenure is arranged.
What then became of the candidates who
challenged the corporate open borders agenda? Their campaigns died from
lack of funds. Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado is a case in point.
Wall Street likes pro-immigration candidates for obvious reasons and so
they will reward those who sing their tune. Tancredo insisted on singing an
objectionable note, like a three year moratorium on immigration. So he paid
the price and collected just $6 million dollars or less than 6% of what
Clinton received by year's end and was forced to end his campaign. Clinton
at that time was Wall Street's anointed one, someone who, in the words of
Numbers USA, "consistently pressed for U. S. population growth, immigration
and foreign labour importation." But of course such an agenda of unabashed
greed needs always to be camouflaged with a politician's candy floss, the
spin is what they are purchased for. So Clinton obliged her corporate
donors by saying that "we should always be open to legal immigration-it
reforms, it makes us better." Well, it certainly makes a few of us richer
Hillary, doesn't it, like your donors and supporters, the most well-heeled
of either party! An examination of
Clinton's voting record should confirm that big business is getting what it
paid for. Clinton was co-sponsor of Bill S-2109 to help employees import
cheap high tech workers while the big law firms who give to her campaign
are counseling them how to use the legal system to avoid hiring qualified
U.S. workers. Her support of Senate bill 2109 helped expedite the
processing of the infamous H-1B visas that depress wages and displace
workers. She supported an amnesty of illegal agricultural workers (S bill
1340) and another one of a similar nature (S. bill 2137) that would have
brought an amnesty to another 860,000 workers not counting family.
Clinton's support of Kennedy's bill S 2381 would have meant amnesty to
almost all illegal aliens. Her numerous attempts to sponsor "shamnesty"
bills is reflective of a comment she made to a man who said that his wife
was an illegal immigrant. "No woman is illegal", Clinton replied.
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Benefits and costs employment, politics
An immigration policy bought and paid for? [part 4] Tim Murray (We) Can Do Better [website], 24 February 2008 |
If Hillary's record is atrocious, it
is doubtful if Obama's is any better. His positions seem almost
indistinguishable from Clinton's, the difference being more one of emphasis
than policy. He supports employer verification of employee identity to
deter the hiring of illegals, she doesn't. She favours lower legal
immigration intakes, he doesn't. Obama's main focus is the human rights and
economic needs of those knocking at America's door wanting to come
in and those already in, legally or illegally. On the Senate floor he
stated on May 23, 2007 that "Where we can re-unite families, we should.
Where we can bring in more foreign-born workers with skills our economy
needs, we should." This was an ominous declaration. Since the law was
changed in 1965 to create the so-called family re-unification system,
"chain migration" where an immigrant sponsors several others who in
turn sponsors several more has caused the numbers under this
category to spiral out of control. In 36 years the number of immediate
relatives admitted was over 13 times higher than it was when the law was
first enacted to almost one-half million per year.
An Obama policy statement maintains
support for "improvements in our visa programs, including the H-1B
programs, to attract some of the world's most talented people to America."
But H-1B visa holders are not paid as much as Americans, and even Microsoft
admits that salaries have not kept pace with inflation. That would do much
to explain a so-called labour shortage in the field. As for Obama's goal of
attracting the best and the brightest, the vast majority of H-1B holders
make in the $60,000 range (Intel's median salary is $65,000), but top
talents in the industry capture more than $100,000. And ironically the
great majority of awards for innovation have fallen to Americans,
indicating that the industry is not shackled by a domestic cognitive
deficit that needs relief by a massive injection of foreign Einsteins. The
quest for the best and brightest of overseas talent is a smokescreen for
the tech corporations' prime motive, the hunt not for the brightest minds
but those that come at the cheapest price. And the H-1B program doesn't
even require employers to give hiring priority to qualified American
citizens, and they have an arsenal of legal measures to reject those who
apply. If one is given to wonder why a U.S. Congress would expand the H-1B
program in 2000 when their employers, the American taxpayers, most of whom
are workers, were not its obvious beneficiaries, Utah Senator Bob Bennett's
comment would be informational: "There were, in fact, a whole lot (of
Congressmen) against it, but because they are tapping the high-tech
community for campaign contributions, they don't want to admit that in
public." John McCain, the only Republican
contender left standing, were it not for his title as waterboy for Iraq,
could run for the Democrats. He got the ball rolling in 1986 when he signed
the 1986 amnesty for illegals and thereby gave the green light for aspiring
border-crossers who knew that American law could be violated with impunity
and trespass retroactively forgiven. He ran his nomination race on a
full-throttle amnesty platform until he found religion earlier this year
and back-pedaled. He has voted for S-1639 to double legal immigration, to
continue chain migration and the ridiculous annual jackpot lottery of
50,000 applicants from third world nations called "Diversity Immigration".
McCain's problem is that he is a dark horse and Wall Street, while hedging
its bets, likes to back winners. So his take of their money is but
one-third of Obama's and Clinton's. ...
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Benefits and costs employment, politics
An immigration policy bought and paid for? [part 5] Tim Murray, director of Immigration Watch Canada (We) Can Do Better [website], 24 February 2008 |
The most disappointing feature of the
American immigration dialogue is its one-dimensional nature. Two critical
elements are virtually absent from the arguments presented by both open and
closed borders advocates. One is that both sides talk about what attracts
Mexican labour to America, and therefore the measures for turning them
away. But no one talks about the conditions in Mexico that drove people to
take desperate risks to get to the United States and who is responsible for
those conditions. When is America going to look in the mirror and admit
that the larcenous NAFTA agreement and rapacious rampage of multinational
corporations undercut a viable Mexican economy and the basis for a decent
life for so many Mexicans? When are American politicians and opinion-makers
going to acknowledge that much of American prosperity is built on the backs
of those people and others like them in the hemisphere and the world? All
the measures proposed by the anti-immigrationist forces are necessary, but
by no means sufficient to defend the borders. America cannot play King
Canute and hold back a tide of billions. It must reduce the tide by
ensuring that the billions do not want to leave home. Scrap the trade
agreements, the IMF, SAPs (Structural Adjustment Policies) and offer
restitution to rebuild economies that have been pillaged.
Aside from NAFTA, there is another
crucial phrase missing from US immigration discussions. Carrying capacity.
Each year the United States adds the equivalent of another Chicago. During
the Bush administration it has grown by 21 million people. Immigrants,
their children and grandchildren will account for 82% of all population
growth in the years leading up to 2050, when the country will reach a
staggering 438 million if this growth rate is not slowed. Some worry about
assimilation, since the share of non-Hispanic whites will fall from 67 to
47%. Obviously the labour market is the focus of most, who would share
Samuel Gompers's conviction that "immigration is fundamentally a labour
issue." But full employment and economic prosperity in a culturally or
linguistically cohesive America would be a pyrrhic accomplishment if such a
nation were to rest on a collapsing ecosystem. Can America sustain half its
current population when critical resource shortages appear or biodiversity
services are compromised ? The works of analysts like David Pimental, Dale
Pfeiffer and Richard Heinberg do not inform any Congressional debate about
how many people the country should admit. Clearly a Population Plan is
overdue. The American people have spoken
on immigration but the political elite will not listen because they are
paid by their corporate benefactors not to listen. It is sad to see the
world's greatest democratic experiment come to such grief. The Founding
Fathers devised a system that they embedded in a constitution with
mechanisms to counter-act the natural instinct of the political class to
usurp power and exercise it as a permanent elite dominating pauperized
subjects on the old European model. They counted on a "vigilant and manly
spirit" that animates the American people to breath life and vigour into
the constitution. But alas, the Founding Fathers couldn't possibly foresee
the power and the scale of Wall Street money.
In America today, anything's for sale,
even democracy. I hear a Senator earmarked for the White House can be had,
for, oh around 134-138 million. Sound right?
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Benefits and costs
Benefit cuts for migrants under citizenship plan Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 21 February 2008 |
Britain could link citizenship to
benefits for the first time as part of a plan to cut the millions of pounds
paid to immigrants from eastern Europe.
Immigrants would not receive a passport
until they had lived in the country for several years under the new plan,
and during this "probationary period" they would not be allowed to claim
the full range of welfare handouts such as child benefit and income
support. Polish families are currently
claiming more than £20 million a year for thousands of children who
remain in their homeland. They get a
better deal in Britain than in their own country, where payments are means
tested. Under European regulations, migrant workers living in Britain are
entitled to full family benefits even if their dependants stay
behind. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary,
announced a Whitehall review only to see if these rules could be tightened
up. However, it would require a new deal among the 27 European Union
countries. The review forms part of a
wider range of reforms to immigration rules and citizenship rights. A Green
Paper published by the Home Office yesterday said that new arrivals from
outside the EU would be required to pay more for their visas to meet some
of the costs to public services.
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Benefits and costs
Money transfer charter helps your cash arrive safely Liz King Daily Telegraph, 16 February 2008 |
A staggering £2.3bn is
transferred from the UK each year as people increasingly send money abroad
to relatives and friends, but the biggest worry is getting it there safely.
Much of this money goes to developing
countries more than 50 around the world with £300m going
to India and £200m to Pakistan, with Nigeria, Jamaica and Ghana next
on the list. ... A new Remittance
Customer Charter has been introduced to help those sending money abroad,
... The charter, created by the
Department for International Development (DFID) through the UK Remittance
Task Force, will ensure that firms that sign up will give clear,
transparent information in a standard format to the consumer.
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Benefits and costs
Pakistanis ignoring dangers of cousins marrying, says MP Sarah Womack Daily Telegraph, 12 February 2008 |
British Pakistanis are "in denial"
about the increased risk of birth defects among the children of married
cousins, a Labour MP claimed yesterday.
Ann Cryer said that many marriages of
Muslims in Bradford were between cousins and could have "tragic" impacts.
She called for community leaders to encourage debate which, she believed,
would move more families away from marriages between cousins.
Mrs Cryer raised the issue two years ago
after research showed that British Pakistanis were 13 times more likely to
have children with disorders than the general population. ...
Steve Jones, professor of genetics at
University College London, agreed that there was a higher risk of defects
but drinking or smoking in pregnancy was "as bad if not worse". ...
Prof Jones said: "Let's bear in mind that
families like the Rothschilds married their cousins frequently."
Cousin marriages were quite common in
Spain and in Muslim communities worldwide, he said.
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Benefits and costs marriage
Minister warns over in-breeding in Asians James Kirkup Daily Telegraph, 11 February 2008 |
Arranged marriages between British
Asians raise the risk of in-breeding and birth defects, a Government
minister has said. Phil Woolas, a junior
environment minister, came under fire from Muslim groups already concerned
about the public reaction to the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks about
sharia law. Mr Woolas, the Labour MP for
Oldham East and Saddleworth, said that marriages between first cousins are
a factor in birth defects and inherited conditions. ...
The Muslim Public Affairs Committee, a
campaign group, suggested the minister was demonising British Muslims. ...
Arranged marriages are common among
several British Asian groups, but intermarriage of relatives is a
particular characteristic of people of Pakistani origin.
It is estimated that more than 55 per
cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins, resulting in an
increasing rate of genetic defects and high rates of infant mortality.
Figures show that British Pakistani children account for as many as one
third of birth defects despite making up only three per cent of all UK
births.
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Benefits and costs hospitals
£350m maternity bill for foreign mothers Daily Telegraph, 30 January 2008 |
Britain pays £350 million a year
to provide maternity services to mothers born outside the country,
according to a BBC analysis. While the
birth rate among British-born women has dropped, the number of immigrants
giving birth has risen by three quarters.
The sudden rise has put such pressure on
maternity services that many cannot cope and are having to turn women away.
Immigrant women are more likely to suffer complications, requiring
emergency caesarean sections and often are not known to health services
until they are in labour. When Tony Blair
came to power in 1997, the NHS spent around a billion pounds a year on
maternity services, with one baby in eight delivered to a foreign-born
mother. Ten years on, spending has risen to £1.6 billion with almost
one baby in four delivered to a mother born overseas, according to an
analysis by the BBC's Ten o'Clock News.
While the number of babies born to
British mothers has fallen by 44,000 a year since the mid-1990s, the figure
for babies born to foreign mothers has risen by 64,000. The overall birth
rate is at its highest level for 26 years.
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Benefits and costs
Poles claim £20m benefits in UK for children back home Daily Telegraph, 29 January 2008 |
Polish families are claiming more
than £20 million a year in benefits for thousands of children living
outside Britain, it emerged yesterday.
Under European regulations, migrant
workers living in Britain are entitled to full family benefits, even if
their children remain behind in their home country.
Following the influx of workers from
eastern Europe in the wake of the expansion of the EU nearly four years
ago, more than 16,000 Poles alone have submitted child benefit claims. They
cover 26,000 children living in Poland, at a cost to the taxpayer of
£21.4 million a year. The figures were disclosed by Jane Kennedy, the
financial secretary to the Treasury, in answer to a written question ...
She refused to say how much of another
benefit, child tax credit, was being claimed by Polish workers for families
living overseas, ... In Poland, parents
are not universally entitled to child benefit, and any payments are
means-tested.
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Benefits and costs
Cost of migrants Cllr David Ashton, Deputy leader, Harrow Council Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2008 [Letter to the Editor] |
As evidence presented to the Treasury
select committee this week shows, the Government is indeed detached from
reality when it comes to the costs of immigration and a changing diversity.
My own local authority is a clear
illustration of the point. We are the fifth most ethnically diverse borough
in England and Wales, and currently incur substantial extra costs looking
after that diverse population, plus the growing number of migrants who come
to the area. Migrant skills are always
welcome, and we consider diversity to be a strength. But we need to
underline that there is a cash cost for the local authorities which are on
the front line of caring for those populations. Until the government grant
settlement recognises these seismic changes, we will all strain to cope.
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Benefits and costs
Call for tougher action on foreign car drivers Daily Telegraph, 9 January 2008 |
A police officer yesterday called for
tough action on foreign drivers who break the law in Britain after a
25-year-old was killed by a Polish woman driving the wrong way around a
roundabout. Superintendent Mick Doyle,
the head of roads policing for Thames Valley Police, said the number of
migrants coming in to the country but not forced by law to take a British
driving test had caused a huge problem on the roads.
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Benefits and costs
The price of cutting migration Daily Telegraph, 9 January 2008 |
Cutting immigration levels could put
9p on income tax, a think tank told peers yesterday. The Institute of
Public Policy Research also questioned whether newcomers were taking
hundreds of thousands of jobs from British-born workers.
The institute claimed that if the
Government adopted a zero net migration policy then working-age people
would have to pay more tax to support far more dependants in decades to
come.
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Benefits and costs NHS
Immigrants 'stretching the NHS' Daily Telegraph, 31 December 2007 |
The Health Service is being pushed to
breaking point by Eastern European immigrants, an NHS source claimed in a
Sunday newspaper yesterday. The
Department of Health is said to have expected to treat an extra 150,000
patients since eight countries joined the EU in 2004. But hospitals and GPs
have reportedly dealt with that number every year since Britain opened its
doors. ... The Government insisted
services were not being stretched. A Health Department spokesman added: We
are talking about people who are legally entitled to live in this country
and access the NHS."
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Benefits and costs
Politicians aren't making economic sense Irwin Stelzer Daily Telegraph, 14 November 2007 |
Immigration is another area of
muddle. There are 600,000 known job vacancies, while millions of sensible
potential British workers, the very ones for whom the Prime Minister wants
to create British jobs, have become layabouts. Or, to use the technical
jargon, economically inactive. Some are physically unable to work. But for
millions who have joined the lists of the disabled during this era of
increasing health and longevity, and many of those of the dole, it would be
irrational to work when the pay for staying home is better. ...
So the first step in forging a sensible
immigration policy is to reduce the demand for immigrant labour by
increasing the supply of British workers.
...
The second step would be to meet the
legitimate complaints of the native population that is bearing the high
social costs of immigration - crowded schools, overloaded health facilities
and the like. Employers are getting a free ride: they have the benefit of
often-cheaper foreign labour and pass on the social costs. Solution:
employers to pay a fee equal to those costs for every immigrant hired, the
proceeds to go to the affected community. Supplement that by raising the
cost of employing illegal immigrants further - by jailing employers who
knowingly hire them - and economic reason will have replaced some of the
populist posturing that dominates debate about immigration policy.
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Benefits and costs
Immigration officials got £7m bonus despite errors James Kirkup Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2007 |
Immigration officials involved in a
string of fiascos have been paid £7 million in bonuses, it emerged
yesterday. Staff at the Immigration and
Nationality Directorate of the Home Office got nearly £2 million in
bonuses last year alone. In that year,
the division was described as "not fit for purpose" by John Reid, then Home
Secretary, after a series of blunders including the failure to deport
hundreds of foreign prisoners held in UK jails.
Flawed data from the IND, now the Border
and Immigration Agency, were blamed for the Government omitting 300,000
foreign-born workers from immigration figures given to Parliament last
month. ... In 2005-06, IND staff were
paid £1,951,276 on top of their salaries. The previous year, the total
was £1,967,989. In 2003-04, it was £1,650,451. And in 2002-03,
officials got £1,334,164. ... The
figures were released in response to Parliamentary questions from Danny
Alexander, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on work and pensions, who said
the situation "defies common sense".
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Benefits and costs public opinion
Restrictions call Daily Telegraph, 12 November 2007 |
Eighty-one per cent of the public
believe immigration in Britain should be cut substantially, according to a
poll today, while 54 per cent dispute the Government's assertion that those
coming into the country have helped the economy.
The research, carried out by YouGov for
pressure group Migrationwatch, found 85 per cent of people thought that
immigration was putting too much pressure on public services.
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Benefits and costs housing
Inquiry launched into migrant council housing Robert Winnett Daily Telegraph, 2 November 2007 |
A major independent inquiry to
determine whether immigrants are given unfair access to council housing was
announced yesterday by Britain's race watchdog and local authority leaders.
Trevor Phillips, the head of the Equality
and Human Rights Commission, said there was a "widespread public
perception" that new migrants had "unfair advantages to which they are not
entitled". He announced that his
commission and the Local Government Association (LGA) would launch a study
to determine whether the perception was correct, and would stop any abuse
it uncovered. ... A spokesman for the
Department for Communities and Local Government said: "Trevor Phillips said
... he has never seen 'any reliable evidence' to back up claims that
councils are unfairly allocating housing. While local government has always
maintained they have operated allocations fairly, we agree it is important
to deal with perception."
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Benefits and costs
Migrants may push up council tax Toby Helm Daily Telegraph, 1 November 2007 |
Millions of homeowners face higher
council tax bills next year because of the Government's failure to keep
track of the number of immigrants in Britain, local authorities warned
yesterday. Schools, hospitals and other
services are struggling to cope with rapid and uncontrolled influxes of
migrants, the Local Government Association (LGA) claimed. It says that
because money allocated to local authorities is calculated by population
figures, the government's inability to accurately assess migrant numbers
means councils are receiving inadequate funding.
A spokesman for the LGA said that in
areas where numbers had risen but statistics had not reflected the
increase, councils would have two options: to put up council tax next year,
or cut services.
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Benefits and costs
No jobs for 4,000 UK junior doctors Rebecca Smith Daily Telegraph, 1 November 2007 |
Almost 4,000 UK medics have not got
training posts in the disastrous junior doctors recruitment system, The
Daily Telegraph can disclose. A
second round of recruitment ended yesterday and of the 13,624 UK graduates,
who cost the taxpayer £250,000 each to put through medical school,
3,687 have not been awarded posts to allow them to train towards becoming a
consultant or GP. Some may yet be
allocated a post in one of the less popular specialties such as trauma,
orthopaedics or psychiatry, and an extra 1,050 short-term posts that have
not yet been allocated. But most face a choice between taking a
non-training job, leaving medicine or practising abroad. ...
Officials have said that without the
thousands of applicants from outside Europe, most of which were from
Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, there would not have been such
oversubscription for training places.
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Benefits and costs
We need an honest immigration debate Bob Rowthorn, professor of economics at Cambridge University Daily Telegraph website, 21 October 2007 |
Immigration is a contentious topic.
But there is widespread agreement in official circles to one proposition:
immigrants contribute enormously to increasing the prosperity of the
British people. The consensus that immigration has economically beneficial
effects was on display last week, when the Government released a report by
its own experts. "Migrants contribute £6 billion to the GDP" was the
headline in many newspapers. And the report indeed confirmed the orthodoxy
that "the Exchequer is better off with immigration than without it" - as
Liam Byrne, the Home Office Minister, has insisted.
Such claims are profoundly misleading.
What matters to the existing population is not how migration affects the
"economy" as a whole, but how it affects them individually. Migration may
increase the size of the national cake, but it also increases the number of
people who are entitled to a slice of this cake.
There is a whole section of the report
devoted to the contribution of migrants to GDP per capita. It claims that,
since 1998, immigrants have added 3.1 per cent to Britain's GDP. That is
true. But there is another, critical fact: during the same period,
immigrants have added 3.8 per cent to the total British population. Put
those two together and you get the result that the additional amount
produced by immigrants has been smaller than the number of people they have
added to the population. The conclusion
is inescapable: the result of immigration since 1998 has been to lower per
capita GDP, or output per individual worker, not to increase it. The effect
is very small, and within the margin of statistical error. But if you are
willing to rely on the figures, the one thing you cannot conclude is that
immigration has increased per capita GDP.
Yet this is precisely what is often meant
by those who insist that "immigration has been enormously beneficial to the
economy". Putting the GDP and population figures together is not
complicated economics. But somehow the report never manages to do it, and
so never manages to reach the obvious conclusion. I don't know whether that
failure is deliberate or not - but it is certainly misleading. ...
Immigration, if it continues at the
present rate of a net inflow of around 200,000 people a year, is going to
add around 20 million to Britain's population over the next 50 years.
Official press releases from the Office of National Statistics do not
accurately report that fact, because they do not take account of the
children that immigrants will have. It is not easy to see how the South
East - which is where most immigrants settle, because that is where the
jobs are - will be able to cope with so large an additional population. ...
But let's have an honest debate about the
effects and consequences of immigration, not one based on misleading
statistics or evasion of the truth. At the moment, the Government seems to
want to conduct the discussion on the basis that it is better that people
should not know what the truth is. I cannot believe that ignorance is a
rational or ethical basis for making a decision on so important a topic. If
we do not debate the effects of immigration honestly and truthfully, we
will all come to regret it.
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Benefits and costs
Migrant workers earn more than British Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 17 October 2007 |
Immigrant workers are both higher
paid and more reliable than their British counterparts and contributed
£6 billion to economic growth last year, a Government study said
yesterday. Migrants earn £424 a week
on average, compared with £395 for UK workers, and paid more in tax
than they consumed in services. However,
a separate paper issued together with the study by the Home Office admitted
there were complaints about the impact of immigration on housing and other
public services. Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, said the research
showed that "in the long run, our country and Exchequer are better off with
immigration rather than without it". The
report found that in 2006, record immigration pushed the number of foreign
workers up to 12.5 per cent - or one eighth - of the labour force, compared
to 7.4 per cent a decade ago. Since
average output growth over this period was 2.7 per cent a year and
migration contributed an estimated 15 to 20 per cent of this, the study
estimated a contribution of £6 billion from foreign workers - or
£700,000 a day. However, the figure
does not take account of the costs of a growing population, for instance
the impact on public services such as health, education and transport. But
the overwhelmingly positive findings were last night challenged by
academics. Robert Rowthorn, an emeritus
professor at Cambridge University, warned that as well as putting pressure
on services, large-scale migration would "undermine the labour market
position of the most vulnerable sections of the local workforce". The
study, the first official attempt to establish the economic and fiscal
impact of the record levels of immigration seen in recent years, states
that "in the long run, it is likely that the net fiscal contribution of an
immigrant will be greater than that of a non-immigrant".
It also claims there is no evidence of
foreign workers pushing British people out of jobs, although it presents no
firm evidence for this.
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Benefits and costs housing
Public 'link immigrants to soaring house prices' Andrew Porter Daily Telegraph, 8 October 2007 |
Immigrants are being blamed for
driving up house prices, according to a new survey.
The Conservatives immediately seized on
the evidence to push their policy of putting annual limits on immigration.
One in five people said controls on the number of foreigners coming to
Britain was the best way to slowing demand and halting soaring property
prices, the survey for propertyfinder.com found.
... New arrivals from abroad came second
only to property investors as being responsible for fuelling the market.
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Benefits and costs
Migrants 'reliant' on benefits Duncan Gardham Daily Telegraph, 1 October 2007 |
The degree to which new immigrants
rely on benefits and council housing has been revealed by a survey that
looks at how much foreigners contribute to the economy.
The league tables have been compiled by
the Left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research on behalf of
Dispatches, to be shown on Channel 4 tonight. The figures come from
the census and the quarterly Labour Force Survey.
Somalians rely heavily on benefits,
according to the statistics - 80 per cent live in social housing and 39 per
cent claim income support. Nearly half of
newly-arrived Turks - 49 per cent - rely on social housing and 39 per cent
claim income support. However, 35 per cent are self-employed.
Other nationalities rely on sickness
benefit - 10 per cent of those newly arrived from Pakistan claim it, along
with nine per cent from Cyprus, and eight per cent from Kenya, Ireland and
Jamaica. Poles work longer hours for less
pay and are paid less sickness benefit than almost any other group.
Nigerians are among the best educated,
most likely to be working in the public sector and least likely to claim
sickness benefit. British-born workers
score below average in most of the tables - they claim more sickness
benefit and council housing and work shorter hours.
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Benefits and costs
Migrants are a drain on Britain, says Left think-tank Ben Leapman Sunday Telegraph, 30 September 2007 |
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants
are a drain on Britain and its economy, says a Left-leaning think-tank.
Migrants from many developing nations
fail to pay their way, while those from wealthy countries, such as the
United States and Australia, provide a boost for the economy.
The report, published today by the
Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), sets out to reveal which
nationalities are "a debit on Britain's balance sheet".
It found that fewer than half of
Britain's 650,000 Somalis, Bangladeshis, Turks and Pakistanis, have jobs
and the four communities have the highest levels of benefit dependency.
Britain's fastest-growing migrant group,
the Poles, score above-average for employment, but have the lowest hourly
pay and make a below-average tax contribution.
Channel 4 commissioned the report for a
Dispatches documentary, Immigrants: the Inconvenient Truth,
to be shown tomorrow night.
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Benefits and costs
Immigrants 'fuel rise in crashes' Daily Telegraph, 25 September 2007 |
Immigrants motorists' attitudes to
drink-driving and speeding is fuelling a surge in road crashes, a police
chief warned yesterday. Eastern European
drivers struggling to understand signs is also thought to be a factor in
the number of accidents. Chief Insp Rick
Dowell, the head of Dorset Police's traffic unit, said there had been an
increase in the number of foreign nationals arrested for drink-driving and
speeding. "The number of fatal or serious
injury collisions involving foreign nationals is also increasing," he said.
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Benefits and costs public services
Migrants 'should pay for our services' Bonnie Malkin Daily Telegraph, 24 September 2007 |
Economic migrants could be forced to
make a bigger contribution to the cost of public services, under plans
outlined by the head of Britain's new equality watchdog.
Trevor Phillips, who launches the
Commission for Equality and Human Rights this week, said that some migrants
who stay in the UK only for a short time should pay more for the use of
schools and hospitals. He said the
current immigration system was not built to deal with "shuttle migrants",
described as people who "virtually commute from Warsaw or Slovenia", and
recommended a "two-track immigration system" instead.
He said: "It's not that we don't want
them to come here. But they put a stress on infrastructure.
"You might say they are people who are
basically here for work ... they and their employers might have to make a
contribution, for social insurance for example." ...
Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister,
said yesterday that the suggestions would be taken seriously.
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism
Police face growing bill for interpreters Aislinn Simpson and Alison Stacey Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2007 |
Police forces are spending millions
of pounds on interpreters to meet the demands posed by immigrant workers.
... ... Thames Valley Police - which
covers Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire - said it was spending
£1 million a year on interpreters. Ten years ago the bill was about
£80,000. ... In London, the
Metropolitan Police spent £9.9 million on interpreters last year - up
almost £3 million in the past three years.
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Benefits and costs employment
One in four Britons is out of work Graeme Wilson Daily Telegraph, 16 August 2007 |
Nearly 10 million adults in Britain
are currently out of work, one in four of the working population, the
Government admitted yesterday. Official
figures showed there are 1.65 million people who are unemployed, with a
further 7.9 million defined as "economically inactive".
The latter group includes more than two
million people who are on long-term sickness benefits as well as students,
people who have taken time off work to look after their family and those
who have taken early retirement. ... The
scale of the figures overshadowed the fact that the official unemployment
figure had dropped by 45,000 over the past three months to 1.65 million,
the lowest figure for more than a year.
At the same time, the number of people in
work rose by 93,000 to 29.07 million, the second highest figure on record.
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Benefits and costs housing
Immigrants given 4 in 10 new homes Tom Savage Daily Star, 16 August 2007 |
Immigrants have taken 40% of all
homes built in the UK in the past 10 years.
The number of properties available for
Brits has been squeezed because of the record number of foreigners coming
to live here, according to official figures released yesterday.
Nearly 600,000 properties have been
needed to house immigrants since 1997 - three times the amount required
under the last Tory Government. On average, 19,000 new homes were needed
for migrants each year from 1992 to 1997.
But after Labour came to power, that
figure rocketed to an average of 66,000 each year from 1997 to 2005 - the
latest year figures are available for - making a total of 592,000 homes.
And experts say the figure is likely to
have continued rising due to East European immigration since 2005.
Tory MP James Clappison, who requested
the figures, said the extra homes also damage the countryside. ...
The Brown Government plans to build 3
million new houses in the UK by 2020, many tailored for firsttime buyers.
But projected levels of immigration
suggest that 1.2m - or 40% - will be needed for migrants, though the
Government claims the figure is 33%.
[Site link] |
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Benefits and costs
Counting the cost of immigration Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 30 July 2007 |
Immigration is, then, a numbers issue
after all. Even the BBC now agrees. Last week, after studiously ignoring
the subject for years, or finding it somewhat distasteful, the Beeb
screened a Panorama programme entitled "How We Lost Count", which it
advertised as though this were some sort of scoop.
These are facts that many of us have
known for years, but it has been an uphill battle to get them seriously
debated. The fact that they are now being discussed is largely due to the
efforts of a small, independent research outfit called Migrationwatch,
which came on to the scene exactly five years ago this week. It issued a
report that was denounced as alarmist, scaremongering, even racist.
It was a prediction that Britain could
expect to receive more than two million immigrants every 10 years for the
foreseeable future unless curbs were introduced. It was absolutely spot on,
but few thanked Sir Andrew Green, the retired diplomat who founded
Migrationwatch, for pointing it out. More than that, efforts were made -
including official ones - to traduce his motives and to trash his group's
research. You may or may not agree with
Sir Andrew's view, which he articulated five years ago, that "the scale of
inward migration is now so great as to be contrary to the best interests of
every section of our community". But you can no longer ignore that scale
nor its consequences. The big question now is what do we do about it?
In a recent parliamentary debate,
important speeches on this subject were made by Nicholas Soames, the Tory
MP for mid-Sussex, and Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead. Mr Soames
proposed moving to zero net immigration from outside the EU; Mr Field, if
anything, was more radical in his prescription. He also said: "The debate
is of course about numbers, but it is also about what it means to create
and maintain a community. If the Government do not change track very
smartly on this issue, the sense of national identity might be lost, and
then we are in totally new territory."
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Benefits and costs employment
Rural migrant workers 'drive out young' Graham Tibbetts Daily Telegraph, 17 July 2007 |
Migrant workers from Eastern Europe
are flooding the rural labour market and forcing young people to leave the
countryside in search of work, a Government advisory body warns today.
The number of migrants working in the
countryside has increased by 200 per cent in three years, with many seeking
employment in agriculture, manufacturing, hotels and retail, according to a
major report by the Commission for Rural Communities. This comes amid a
long-term decline in the number of young people living in rural areas. ...
The report, entitled State of the
Countryside 2007, found much to commend country life over urban life
including full employment, less pollution, better diet and fewer cases of
stress and mental illness. But the
researchers raised concerns that the influx of foreign workers, following
the accession of eight former Soviet-bloc countries to the European Union,
was placing a great strain on local schools and transport and posing
problems for young country people. About
120,000 migrant workers registered to work in rural areas between May 2004
and Sept 2006. ... The commission said
the money the Government gave town halls for supporting immigrants was
based on statistics that were several years out of date.
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Benefits and costs education
Britain's universities 'could lose world position within 10 years' Caroline Davies Daily Telegraph, 5 July 2007 |
Britain's reputation as a world
leader for university education could be lost within 10 years, the
vice-chancellor of Cambridge warned yesterday.
Standards will plummet unless
universities resist the temptation to take on poor-quality students in an
attempt to plug funding gaps, Professor Alison Richard told MPs. ...
Prof Richard told the education select
committee that standards could be seriously compromised by the Government's
drive to increase student numbers. In
particular, the trend to recruit foreign students for their higher fees
could lead to "a downward spiral", she said.
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Benefits and costs housing
200,000 'social homes' were given to immigrants last year Gary Cleland Daily Telegraph, 2 July 2007 |
Five times more immigrants are given
social housing than previously claimed, the Government has admitted.
Just weeks ago ministers insisted that
only one per cent of social housing is given to immigrants, in an attempt
to quell widespread fears that they are treated better by local authorities
than people born in Britain. But after an
investigation by ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald programme, the
Government has admitted that 200,000 of Britain's social homes - five per
cent of the total - were given to immigrants last year.
There is a waiting list of 1.5 million
for the four million social houses in Britain.
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Benefits and costs
Shortage of £50 notes blamed on immigrants Daily Telegraph, 29 June 2007 |
The Bank of England has revealed that
a shortage of £50 notes is the result of so many eastern European
immigrants sending them back home. Poles
in Britain sent home almost £1 billion in the first three months of
this year. Polish officials say two thirds of the Poles who have left the
country are working in Britain and more than three quarters of the money
flooding back to boost the Polish economy has been sent from this country.
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Benefits and costs housing
Open borders demand open debate Sunday Telegraph, 27 May 2007 [Leading article] |
Margaret Hodge, the Minister of
Industry and the Regions, and MP for Barking in London, was therefore doing
little more than stating the obvious when she noted that the basis on which
the state allocates the scarce resource of council housing "needs to be
transparent and it needs to be perceived as fair". She also said that it
was not perceived as fair, particularly since there was a widespread
perception that a recently-arrived family with children would get priority
over people who had lived and paid taxes for most of the lives in Britain.
Such a perception exists, as the polls show: around 70 per cent believe
that long-term tax-paying Britons should have priority over just-arrived
immigrants in the queue for social housing.
Yet the reaction of Margaret Hodge's
Labour colleagues to her statement was hysterical. She was accused of
"allowing the BNP to dictate Labour Party policies", of advocating changes
which would have "catastrophic consequences for community relations", and
advocating "discriminatory" housing policies. The tactic is only too
familiar, because it is what Labour has done whenever any issue relating to
immigration has come up for discussion: it has tried to close down debate
by suggesting that even to talk about the topic is to be "racist" and to
have views indistinguishable from the BNP. ...
Myths and outright falsehoods are quickly
accepted as true when public discussion is suppressed. For instance: it is
not generally true that immigrant families are given automatic preference
over native-born Britons when it comes to allocating housing. But the
refusal of the Government to allow an open and honest discussion of the
subject means that many Britons waiting for council houses believe it. ...
We badly need and honest and open public
debate about the costs and benefits of immigration to Britain, and on the
extent and limits of our obligations to poor or destitute people who arrive
in Britain in search of a better life. ...
There was not a word on the topic in any
of Labour's election manifestos. Conservative attempts to put the issue on
the agenda have been smeared and denigrated in exactly the same way as
Margaret Hodge was last week.
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Benefits and costs housing
Lady Hodge's days must be numbered Simon Heffer Daily Telegraph, 26 May 2007 |
It is hard to believe that one person
who will not be sacked - and for whom it would be hard to find as appalling
a replacement - will be the industry minister, Margaret Hodge. Mrs Hodge -
or Lady Hodge, as she should more correctly be known, her husband being a
knight - came out this week with the amazing statement that our indigenous
population should be given preferential treatment in housing allocations to
recent immigrants. I happen to agree with her, but it is only because the
BNP threatens to unseat her in her constituency because of this issue that
she has come out so cynically in favour of the policy. I won't ask what
took her so long, just why even now she is still allowed to hold office.
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Benefits and costs housing
Johnson accuses Hodge of using 'language of BNP' Brendan Carlin Daily Telegraph, 25 May 2007 |
Labour's immigration row deepened
last night after the Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, accused a fellow
minister of language worthy of the British National Party.
Mr Johnson, one of the frontrunners to be
Labour's deputy leader, condemned the industry minister, Margaret Hodge,
for claiming that existing British families should have more right than
immigrants to social housing. Speaking on
BBC's Question Time, Mr Johnson said: "The problem with that is
that's the kind of language of the BNP.
"And it's grist to the mill of the BNP,
particularly as there is no evidence that there's any problem in social
housing - none whatsoever." ... Earlier
this week, Mrs Hodge was rebuked by two other contenders for the deputy
leadership - Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and backbencher
Jon Cruddas. ... However, Mrs Hodge, who
was born in Egypt, won some support from Hazel Blears, Labour's party
chairman and also a deputy leadership candidate. She said that "you have
got to look at allocations policies to show that they are fair".
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Benefits and costs housing
Shame on you, Margaret Hodge Andrew O'Hagan Daily Telegraph, 22 May 2007 |
Are modern politicians generally more
disgusting than they used to be? I feel it is worth pondering the question
as you go about trying to understand the latest statement by Margaret Hodge
on the question of immigrants and public housing. ...
It was nauseatingly worded, in an article
for the Observer, so as to seem fair to all parties, but nobody is
fooled: Mrs Hodge wants to stop foreigners from taking our houses.
She hasn't the courage to present the
matter so frankly, but this is what she means, and her idea is completely
divisive. ... Why do you think she did
it? I'll give you three clues. One: she represents Barking. Two: her
constituency used to be very white and now it's very mixed. And three: the
BNP gained 11 seats on the local council last year. So there you have it,
the simple moral arithmetic of modern British politics. Mrs Hodge is wooing
those of her constituents who have lately found their concerns being
represented most nakedly by the British National Party, and their sitting
MP is keen enough to see that she'd better say something to appease their
growing anger. Shame on her. And shame on
them. The notion that immigrants are hoisted on to the housing lists at the
expense of true blue working-class English folk is a complete fallacy. It's
more than a fallacy: it's a stupid, jingoistic fallacy, propagated by
people who have their own reasons for feeling aggrieved at their lot in
life.
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Benefits and costs housing
A message to my fellow immigrants Margaret Hodge, Industry Minister The Observer, 20 May 2007 |
In our open, tolerant country, there
are, thankfully, few issues that remain taboo. But, motivated by the fear
of both legitimising racism and encouraging the extreme right, migration is
one. Yet for many voters, it continues to be a top issue.
My constituency of Barking in east London
has experienced rapid change, moving from predominantly white
neighbourhoods to many multiracial neighbourhoods. ... ...
Unless we listen, we shall be unable to
convince people that we are on their side as they learn to live with new
neighbours in the tolerant and strong multiracial society we on the liberal
left desire. This stifled debate means we have missed the opportunity to
articulate more clearly the huge benefits to our economy, our culture and
the evolving nature of our Britishness that migration brings. ...
We need just immigration policies that
are fairly and efficiently administered. But we also need to acknowledge
that population change is a feature of the modern world, of our
globalisation. Yet the period of transition can be disturbing and painful.
We all find change difficult and new neighbours, new shops and new habits
in our street or on our estate do demand adjustment. As ever, the people
who face the greatest changes tend to be those who live in the poorest
communities where migrants can afford to settle.
So while we need strong leadership to
promote the rewards migration offers, it is only fair to hear the
resentments and fears it can arouse. Only by listening to those fears can
we demonstrate understanding for the difficulties settled communities
experience in adjusting and move beyond the fears to secure tolerance and
harmony. ... We prioritise the needs of
an individual migrant family over the entitlement others feel they have. So
a recently arrived family with four or five children living in a damp and
overcrowded, privately rented flat with the children suffering from asthma
will usually get priority over a family with less housing need who have
lived in the area for three generations and are stuck at home with the
grandparents. We should look at policies
where the legitimate sense of entitlement felt by the indigenous family
overrides the legitimate need demonstrated by the new migrants.
We should also look at drawing up
different rules based on, for instance, length of residence, citizenship or
national insurance contributions which carry more weight in a transparent
points system used to decide who is entitled to access social housing.
There are a small number of confirmed refugees who, of course, would
receive the same entitlements as British citizens. However, most new
migrant families are economic migrants who choose to come to live and work
here. If you choose to come to Britain, should you presume the right to
access social housing? ... As an
immigrant myself, although I am white and middle class, I know how
difficult it is to adapt in a new country. ... I know that striking the
best balance in our approach to migration is fraught with huge
difficulties. But if we don't dare to talk about it, we'll never get it
right.
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Benefits and costs statistics
Whitehall immigration figures are too low, say councils Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 15 May 2007 |
The Government was accused yesterday
of exaggerating the economic benefits of immigration as council leaders
complained that official data about migrant numbers were flawed.
Liam Byrne, the Home Office minister,
said immigrants were contributing half a billion pounds every working day
to the economy, a figure later repeated by Downing Street.
This would amount to £125 billion a
year - equivalent to 10 per cent of total GDP.
But critics said it did not take into
account the fact that immigrants also added to the population, which meant
that on a per head basis the addition was negligible.
Mr Byrne was responding to criticism from
town hall bosses that official statistics underestimated the number of
migrants in their areas. This affects the
grants they receive from Whitehall, which are based on population numbers.
... Councils receive around £600 for
every person in the borough from central government. ...
Sir Simon Milton, the leader of
Westminster City Council, said 2,000 migrants were coming through Victorian
coach station every week.
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Benefits and costs assessment
Forum to assess impact of record immigration Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 29 March 2007 |
Ministers are to set up a forum to
assess the impact of immigration on communities, the Home Office announced
yesterday. The new body, which follows 10
years of record immigration under Labour, will consider evidence that
schools, hospitals, housing and transport infrastructure are all feeling
the strain of a growing population. ...
The creation of the Migration Impacts
Forum (MIF), alongside another body advising on skills shortages that
immigrants might be able to fill, marks a significant change of approach by
Labour, which has justified the four-fold increase in immigration since
1997 almost entirely on economic grounds. ...
Yesterday's announcement was part of a
package of measures that included the prospect of a £1,000 fine on
families whose relatives failed to go home when their visas expired. It is
already an offence punishable by a £5,000 fine to retain a nanny who
has overstayed. It also envisaged further
curbs on forced marriage by raising the minimum age for bringing a spouse
into the country from 18 to 21. It will be a requirement for spouses to
learn English before they can join they wife or husband. ...
Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of
Migrationwatch, said: "It is high time that the wider picture was
considered, including the widespread public concern that we are losing our
own culture. "But this forum will be
useless if it includes only the usual suspects from the immigration
industry and employers who stand to gain from immigration."
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Benefits and costs asylum
Taxpayers get bill for asylum seekers Daily Telegraph, 16 March 2007 |
Taxpayers will have to pick up the
bill for looking after failed asylum seekers after a council lost a legal
test case yesterday. Hillingdon borough
in west London is adding £10 to its average tax bill to cover the cost
because the Government refuses to provide the funds.
The Tory-run council, which covers
Heathrow, spends £1 million a year looking after people who arrive as
unaccompanied children and remains legally responsible for them until they
are 21.
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Benefits and costs jobs
'Learn English or lose benefits' George Jones Daily Telegraph, 13 February 2007 |
Unemployed immigrants will have to
show they are learning English or risk losing benefits from April, Jim
Murphy, the welfare minister, announced yesterday.
About 40,000 jobless people from ethnic
minorities say their poor English is a barrier to finding employment - and
£4.5m is spent on translators in job centres.
The Government believes that this money
would be better spent on teaching them English so they could get jobs
rather than claim benefit. Mr Murphy told a Work Foundation seminar that it
was "unacceptable" that ethnic minorities in Britain earned on average a
third less than their white counterparts.
While 15 per cent of members of ethnic
minorities cited language difficulties as a barrier to work, not enough of
the language-learning opportunities at job centres were being taken up.
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Benefits and costs
Migrants 'add 4p a week' to your pocket Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 3 January 2007 |
The alleged economic benefit to
Britain of record levels of immigration are a myth, new figures suggest.
They show a "very slight" gain of around
4p a week for each member of the native population - not enough to buy a
Mars bar a month. An analysis carried out
by Migrationwatch UK used the Government's own claim that immigrants
contribute a net £4 billion a year to Britain's gross domestic
product. The study said this amounted to
£2.10 a year for each of Britain's 60 million inhabitants.
It concluded: "The much vaunted
contribution of immigrants to the economy is very slight indeed." ...
Migrationwatch examined a range of
British and international studies on the economic value of mass
immigration, all of which indicate that, on a per capita basis, the
financial benefits are minimal. In
addition, high levels of immigration place huge pressure on housing, health
and schools and have an increasing impact on employment.
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Benefits and costs
Little to show from tide of migrants Sir Andrew Green Daily Telegraph, 3 January 2007 |
It is amazing what the Government's
spin doctors have been getting away with. For years they have trumpeted the
economic benefits of immigration but now we find that they are, in fact,
very small. The Government recently put a
figure on it for the first time. Ministers told Parliament that immigrants
add "at least £4 billion to production". What they did not say is that
they also add almost exactly the equivalent percentage to our population,
so the extra wealth per head is barely positive. We calculate it is 4p per
week per head. Another claim - that immigrants contribute 10-15 per cent of
trend growth - gives a slightly better result of 12p a week. Both are
trivial. We shouldn't be surprised. Major
studies in America, Canada and Australia found similarly small benefit -
typically a tenth of one per cent of GDP. ...
But the key issue is scale. We need to
balance any economic benefit against the social cost of immigration ...
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Benefits and costs
£100m translation bill for migrants who can't or won't speak English Amy Iggulden Daily Telegraph, 14 December 2006 |
Public spending on interpreters and
translation for immigrants is to be reviewed after figures revealed the
yearly bill is more than £100 million.
Police forces, councils and hospitals are
each spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money on
translating services that include recycling and anti-smoking advice, it
emerged yesterday. ... The Government
yesterday ordered a review after figures showed that NHS trusts spend at
least £55 million a year on translating and interpretation, the courts
and police spend £31.3 million and local authorities spend £25
million a year. The costs, obtained by
the BBC, are likely to be an underestimate because not all public bodies
are taken into account. The details show
how the Metropolitan Police spends £8.4 million a year, Barts and the
London NHS Trust spends £1 million a year, and the Department of Work
and Pensions spends £3 million on a telephone interpreting service.
Overall, the interpretation market for
business and the public sector is thought to be worth about £400
million and growing to reflect the increasingly diverse population,
according to the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.
The increase in the courts service bill
alone - now £10 million a year - has trebled over five years. ...
Phil Woolas, the local government
minister, admitted that the situation needed to be examined. He said that
more than £1 billion is already being spent on teaching English.
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism
Winning Muslim hearts and minds Michael Burleigh, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2006 |
We are entitled to have accurate
information about immigration, with open discussion of its cultural, as
well as economic, merits and demerits. Clear lines need to be established
about what the majority of people here are prepared to tolerate, for
toleration is not some open-ended, one-way arrangement. It's all very well
to say you are against the formation of inner-city ghettos potentially
subtracted from common law, but how, precisely, do Conservatives imagine
dispersing them or preventing their formation?
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Benefits and costs
'Feckless' Poles aim for Britain Daily Telegraph, 8 November 2006 |
"Feckless" Poles have turned Britain
into their number one destination, the Polish president declared yesterday
during a press conference with Tony Blair in Number 10.
Lech Kaczynski said Britain had become
the "destination of choice" for homeless and jobless Poles and complained
that many of his countrymen were still claiming benefits in Poland despite
holding down jobs in Britain.
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Benefits and costs drug addicts
Doctor's diary Dr James Lefanu Daily Telegraph, 20 October 2006 |
Back in the mid-1990s, ...
At the same time, when sentencing an
Italian drug addict convicted of theft, a judge remarked how those coming
before the bench were frequently from other countries in the European Union
who appeared to have moved to Britain to take advantage of the generous
attitude of the welfare system to those in their situation. A decade on,
it's hard to imagine anything more in need of reform.
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Benefits and costs
Why is the white working class so roundly despised? Andrew Gimson Daily Telegraph, 13 October 2006 |
The Government has encouraged mass
migration, a change of which I happen to be in favour, for I believe these
newcomers are an asset to our country and will rapidly become British. But
no heed has been paid to those members of the indigenous working class who
have found their wages undercut by cheap foreign competition, and have
difficulty getting council housing.
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Benefits and costs education
Months after they turned children away, 'full' schools open to migrants Julie Henry Sunday Telegraph, 8 October 2006 |
Schools that are officially full have
been forced to find places for eastern European children who turn up at
their gates after term has started.
Secondary schools across the east of
England have suspended admission rules that dictate how many children they
can accommodate each year, in order to take dozens more pupils, mostly from
the EU accession states of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.
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Benefits and costs
Life in Britain 'declining' Laura Clout Daily Telegraph, 4 September 2006 |
Britain is a worse place to live now
than it was 20 years ago, according to almost half of respondents to a
nationwide poll. Lack of respect and
crime were given as the main reasons for the decline by the 47 per cent who
felt that British life had deteriorated since 1986. Less than a quarter
believed that it had improved. Almost
half of those who felt the country had gone downhill cited a lack of
respect and crime, while 31 per cent mentioned the cost of living.
Terrorism and immigration were each blamed by 28 per cent of respondents to
the poll, conducted for BBC1's Six O'Clock News.
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Benefits and costs
Immigrants 'should be set £27,000 wage target' Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 29 August 2006 |
Immigrants unable to earn more than
£27,000 a year should not be allowed to settle in Britain because they
do not make "a positive contribution", a report says today.
The Migrationwatch think-tank suggests
that the figure could be used to set an optimum level of immigration along
the lines recently suggested by John Reid, the Home Secretary. ...
The report says that immigration is of
long-term benefit to the economy only if it raises productivity. Otherwise,
it simply adds to the pressure on infrastructure and public services.
The paper adds that less skilled migrants
can make a contribution by filling gaps while British workers are trained
but should not be allowed to settle permanently. ...
Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of
Migrationwatch, said: "The social costs of the present massive levels of
immigration far outweigh any possible benefit."
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Benefits and costs
The cry has gone up 'Enoch was right'. Tosh. Immigration is good for Britain Magnus Linklater The Times, 23 August 2006 |
"If Enoch Powell were alive today,
what would he have to say about the current security situation?" It was a
typical Any Questions debating point - the equivalent of rolling a grenade
into a crowded pub, then standing back to see what would happen. Within
minutes, the discussion on Radio 4 had become a full-scale argument about
Islamic terrorism, multiculturalism, free trade and Polish plumbers. From
this week, it is also about Romanians and Bulgarians, rampant Aids and the
white slave traffic. The debate about immigration is as inflammatory today
as it was when Powell articulated it in 1968. It is also as dangerously
confused. The answer Powell himself would
undoubtedly have given is: "I told you so." He would have claimed
prescience about the numbers flooding into Britain from abroad, he would
say that multiculturalism (which he referred to it in those days as
"communalism") had demonstrably failed, and he would have argued that the
growth of immigrant communities had undermined the security of the State.
He said as much in his infamous "rivers of blood" speech, when he spoke of
"dangerous and divisive elements" within the immigrant community, who would
use Britain's well-intentioned race relations laws "to organise and
consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their
fellow-citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest".
It was a blatantly racist speech, playing
to the most basic fears of the white population at the time about the
growth of immigration from the Commonwealth. It was also wrong. Powell
presumed that the majority of immigrants would become increasingly
alienated from society and that, as their numbers increased, they would
seek to assert their domination over the native British. He thought that
the sheer weight of numbers would simply overwhelm white communities, who
would become, to quote him, "strangers in their own country". He predicted
intolerable tensions as a result, with a system of "one-way privilege"
operating in favour of immigrants. That has not happened. There have been
flashpoints along the way - race riots in Brixton, Bristol and the North of
England, racist attacks and murders, and the worrying alienation of Muslim
minorities. But the breakdown that he predicted has not happened; Powell's
nightmare vision has not materialised. It
has not, however, gone away. In different forms, it is summoned up to warn
us of the threat from Islamic extremists, from asylum-seekers, and now the
influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe. ... ...
As so often, there is a grain of truth in
some of these arguments - but collectively, they amount to a lie.
Immigration has, by and large, been of enormous benefit to Britain. It has
helped to transform our economy, enrich our cultural life, support our
public services and improve our image abroad. It would be inconceivable to
imagine our health or transport systems functioning without it. It fills a
skills gap among doctors and teachers. It allows the nation's corner shops
to survive. Toynbee's argument about cheap labour could have been deployed
at any time over the past 50 years, and would have prevented buses and
trains from functioning, hospitals being cleaned, schools being staffed and
maintained. I have no doubt that mass
immigration needs to be controlled, but rather than new restrictions the
current rules should be managed more effectively and with greater humanity.
This is too important an issue to be hijacked by prejudice disguising
itself as rational debate. Unless we distinguish carefully between its
differing strands, we might just as well give in to racism and say that
Enoch was right all along.
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Benefits and costs
Keith Vaz MP (Lab), Chair, Labour Party Ethnic Minority Taskforce Daily Telegraph, 10 August 2006 [Letter to the Editor] |
It is ... regrettable that some
commentators have already jumped to the conclusion that immigration acts as
a drain on the national exchequer. As a
recent report by the Ernst & Young Item Club concluded, immigration from
other EU countries has helped to keep inflation under control, boost
economic output and in fact raised tax revenue by £300 million in
2006.
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Benefits and costs
Legal aid for asylum seekers tops £1bn Jonathan Wynne-Jones Sunday Telegraph, 6 August 2006 |
More than a billion pounds of
taxpayers' money has been spent on legal aid in immigration and asylum
cases in the past decade, according to Government figures.
In that period, the amount provided by
the Department for Constitutional Affairs for the cases has nearly
quadrupled - from £29 million in 1996-7 to £107.3 million in
2005-6.
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Benefits and costs population
Blair admits he has no policy on population George Jones Daily Telegraph, 5 July 2006 |
The Government has no policy for
controlling the size of Britain's population, Tony Blair admitted
yesterday. ... Tony Wright, the Labour MP
for Cannock Chase, told Mr Blair that Britain's population had topped 60
million for the first time last year and was expected to rise 12 per cent
over the next generation. The rises were equivalent to having a new Oxford,
a new Middlesbrough and a new Ipswich every year, and migration was the
main driver of the rise. ... Mr Wright
urged Mr Blair to set up a commission to give a cost and benefit analysis
about different levels of population. ...
Asked if the Government had a population
policy, Mr Blair replied: "No, but we do have a migration policy
obviously." He agreed with an MP's
suggestion that the issue was "political dynamite". He said it was
difficult to give objective facts on the benefits and "disbenefits" of
migration. Migration on the whole was
positive and with benefit to countries but it needed to be controlled.
Asked if thousands of people could be deported, even if they had been in
Britain for several years, he said there was "no easy way" of dealing with
the issue. But allowing all illegal
migrants to stay would encourage many more to come, he said. ...
Gwyneth Dunwoody, the Labour MP for Crewe
and Nantwich, told Mr Blair that a large influx of migrants from the new EU
states was putting schools and housing under strain in some areas.
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Benefits and costs
Never have we seen immigration on this scale: we just can't cope Robert Rowthorn, professor of economics at King's College, Cambridge Sunday Telegraph, 2 July 2006 |
As an academic economist, I have
examined many serious studies that have analysed the economic effects of
immigration. There is no evidence from any of them that large-scale
immigration generates large-scale economic benefits for the existing
population as a whole. On the contrary, all the research suggests that the
benefits are either close to zero, or negative.
Immigration can't solve the pensions
crisis, nor solve the problem of an ageing population, as its advocates so
often claim. It can, at most, delay the day of reckoning, because, of
course, immigrants themselves grow old, and they need pensions. The
injection of large numbers of unskilled workers into the economy does not
benefit the bulk of the population to any great extent. It benefits the
nanny- and house-cleaner-using classes; it benefits employers who want to
pay low wages; but it does not benefit indigenous, unskilled Britons, who
have to compete with immigrants willing to work hard for very low wages in
unpleasant working conditions. For
low-skilled Britons, the result is that there are only two options: very
low pay or unemployment. ... It is
bizarre that the Labour Party, which still continues to insist that it is
the party of the poor and vulnerable, should endorse a policy the purpose
of which is the creation of what Marx called "a reserve army of labour": a
pool of workers whose presence ensures that rates of pay for cleaners and
ancillary staff in the NHS can be kept as low as possible. ...
Unskilled migrants and their families
often are net consumers of taxes: their children are educated in state
schools, they are looked after when they have medical problems by the NHS,
and they are eligible for state benefits if they are unable to find work.
The new arrivals place a significant strain on the housing stock and
delivery of public services in the neighbourhoods where new immigrants
live: schools, hospitals and GP surgeries become more crowded, and
state-subsidised housing gets more difficult to obtain. ...
At the present rate of 223,000 additional
immigrants every year, though, and adding the children that they will
produce, the population of Britain will grow by more than 12 million to
reach 73.2 million by 2046. There is no parallel for such a huge influx
over a mere 40 years in our recorded history.
Most of the immigrants will settle in
London and the South-East, because that is where the jobs are. There is
already a chronic housing shortage in that part of England, a large portion
of which is due to immigration. ... Exacerbating the housing shortage and
increasing the amount and density of built-on land, however, is only one of
a series of transformations that will be triggered by the constant arrival
of immigrants. They will inevitably completely change the culture and
complexion of many cities. I am not
suggesting that all those changes will be bad, because I am sure that not
all of them will be. While the immigration lobby tries to smear anyone who
questions the benefits of large-scale immigration as "racist", the real
issue is not whether you like or dislike the social changes that the
colossal influx of immigrants will bring. It is rather that the Government
has embarked on a policy that will totally change the nature of many of the
communities in which we live without consulting any of us.
... There was nothing about increasing
immigration in Labour's manifesto of 1997, or of 2001, or of 2005.
... We desperately need an honest debate
on the issue. But if the Government's record is anything to go by, it will
do everything it can to prevent one.
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Benefits and costs
Ten million immigrants 'could help crisis' Edmund Conway Daily Telegraph, 24 June 2006 |
The pensions crisis could be solved
by allowing an extra 10 million migrants into the UK in the next 20 years,
leading economists have suggested.
Experts from the Royal Economic Society
said that the population in the UK was ageing so fast that the workforce -
as it currently stands - would not be able to afford to pay the pensions
bill for their elders. Professors David
Blake and Les Mayhew have produced a study which also concludes that the
government should raise the pension age to 70, and must lift it beyond 65
sooner than it already plans. ... Prof
Blake said: "From a wider perspective, all these things may need to occur -
working longer, increases in migration and increases in contribution
levels. ..."
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism
£700,000 bill for rural police interpreters David Sapsted Daily Telegraph, 16 June 2006 |
A rural police force had to spend
more than £700,000 last year employing interpreters to interview
suspects, victims and witnesses. The
money - the equivalent of a year's pay for 35 beat bobbies - was spent by
the Cambridgeshire police in the year ending March 31.
Not only are the Fens a magnet for
migrant workers and Cambridge a centre for tourists, but Peterborough is a
"cluster" area for immigrants coming into East Anglia.
However, the police authority said
yesterday that some of the people the police had to deal with were second
or even third generation Britons who did not speak English.
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Benefits and costs
Government 'has hidden £200m cost of migrants' Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 25 April 2006 |
Immigrants are a net cost on the
economy and not a benefit as the Government has claimed, a report says
today. The study by Migrationwatch UK
challenges official figures suggesting that immigrants annually contribute
£2.5 billion more to the economy in taxes than they receive in
benefits and state services. It accuses
Whitehall of using "entirely false" methodology to back up its claims by
failing to take full account of the children of immigrants. ...
The report says the original research,
widely and regularly quoted by ministers, chose the only assumption that
could deliver the "positive" result they were seeking. ...
Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of
Migrationwatch, said: "Our research completely demolishes the Government's
last remaining excuse for the highest levels of immigration in our history
by exposing a serious error in their methodology. The Government has used
this statistic on every possible occasion but now it has been shown up as
entirely worthless." The Home Office
research paper, published in 2002, said that although immigrants cost
£28.8 billion in welfare benefits and state services that year, they
contributed £31.2 billion in taxes.
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Benefits and costs
Of course the wealthy want an immigration free-for-all Polly Toynbee *The Guardian, 11 October 2005 |
Here is a sign of how fast some
Tories are on the move. Tory modernising MP John Bercow has written a
pamphlet slashing and burning his party's election policy on asylum and
immigration. Bercow is one of those who got his U-turn in early, his career
a template for how far the modernisers in the party are travelling. Once a
Thatcherite Tory boy of the far right, then on the move with Portillo, now
he is where his party needs to be - not racist or Daily Mailist but
pragmatic. ... Praise of immigration is
the main thrust of Bercow's pamphlet. His argument for an open immigration
policy is liberal in the free-market sense. A call for free movement of
(cheaper) labour across the globe is, after all, the CBI's one and only
"liberal" policy. Bercow, like Labour,
says that in a global economy the UK needs migrants to fill jobs the
British are "unable or unwilling to do". Migrant workers put in more than
they take out, making a net contribution of £2.5bn. The Home Office
says a 1% increase in immigration yields up to a 1.5% increase in GDP. Of
the entire working population, 10% are now born abroad. The government
agrees with Bercow and is setting up a new skills advisory body to let in
migrants according to business demand.
Bercow and Labour hotly assert that
migrants don't take jobs from British workers nor depress wages. But there
is no evidence for this assertion. It is impossible to know what level
wages might be at or how many unemployed might have been tugged into jobs
at higher pay rates had Britain kept its doors shut to new EU citizens
until their countries had caught up economically.
Blair and Brown embrace the inevitability
of globalisation, but make a deliberately class-blind analysis. Migrants do
bring GDP growth, but remember the Gate Gourmet workers fired to make way
for cheaper newly arrived workers. Migrants add to the profits of the
company and thus to GDP. They keep down the cost of flying for people
wealthy enough to fly. They also hold down the pay rate for all other
low-paid workers, keeping wage inflation remarkably low and the Bank of
England very happy. ... Try this thought
experiment: 43.5% of nurses recruited by the NHS since 1999 come from
outside the UK. What if that were banned? The NHS in London would find
clever ways to recruit from the city's mass of underqualified boys and
girls, single mothers and other non-workers. Recruiters might set up
special classes for 14-year-olds interested in nursing, promising work as
nursing assistants while they trained, places to live in attractive nurses'
homes, starter homes for key-worker families, status and good pay. The
offer would be irresistible, and yes, taxes would be higher. ...
[Incoming Assets: Why Tories should
change policy on immigration and asylum, by John Bercow MP, is published by
the Social Market Foundation.]
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Benefits and costs
Taboo topic [1] Thomas Sowell The Social Contract, Fall 2005 |
Immigration has joined the long list
of subjects on which it is taboo to talk sense in plain English. At the
heart of much confusion about immigration is the notion that we "need"
immigrants - legal or illegal - to do work that Americans won't do.
What we "need" depends on what it costs
and what we are willing to pay. If I were a billionaire, I might "need" my
own private jet. But I can remember a time when my family didn't even
"need" electricity. Leaving prices out of
the picture is probably the source of more fallacies in economics than any
other single misconception. At current wages for low-level jobs and current
levels of welfare, there are indeed many jobs that Americans will not take.
The fact that immigrants - and especially
illegal immigrants - will take those jobs is the very reason the wage
levels will not rise enough to attract Americans.
This is not rocket science. It is
elementary supply and demand. Yet we continue to hear about the "need" for
immigrants to do jobs that Americans will not do - even though these are
all jobs that Americans have done for generations before mass illegal
immigration became a way of life.
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Benefits and costs
Taboo topic [2] Thomas Sowell The Social Contract, Fall 2005 |
Europeans and Americans have for
decades been playing Russian roulette with their loose immigration
policies. The intelligentsia have told us that it would be wrong, and even
racist, to set limits based on where the immigrants come from. ...
In that rhetoric, all differences between
peoples are magically transformed into mere "stereotypes" and
"perceptions." This blithely ignores hard
data showing, for example, that people who come here from some countries
are ten times more likely to go on welfare as people from some other
countries. The media and the
intelligentsia love to say that most immigrants, from whatever group, are
good people. But what "most" people from a given country are like is
irrelevant. If 85 per cent of group A are
fine people and 95 per cent of group B are fine people, that means you are
going to be importing three times as many undesirables when you let in
people from group A. ... In the current
climate of political correctness it is taboo even to mention facts that go
against the rosy picture of immigrants - for example, the fact that Russia
and Nigeria are always listed among the most corrupt countries on earth,
and that Russian and Nigerian immigrants in the United States have already
established patterns of crime well known to law enforcement but kept from
the public by the mainstream media.
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Benefits and costs myths
Large-scale immigration has prompted a flood of shoddy economic thinking Ruth Lea Daily Telegraph, 19 April 2004 |
In November 2003, David Blunkett,
defending the Government's immigration policy, asserted that "legal
migrants brought economic benefits" and there was "no obvious limit" to the
number of immigrants who could settle in the UK. In other words, the quite
unprecedented large-scale immigration of a net 200,000 to 250,000 a year
into Britain was not just perfectly acceptable, but there was no obvious
reason why it should not be higher. ...
... ... Finally, I would like to dispel a
couple of myths about immigration. The first is that large-scale
immigration is necessary for buoyant economic growth. But this was most
emphatically not the case in post-war Japan. The second is that the
native-born British "will not do certain jobs". But they do these jobs in
parts of the country where there are very few immigrants.
Clearly, immigration does bring economic
benefits but there are, equally clearly, costs as well. The Government
should really be prepared to give us the whole picture.
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BIAS |
Bias religion
Church leaders believe anti-Christian bias rife Jonathan Wynne-Jones Sunday Telegraph, 15 February 2009 |
Almost two thirds of the Church of
England General Synod believe Christians are the victims of discrimination
in the workplace. A survey of members of
the Church's parliament found that 63 per cent of them felt that Christians
faced discrimination at work. ... While
59 per cent agreed that they had seen a decline in religious liberty over
the past decade, 38 per cent of members disagreed. ...
Church leaders have made impassioned
pleas to Christians to stand up for their beliefs.
... However, Synod members were divided
on whether Christianity should be exempt from equality legislation.
While there are limited exemptions for
religious employers under equality regulations, a significant number of
respondents said that the Church should not be given the opportunity to opt
out. ... The Sunday Telegraph
survey was of 80 of the Synod's 484 members, including bishops, clergy and
laity.
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Bias religion
Losing our religion Olga Craig and Patrick Sawer Sunday Telegraph, 15 February 2009 |
And nowhere, according to councillor
Alan Craig, of the Christian People's Alliance, is that wake-up call more
vital than in the classrooms. "There is clearly growing discrimination
against Christianity in our schools," he says. Teachers are being prevented
from implementing policies that may be opposed by some Muslim parents by
the fear of an Islamic backlash, believes Craig. ...
In England and Wales, the law states that
children at state schools "shall, on each school day, take part in an act
of collective worship" which should be "wholly or mainly of a broadly
Christian character". In the light of the many instances of Nativity plays
being banned and Christ's birth being celebrated at "Wintermass" rather
than Christmas, Craig points out that it is difficult to remember that the
Christian element of religious education is statutory. ...
Government proposals aimed at giving
increased legal rights to Muslims have left many wondering if the result
will be a further clampdown on Christianity. The measures will force
councils, schools, hospitals and other public bodies to treat members of
all faiths equally. The result, says Simon Calvert, of the Christian
Institute, could be a fresh onslaught of politically correct rulings. "We
are worried that this will further squeeze out Christians," he says.
"Christian groups already find it difficult to get funding from local
councils." He fears that town hall bureaucrats could "over interpret and
gold-plate" measures. "It will simply mean more of the politically correct
rulings, such as banning Christmas celebrations and crucifixes from the
work place."
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Bias free speech
Whatever happened to free speech? Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 13 February 2009 |
The refusal to admit the oddball
Dutch MP Geert Wilders to Britain yesterday marks a further retreat from
this country's traditions of free speech. ... ...
Yet what possible threat to public
security is posed by a Dutch MP showing a film, in private, to a smattering
of peers on a Thursday afternoon in February? Of itself, the film does not
call for violence against Muslims; indeed, it suggests that Islam is a
cause of violence, a view with which you are entitled to agree or feel
strongly about, but not to prohibit. The
reason for the ban appears to have been the possibility of protests by some
Muslim organisations against Wilders's visit. In other words, his freedom
to express a view and the liberty of peers to hear it in an institution
supposedly devoted to free speech, were set aside in the face of
intimidation the opposite of what happened in the Rushdie case, even
if that author was forced into hiding.
What is particularly insidious is the
application of double standards. One of those most opposed to Wilders's
visit is the Muslim peer Lord Ahmed, though he denies allegations that he
warned parliamentary authorities that 10,000 demonstrators would take to
the streets. Yet two years ago, Lord Ahmed invited Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a
Palestinian previously detained on suspicion of fundraising for groups
linked to al-Qaeda, to Westminster to meet him. When he was criticised for
doing so, he said it was his parliamentary duty to hear Rideh's complaints.
He does not appear to see any contradiction with the position he now adopts
against his fellow peers. ... ... Free
speech is about understanding that some people hold a different view from
you, whether you like it or not. When we start to alert the "authorities"
to thought crimes we really are one step away from the dystopian world that
Orwell invented as a warning, not a prophecy.
The Government that has treated our
liberties in such a cavalier way is having none of this, of course. David
Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said the film made by Wilders was "full of
hate" and therefore fell foul of British laws, though he admitted that he
had not seen it and therefore could not judge. But, in any case, is he
right? Is it against the law? People have
always been free under the criminal law to speak their minds, provided they
did not, in doing so, incite others to commit violence or infringe public
order. ... However, it is necessary to demonstrate that the words
complained of are likely to stir up hatred and public disorder, not merely
to complain that they are unpleasant or objectionable to some. Imams have
been allowed to continue preaching in mosques when it could be argued that
they have overstepped this mark, as when they have called for the death of
homosexuals or Jews. Wilders is no
advertisement for free speech. After all, he wants the Koran to be banned.
But that is not the point. It is what this affair says about us, not him,
that matters. Is Britain now adopting a position where people who support
suicide bombers and jihad are able to make known their opinions without
legal challenge, whereas those who oppose them cannot?
The very people who in 1989 were
demanding the murder of Salman Rushdie for writing a book are today leading
the charge against a Dutch MP for making a film. The fundamental difference
is that 20 years ago, the government supported free speech; today, it has
cravenly surrendered. It is simply not good enough to say that Wilders
should not be heard because he might provoke a backlash from those who do
not like him or his views. That is not upholding the law. That is
appeasement.
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Bias BBC, racism
Golly: now we know what's truly offensive Charles Moore Daily Telegraph, 5 February 2009 |
Commenting on the BBC's decision to
sack Carol Thatcher from The One Show because she described a tennis player
as looking like a "golliwog", a spokesman for the corporation said: "The
BBC considers any language of a racist nature wholly unacceptable." ...
If Carol used the supposedly shocking
word "golliwog", you can be quite sure that she used it without malice
indeed, with good will. The worst that you could possibly say about
her was that her choice of words was thoughtless.
But, before you say that, you come to the
second question. Since when has the BBC decided that what is said off
screen, in the studio, is a matter of career life or death? I have spent
more hours than I care to remember sitting in BBC studios, and the remarks
I have heard in them, often delivered by household names, have frequently
strayed I am putting this politely from the standards
supposedly demanded by the BBC on air. I have heard racism (usually against
Americans), sexism (usually against Carol's mother), blasphemy, obscenity,
rage, bias. If I had decided to profess myself "shocked" (as Adrian Chiles,
the presenter of The One Show, did), and if I had then sneaked to the
authorities, would the speaker have been thrown out of his job? Should he
have been? A BBC executive might argue
though I would disagree that the word "golliwog" is so
offensive that it should never be broadcast. As an experienced broadcaster
herself, Carol Thatcher might be expected to be aware of that sensitivity
and be careful about it. But she was not broadcasting. She committed no
offence, professional or moral not even, since the person she
described was not in the room, an offence of manners. ...
A third question arises for the
corporation. We have it from its spokesman's own lips that any racist
language is "wholly unacceptable". How does that square with its fervent
commitment, constantly repeated in the affair of Jonathan Ross, to "cutting
edge" comedy? ... You and I might think
that the joys of "edgy" comedy are overrated, but if we are to have it,
wouldn't it be edgier to have words like "golliwog" scattered about as
well? Why not antagonise Disgusted of Brixton, as well as Disgusted of
Tunbridge Wells? ... So this affair
enables us to understand better what the BBC is really up to when it pays
Jonathan Ross so much money to swear and talk on screen about bodily
functions and sex with octogenarians for hours on end. It is not engaged in
a brave, if misguided, attempt to challenge the conventional opinions of
viewers in general in order to shake them out of their complacency and
strike a blow for artistic innovation. If that were the case, it would also
insult homosexuals, the prophet Mohammed, President Obama, racial
minorities, and anyone else who qualifies for the strangely assorted club
of those who earn special deference from our modern elites.
No, what the BBC is doing is the cultural
target-bombing of people who are very numerous, but whose attitudes do not
accord with those of its senior executives old people, white people,
Christian people, monarchist people, people who value politeness,
conservative people, provincial people, suburban people, rural people
many people, I suspect, who are reading this article.
[Site link] |
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Bias BBC, multiculturalism, diversity
How to save the BBC from itself (and get its hand out of our pockets) Jeff Randall Daily Telegraph, 4 July 2008 [Jeff Randall was the BBC's business editor, 2001-05] |
In 2003, I was fighting an internal
battle to bring more balance to the BBC's coverage of immigration. I felt
that some of its reporters had been programmed to promote the benefits of
cultural diversity as an incontrovertible fact.
Fed up with what he perceived to be my
subversion, one of the BBC's most senior figures sent me an email: "The BBC
internally is not neutral about multiculturalism. It believes in it and
promotes diversity. Let's face up to that."
I was amazed that he felt unembarrassed
to put this in a formal memo. It revealed an arrogant mindset at odds with
millions of his customers. Impartiality was fine, but only if it confirmed
the prejudices of the BBC's editorial elite, the self-appointed custodians
of liberal values.
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Bias BBC
BBC is fuelling attacks on Poles, says MP Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 5 June 2008 |
The BBC was accused yesterday of
fuelling racist attacks on Polish immigrants.
The Conservative MP Danny Kawczynski said
that the BBC's coverage of immigration issues tended to concentrate on
Poles even though most immigrants to Britain came from outside Europe.
The result, he said, was a rising number
of assaults on Poles living here. Mr
Kawczynski highlighted his concerns in the Commons when he introduced a
Bill calling for a bank holiday to mark the positive contribution that
Poles have made to the United Kingdom since 1940.
"The liberal elite of the BBC constantly
refer to immigration from Poland because they are using the Polish
community as a cat's paw to try to tackle the thorny issue of mass
unchecked immigration into our country," he said.
Mr Kawczynski, who represents Shrewsbury
and Atcham, also said discrimination would not be allowed if targeted at
other ethnic groups. ...
Romania is planning a campaign to
encourage some of its estimated 50,000 citizens living in Britain to return
home and help meet a chronic labour shortage.
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Bias border security
Taxpayers fund TV series on migrants Lucy Cockcroft Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2008 |
The Home Office is spending
£400,000 of taxpayers' money to fund a television documentary that
will aim to convince the public that it is beating the problem of illegal
immigration. The eight-part series, which
follows immigration officers on their duties, marks the biggest investment
the department has made to promote its work enforcing border controls.
It is part of a drive by Jacqui Smith,
the Home Secretary, to show she is tough on illegal immigration.
The series, which will be shown on Sky
One, will acknowledge the co-operation the Government has given to the
production company, Steadfast Television.
However, there will be no mention that it
has been partly financed by the Home Office, raising questions about how
impartial it will be.
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Bias
Mirror pays out over lobby group slur Stephen Brook The Guardian, 26 November 2007 |
The Daily Mirror has agreed to pay
costs and damages to Migrationwatch UK, after star columnist Brian Reade
compared the lobby group to the Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan.
In today's paper the Mirror apologised to
the organisation's head, Sir Andrew Green, and said it had agreed to pay
damages after Reade's column on September 13. ...
"We accept that the allegations were
untrue," the paper said in an apology on page 18 today.
[Site link] |
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Bias BBC
BBC viewers angered by its 'innate liberal bias' Nicole Martin Daily Telegraph, 19 June 2007 |
The BBC is operating in a
"leftleaning comfort zone" and has an "innate liberal bias" according to a
report commissioned by the corporation.
The report, From Seesaw to Wagon
Wheel, said that the BBC's drift towards a liberal-minded approach to
programmes risked stifling originality and angering viewers.
Mark Byford, the BBC's deputy
director-general, said: "Impartiality is a core value for the BBC, which is
non-negotiable and central to its relationship with licence-fee payers.
"As audience behaviours change and the
media landscape develops rapidly, the BBC has to keep asking itself how
best to safeguard impartiality in this digital age."
Andrew Marr, the BBC's former political
editor, said at a seminar last year that the BBC is "a publicly funded
urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people,
of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people compared
with the population at large." ... A
survey of viewers found that the corporation was generally seen as
impartial. However, some respondents felt
it had gone "too far" in its representation of racial minorities and was
too politically correct. ... Most
respondents outside south-east England believed that they were
under-represented.
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Bias BBC
The BBC can't kick its addiction to bias Damian Thompson Daily Telegraph, 19 June 2007 |
Yesterday the BBC Trust published
From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, an 81-page report with the subtitle
"Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century". That's a bit like the late
Boris Yeltsin talking about safeguarding his sobriety. It is, however, the
first time the corporation has attempted to address the question, so we
should read the report carefully. The
first reaction is to sigh with relief. The report acknowledges that
"mainstream opinion" was wrong to attack monetarism, to belittle
Euro-sceptics as small-minded and blinkered, and to assume that
multi-culturalism would solve the problems of immigration. ...
This report is a step in the right
direction. But, as anyone who has ever dealt with an alcoholic will
confirm, it is best not to get your hopes up. Nothing will happen without a
desire to change; and I don't think Auntie is ready to come off the sauce.
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Bias adoptions
The improved lot of Romanian orphans Lady Nicholson of Winterbourne, MEP Daily Telegraph, 14 November 2006 |
There have been protests about
Romania's decision to ban international adoptions, coming from individual
politicians in France and America, but these are the result of the
multi-million-dollar lobby for international adoptions - a lobby that
represents a shadowy, unaccountable and deeply unethical industry.
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Bias BBC
The BBC's commitment to bias is no laughing matter Tom Leonard Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2006 |
But no matter how much BBC bosses
swear blind there is no problem, the issue refuses to go away. Why? Because
for many licence-payers, the BBC's skewed assumptions about what the world
is about and how its inhabitants should think is the most annoying thing
about it - more annoying than dumbing down, than the universal licence fee,
than Jonathan Ross's £18 million pay packet. More annoying even than
Natasha Kaplinsky. And particularly infuriating when the BBC denies it
outright, as did Michael Grade, the BBC chairman, in an article published a
few days before a governors' impartiality summit a month ago.
... Anyway, embarrassingly it emerged ...
that even some of his most senior journalists disagreed. Andrew Marr,
hardly one of the BBC's token Right- wingers, declared that the BBC "is not
impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an
abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people".
It has, he added, "a liberal bias, not so much a party-political bias. It
is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."
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Bias BBC, multiculturalism
We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News Simon Walters Mail on Sunday, 21 October 2006 |
It was the day that a host of BBC
executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them
for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are
biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.
A leaked account of an 'impartiality
summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new
row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning
Muslims and the war on terror. It
reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a
TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an
interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it
discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders
to be allowed to wear veils when on air.
At the secret meeting in London last
month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives
admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic
minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American,
anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than
Christians. One veteran BBC executive
said: 'There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far
in the direction of political correctness.
'Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply
embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it.' ...
The full account of the meeting shows how
senior BBC figures queued up to lambast their employer.
Political pundit Andrew Marr said: 'The
BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation
with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay
people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is
better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.'
Washington correspondent Justin Webb said
that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark
Byford had secretly agreed to help him to 'correct', it in his reports.
Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it
'no moral weight'. Former BBC business
editor Jeff Randall said he complained to a 'very senior news executive',
about the BBC's pro-multicultural stance but was given the reply: 'The BBC
is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.'
... There was another heated debate when
the summit discussed whether the BBC was too sensitive about criticising
black families for failing to take responsibility for their children.
Head of news Helen Boaden disclosed that
a Radio 4 programme which blamed black youths at a young offenders'
institution for bullying white inmates faced the axe until she stepped in.
But Ms Fitzpatrick, who has said that the
BBC should not use white reporters in non-white countries, argued it had a
duty to 'contextualise' why black youngsters behaved in such a way.
Andrew Marr told The Mail on Sunday last
night: 'The BBC must always try to reflect Britain, which is mostly a
provincial, middle-of-the-road country. Britain is not a mirror image of
the BBC or the people who work for it.'
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BORDER CONTROLS |
Border controls racism, education
Academics boycott visa 'snooping' BBC, 29 May 2009 |
University academics say they will
boycott new visa rules for overseas students that would make them into
"immigration snoopers". Delegates at the
University and College Union's annual conference said they did not want to
become a branch of the UK Border Agency.
Under the new rules universities are
expected to monitor whether overseas students really attend their courses.
The Home Office said such things were
part of their normal duty of care.
Institutions must also report concerns
that a student could be involved in terrorism.
In a debate at the conference, in
Bournemouth, delegates argued that the rules would place a strain on the
relationship between staff and students from outside the European Union.
General secretary Sally Hunt said: "UCU
members are educators not border guards."
She said later: "Politically, UCU is
absolutely opposed to this legislation and we know that many members have
strong and principled moral objections as members of society and as
professional educators. ... One of the
resolutions tabled for discussion said the new system "makes educators into
immigration snoopers which could damage UK education irreparably".
It deplored "this pandering to
anti-immigration racism" and committed the union to "non-compliance with
all such policing and surveillance duties".
But a Home Office spokesman said:
"Educational institutions have a duty of care to all their students and
checking that they are attending and making progress in their studies is
part of that responsibility. "The records
we expect education providers to keep are those which most will keep for
their own purposes anyway."
[Site link] |
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Border controls terrorism, education
Four terror suspects won university places through bogus Manchester college Andrew Norfolk The Times, 21 May 2009 |
Four terrorism suspects were given
places at English universities after leaving the bogus Manchester College
of Professional Studies. John Moores
University, Liverpool, and Liverpool Hope University confirmed yesterday
that each had accepted two of the detainees and that all four students
submitted diplomas from the fake college as part of their application. Both
universities insisted that they had disregarded the Manchester
certificates, accepting the men instead on the basis of their university
degrees from Pakistan. ... The Home
Office says that in Pakistan, which it classifies as "high risk",
additional checks are made on applicants to seek independent verification
of prospective students' qualifications. As a result, the refusal rate for
student visa applications from Pakistan has risen from 53 per cent in 2006
to 69 per cent last year. Despite this, the number of Pakistani citizens in
the UK on student visas has soared. A
critical flaw in the new regulations, however, means that there is still no
limit on how many international students a sponsor college is allowed to
enrol. It may have become more difficult to beat the system, but it is not
impossible.
[Site link] |
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Border controls terrorism, education
Sham colleges open doors to Pakistani terror suspects Andrew Norfolk The Times, 21 May 2009 |
Thousands of young Pakistanis
exploited a hole in Britain's immigration defences to enrol as students at
a network of sham colleges, The Times can reveal.
The gateway, opened by fraudsters who
have earned millions from the scam, has allowed in hundreds of men from a
region of Pakistan that is the militant heartland of al-Qaeda and the
Pakistani Taleban. Eight of the terror
suspects arrested last month in Manchester and Liverpool were on the books
of one college. It had three small classrooms and three teachers for the
1,797 students on its books. Another college claimed to have 150 students
but secretly enrolled 1,178 and offered places to a further 1,575 overseas
applicants, 906 of them in Pakistan. ...
The Times has uncovered close ties
between 11 colleges in London, Manchester and Bradford, all formed in the
past five years and controlled by three young Pakistani businessmen.
Each of the three men entered the country
on a student visa. One has fled to Pakistan after earning an estimated
£6 million from the scam. Fayaz Ali Khan and another man are in the
UK. All but two of the ten students
arrested last month over an alleged al-Qaeda bomb plot were enrolled over
an 11-month period at Manchester College of Professional Studies. Two
Liverpool universities admitted last night that they had given places to
four of them, ... The massive fraud has
fuelled a surge in student arrivals from Pakistan, which the Prime Minister
has identified as the birthplace of two thirds of terrorist plots in the
UK. Between 2002 and 2007, the number of Pakistani nationals with
permission to enter or remain in the UK as students jumped from 7,975 to
26,935.
[Site link] |
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Border controls
Former pub became the centre of a web of bogus colleges Andrew Norfolk The Times, 21 May 2009 |
Among the fast-food shops, Haj travel
agents, halal butchers, curry houses and money-exchange outlets is a former
pub, reborn in 2006 as Manchester College of Professional Studies.
Here, two young men from a town in North
West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan in Britain on student
visas started a scam that would earn them a small fortune.
The Times has evidence that in 15
months from October 2006 they enrolled 1,143 foreign students, most
Pakistanis, and sold bogus college qualifications to enable another 654 to
extend their stay in the UK. ... Most
students, however, had no intention of entering a classroom. They were in
the UK to earn as much as possible for as long as possible. ...
... For the vast majority of students,
the documents were a charade. The college was a front that provided cover
for students to do whatever they wanted in Britain.
Most came from Pakistan, but hundreds
were also admitted from Nigeria and other countries in Africa, South Asia
and the Far East. ... Manchester College
of Professional Studies was also affiliated with Blackpool University,
again based in Dublin, established "under the order of the King of Belgium"
and licensed by the Accreditation Council of Higher Education (ACHE).
All of which might sound impressive until
one learns that ACHE is based in Wallis and Futuna, an island group in the
South Pacific. Finally, the college also
posed as a study centre for the University of Newcastle, which is really
the online University of New Castle, incorporated "in the sate (sic) of
Delaware" and, like Blackpool University, accredited by a group of South
Pacific islands. Mr Fayaz and his
friends could run their scams for so long because the UK's system for
controlling and monitoring international students was until last
month lamentable. He was able to open a college and gain a place on
the Government's register of educational providers by completing an online
application. No one checked his background, no one came at the
outset to inspect his premises and no one sought to discover whether
the teachers he said he was employing had the qualifications claimed.
Advance notice was given of the periodic
Home Office visits made after the college opened, so there was always time
to make sure associates and employees were sitting studiously in a
classroom when an inspector arrived. Astonishingly, there was not even a
system for limiting or monitoring how many students a college enrolled.
... One bad apple would have been one too
many, but The Times has uncovered a tangled web linking 11 international
colleges formed during the past five years, in Manchester, Bradford, London
and Essex. A few barely existed beyond
their registered office address, others had impressive internet sites and
some even gave lessons to a minority of the students they enrolled. ...
[Site link] |
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Border controls European Union
Exclusive: EU'S £14bn vain bid to halt migrants Ted Jeory Sunday Express, 17 May 2009 |
Vast amounts of taxpayers' money has
been squandered on a "disastrous" scheme to stem the flow of illegal
migrants into Europe. More than £14
billion of which Britain's share is an estimated £1.4 billion
has gone on a French-inspired project called the Barcelona Process.
But much of the cash has ended up in the
pockets of north African officials who fail to prevent mass migration.
Yet despite the enormous sums involved,
the European Union has not once published a detailed breakdown of spending
on the venture and produced just one high-level audit of the project's
total spending in 14 years. Incredibly,
EU leaders are set to sanction another £550 million on a similar
project in eastern Europe. The Barcelona
Process is an alliance between the 27-member EU and 16 countries from the
southern Mediterranean and Middle East.
Its main aim has been to combat illegal
immigration from north Africa to southern EU members such as Spain, Italy
and Portugal. But more than 100,000
migrants a year are still estimated to enter Europe illegally via the
Mediterranean, a fifth of the total.
Leading Eurosceptic Tory MP Bill Cash
said: "The process has been disastrous. It does us no good to raise the
volume of expenditure in the vain belief it will curtail illegal
immigration. It doesn't work like that. The money just disappears into
rivers of slush funds and hopeless corruption."
Labour MP Michael Connarty, who chairs
the European Scrutiny Committee, said: "If we create a stable buffer
between north Africa and Europe it will be money well spent, but we've made
no progress." An EU spokeswoman claimed
the Barcelona Process fostered "cohesion and co-operation".
[Site link] |
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Border controls crime, education
Fewer colleges for foreign students Daily Telegraph, 13 May 2009 |
The number of colleges accepting
foreign students has been cut by more than 13,000 after the introduction of
new rules earlier this year. Each college
applying for a licence was visited by an official from the UK Border Agency
as part of a drive to root out fake institutions. There were fears that
many colleges were fronts for illegal immigration.
The list of colleges sponsoring student
visas has fallen from 15,000 to 1,500.
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Border controls crime
Foreign lorries responsible for 90% of smuggled migrants David Pilditch Daily Express, 25 April 2009 |
Nine out of 10 lorry drivers who
smuggle illegal immigrants into Britain are from overseas, shocking figures
revealed yesterday. Even Labour's
official statistics show the Government has failed to collect more than
£1million in fines owed by hauliers registered abroad who have been
caught red-handed. Yesterday critics said
the damning figures expose the full scale of Britain's shambolic
immigration policies and lax border security. It comes after the UK Border
Agency revealed 1,571 foreign truckers were issued fines last year after
illegal immigrants were found hiding in the back of their vehicles.
This compares with only 195 British
lorries found to have stowaways. In theory drivers and owners face fines of
£2,000 for each illegal migrant. But the figures, released under the
Freedom of Information Act, show just £2million has been collected
from foreign firms, a shortfall of at least £1million. British
hauliers have been fined around £300,000.
Last night, British operators complained
the system was being abused by unscrupulous foreign drivers who can earn up
to £1,500 from each person they smuggle across the Channel.
Trucker Mervyn Osgood, 54, from Maidstone
in Kent, said: "It's an absolute farce. We always see the foreign drivers
talking to the migrants in Calais." Immigrants gather to scramble on to
vehicles at the ferry port in a notorious area known as Diesel Alley.
Mr Osgood said foreign truckers simply
ignored the fines, sometimes not even telling their bosses they had been
caught. "To them it's worth the risk.
They get £1,500 from each illegal, so if they get four on, they pocket
around £6,000. Then they just unload their cargoes and head back to
their countries." The Shadow Immigration
Minister Damian Green insisted the Government was to blame. He said:
"Clearly many foreign truckers are abusing our immigration laws and they
should be punished effectively. "However, the problem often is that they
may be convicted of offences relating to illegal migration but are
continuing to operate in the same vehicles."
Last night the agency admitted: "These
figures don't reflect the actual figure because there is often more than
one clandestine found per vehicle." He said 28,000 migrants were caught
trying to sneak into Britain on board lorries crossing the Channel last
year. The records show foreign truckers
were fined a further £811,507 for working in Britain without the
necessary haulage permits. Lorry drivers can unwittingly bring in illegal
immigrants who jump inside their vehicles without them realising what is
happening. But other operators accept
cash from people-smuggling gangs led by east Europeans, Afghans and Iraqis.
[Site link] |
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Border controls
France 'ready to dump migrants in Britain' Peter Allen and Anil Dawar Daily Express, 24 April 2009 |
France wants Britain to sign a deal
allowing thousands of migrants to flood into the UK.
Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart's
controversial plan to scrap passport controls was announced as migrants in
the port staged an angry demo yesterday, waving placards written in
flawless English. The banners expose how
Britain's open-door asylum system and benefits culture are a magnet for
Afghans, Kurds and Eritreans. Exasperated
by the sight of migrants sleeping rough as they try to board England-bound
trains and lorries illegally, Mrs Bouchart outlined her scheme to rid
Calais of the blight to French Immigration Minister Eric Besson.
"It's necessary to speed up negotiations
with the British because at the moment we're ready to charter a boat to
dump them over there," she said. She said
all Britain had to do was sign up to the Schengen Agreement, which allows
anybody to travel between EU states without passports or visas.
Mr Besson challenged Britain to share
responsibility for France's problem by asking why migrants from places such
as Iran, Somalia and Sudan travel across the world to reach the UK.
"Britain should step up its controls and
take on more of this burden," he said. "Britain should also question why
migrants and the traffickers in migrants believe that the British illegal
job market is a golden opportunity." ...
Mrs Bouchart said if Britain signed up to
Schengen, then the migrants could make their way direct to the UK to claim
asylum, rather than using France as a platform to get there illegally. ...
Responding to the plan to make Calais a
passport-free zone, Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said: "UK policy is to
not sign up to the Schengen Agreement. Weakening our controls will only
play into the hands of the traffickers.
[Site link] |
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Border controls welfare state
Calais mayor blames Britain for immigration problems Peter Allen Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2009 |
The mayor of Calais, Natacha
Bouchart, has blamed Britain's asylum and benefits system for "imposing"
thousands of illegal migrants on her town.
In an angry attack in which she also
called for millions in compensation, Natacha Bouchart said the UK was
entirely to blame for the hordes of foreigners who use the French port as a
staging point to get across the Channel. ...
Mrs Bouchart pointed out that the Calais
Chamber of Trade was having to spend £12 million each year securing
the port area money she suggested the French government should pay
back. But it was Britain's immigration
system which was predominantly to blame for thousands of Africans, eastern
Europeans and people from central Asia trying to clamber aboard lorries and
trains in Calais to get to the UK every day.
"Requesting asylum is easier with them
(the British) than in France," said Mrs Bouchart.
"The asylum seeker is given accommodation
and receives £31 to £40 a week according to their case, when the
annual salary of the average Eritrean is around $200 (£136).
"That seems enormous and it's attractive,
even if in some places it's nothing."
Calling for a "change in attitude", Mrs
Bouchart said the current build up of UK-bound foreigners was untenable.
... French immigration minister Eric
Besson is due to outline new policies for dealing with the worsening
situation in Calais. Some 2,000 UK-bound
migrants are currently sleeping rough in the area, with around 800 in the
town itself.
[Site link] |
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Border controls
'Risky' students who want a visa will be interviewed by phone Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2009 |
Fresh questions were raised yesterday
over Britain's security after the Home Secretary admitted some visa
applications were decided over the phone.
Pakistani students wanting to study in
Britain who are deemed a risk may only be interviewed over the phone, and
from outside the country, it emerged. And
the Home Office revealed that final decisions on any visa applications from
Pakistan were now being dealt with by officials in the United Arab
Emirates. The disclosure raises fresh
security fears around the student visa system after it emerged all but one
of the 12 suspects being held over an alleged plot to bomb shopping centres
in Manchester came to Britain from Pakistan using student visas. ...
It later emerged Abu Dhabi is being used
as a "hub" for UK immigration officials to take final decisions, although
fingerprints and documents of applicants are being checked in Pakistan
first.
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Border controls
£8m for border agency ads Matthew Moore Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2009 |
Britain's border agency is spending
nearly £8 million a year on advertising and public relations, it was
disclosed yesterday. The Home Office body
has allocated large sums to its promotional budget despite concern about
its failings to stem illegal immigration.
While other government departments and
private sector companies are cutting jobs in the recession, the agency is
advertising a range of roles in a new communications campaign team, paying
up to £56,000 a year. The figures
were released in a parliamentary answer to the Tories by Phil Woolas, the
Immigration Minister. New research
indicates that at least 250,000 migrant workers are employed in the country
unregistered.
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Border controls education
Bogus foreign students free to flout new laws Richard Ford and Andrew Norfolk The Times, 15 April 2009 |
Thousands of bogus students remain
free to enter Britain despite new laws aimed at tightening controls on
immigration. The Times has learnt that hundreds of colleges recently
approved by the Home Office to accept non-EU students have not been
inspected by its officers. Weaknesses in
the student visa system have emerged following the arrest of 12 terror
suspects last week. Ten of the men entered this country from Pakistan on
student visas. It has also emerged that
the vast majority of non-EU students will not be interviewed by the Home
Office but admitted on the basis of written applications and evidence of
sponsorship, educational qualifications and bank statements. ...
John Tincey, the chairman of the
Immigration Service Union, said that the failure to include interviews
could be exploited by terrorists. Under
the system, universities, colleges and schools must register with the Home
Office to accept students from outside the EU. They must agree to alert the
Home Office if a student fails to register, stops attending classes or if a
course is shortened and keep copies of the students' passports as well as
up-to-date contact addresses. The new
regime came in two weeks ago and is intended to end a scam in which
thousands of foreigners enrolled at bogus colleges to work here. So far,
2,100 establishments have been registered and 400 rejected. There are
14,000 establishments on an earlier database that need to register.
Today The Times highlights the abuses
under the old regime, described by the Immigration Minister as the
Achilles' heel of the system. At one
college in Manchester that claims to have more than 100 students
most of them from North West Frontier Province in Pakistan only two
turned up for classes yesterday. An
international college in London with links to Pakistani businessmen was
raided by the police and the UK Border Agency in December. It was alleged
that individuals attached to the college earned £5 million processing
up to 2,500 fraudulent visa applications.
[Site link] |
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Border controls crime, education
£100 fakes helping terrorists into UK Nick Meo and Emal Khan Sunday Telegraph, 12 April 2009 |
Forged degree certificates, fake
income tax returns and bogus payslips were on sale in Pakistan yesterday
all valuable tools for terrorists to obtain student visas for
Britain. An investigation ... has found
that documents could be obtained for less than £100 by anyone seeking
to support their application to study in Britain.
As concerns grew about the screening
processes that allowed 11 of the 12 bomb suspects to enter Britain,
self-styled "immigration consultants" in Pakistan were hard at work trying
to beat the system. ... Many British
universities have representative offices in Pakistan's main cities through
which they recruit students. ... ... ...
Such documents are widely available under the counter from immigration
consultants all over Pakistan. The
paperwork is designed to convince British immigration officials that
applicants want to learn and can pay for their courses, even though some
are virtually illiterate and only want jobs.
Britain has a reputation for being easy
to enter. ... Nearly 4,000 immigration consultants are thought to be
operating in Pakistan's capital Islamabad and its twin city Rawalpindi. ...
Many of the forgeries are crude and
unlikely to fool immigration officers, but others are sophisticated. The
size of the industry shows how much effort is put in to thwart the system
at every stage.
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Border controls education
One in four colleges for foreigners 'bogus' Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 1 April 2009 |
Bogus colleges that help illegal
immigrants slip into Britain are the "Achilles' heel" in the system, a Home
Office minister admitted yesterday. Phil
Woolas, the Immigration Minister, said fake colleges and language schools
were the "biggest loophole" in the system because figures indicated that
almost one in four was potentially bogus. New visa rules that came into
force yesterday meant overseas students needed to be accepted by genuine
institutions before they could enter Britain.
Colleges and universities who wanted to
take foreign students had to register with the Home Office. Of the 5,000
thought to take foreign students, only 2,100 had so far applied to have
their credentials checked. Of those, 460 were rejected. ...
It was estimated that up to 2,000 "bogus"
colleges could be forced to close. Frank
Field, the co-chairman of the Commons cross-party group on balanced
migration, said the number of colleges rejected was "worrying" but "not a
totally astonishing revelation". "While
ministers are right to tighten the immigration system, this uncovers the
shambles that they have allowed to develop a huge number of dodgy
colleges, some of which are simply designed to get around immigration
controls," he said. Nicholas Soames, his
co-chairman, added: "Given that there are nearly a quarter of a million
non-EU students in British higher education institutions, the question this
poses is: 'How many are here under false pretences?' Ministers need to
answer that question in Parliament."
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Border controls
Calais detention centre is approved Melissa Kite Sunday Telegraph, 22 March 2009 |
A new detention centre to help stop
illegal immigrants entering Britain has been approved in Calais and is
about to be built, according to government documents.
There was confusion this week when
France's immigration minister claimed he had no knowledge of the centre,
but a letter from the UK Border Agency to the Director of Migration in
Paris seen by this newspaper reveals that British and French officials had
held discussions and agreed "joint action".
... Britain will provide half the
500,000 (£470,000) needed for the project.
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Border controls
Daily Telegraph, 19 March 2009 |
Phil Woolas, the Immigration
Minister, faced ridicule yesterday after his French counterpart dismissed
plans for an immigrant detention centre in Calais, just a day after Mr
Woolas announced it.
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Border controls
Taxpayer to fund Calais migrants centre Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 18 March 2009 |
A detention centre is being planned
for Calais to hold hundreds of illegal immigrants trying to sneak across
the Channel and British taxpayers will help pay for it.
Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister,
said the proposed centre is at the heart of joint Anglo-French plans to
tackle the problem of illegal immigrants flocking to the French port.
Charter flights that would return
detainees to their home countries are also planned in particular to
Afghanistan and Iraq where the majority of unlawful immigrants come from.
News of the proposals came as hundreds of
immigrants bound for Britain were in a gang fight in central Calais. Dozens
were injured as violence broke out between rival groups, many armed with
knives or makeshift weapons. The
Government is pushing for the detention centre, and is even willing to help
pay for it, but is awaiting formal agreement from France. ... ...
Whitehall sources said that the
Government would help pay for the centre because it felt a sense of
responsibility over the fact that many of the immigrants are in Calais
after failing to enter Britain.
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Border controls
Unpaid parking fine? Don't attempt to leave the country David Millward Daily Telegraph, 16 March 2009 |
A million motorists with unpaid
parking fines could be stopped from leaving the country under powers used
to secure British borders. Ministers are
examining whether to use an "e-borders" system to track the travel plans of
everyone leaving the country to recoup almost £1 billion in
outstanding fines and court orders imposed for criminal and driving
offences. An "Explanatory Memorandum" to
the Immigration and Asylum Act prepared by the Home Office says e-borders
could help recoup millions of pounds of unpaid fines.
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Border controls
Trips abroad to be logged David Millward Daily Telegraph, 14 March 2009 |
The travel plans and personal details
of every holidaymaker, business traveller and day-tripper who leaves
Britain are to be tracked by the Government, ...
Anyone departing by land, sea or air will
have the trip recorded and stored on a database for a decade. ...
The owners of light aircraft will also be
brought under the system, known as e-borders, which will eventually track
250 million journeys annually. ...
Travellers will have to supply
information such as passport and credit card details, home and email
addresses and exact itineraries. The
changes are being brought in as the Government tries to tighten border
controls and increase protection against international terrorism. ...
The checks are being brought in piecemeal
by the UK Border Agency. By the end of the year, 60 per cent of journeys
out of Britain will be affected, and 95 per cent by the end of 2010.
Yachtsmen, trawlermen and private pilots
will have until 2014 to comply. ...
Currently passports are not routinely
checked when people leave the country. Exit controls for those staying
within the European Union were scrapped by the last Conservative
government. The rest were scrapped by
Jack Straw as Home Secretary after Labour won in 1997.
However, passport inspections at ports
have gradually been reintroduced as the Government looks to prevent anyone
on its watch-list fleeing the country. ...
A UK Border Agency spokesman insisted:
"The e-Borders scheme has already screened over 82 million passengers
travelling to Britain, leading to more than 2,900 arrests, for crimes
including murder, drug dealing and sex offences."
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Border controls asylum
French to build 'mini Sangattes' in Calais Peter Allen Daily Telegraph, 13 March 2009 |
A string of "mini Sangatte" welcome
centres for illegal migrants bound for Britain are to be built near Calais.
Eric Besson, the French immigration
minister, confirmed that the "light buildings" would provide services such
as food, showers and information about how to claim asylum once migrants
arrived in Britain. ... Mr Besson said
the centres would help to deal with the growing numbers. ...
Up to 2,000 people sleep rough in the
area as they try to board trains and lorries to Dover, often paying up to
£1,000 to human traffickers. An
interviewer from VSD, the French magazine, asked the minister: "So,
you're constructing mini Sangattes?" Mr
Besson replied: "But they won't be permanent sleeping centres for illegal
migrants." Sangatte, the overcrowded
refugee camp, was closed in 2003 after riots.
The move marked a change in policy by the
minister who previously promised to make the port "watertight" to illegal
migrants.
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Border controls
Calais border guards too soft, says asylum seeker Daily Telegraph, 13 February 2009 |
A group of Iraqi migrants have
claimed they evaded security in Calais and entered the UK by saying one
word "family" to border guards.
Faradh Maruj, 28, who has claimed asylum
and is living in Birmingham, had paid people smugglers £560 in cash to
get him across the Channel with his wife and their two young sons.
They got into the cab of a Dutch lorry
which was stopped by customs officials in Calais. Mr Maruj said: "I said
'family' and the customs official shut the door."
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Border controls
Stowaway migrant numbers double David Barrett Sunday Telegraph, 8 February 2009 |
The number of illegal immigrants
found hiding in lorries after entering Britain has more than doubled in two
years. More than 3,300 immigrants were
picked up in eight months last year, compared with 1,400 in a 12-month
period in 2006-7. ... Chris Huhne, the
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, who uncovered the figures, said: "For years
our border controls have been shambolic and the increase in lorry stowaways
is another example of the problem. We need a national border force with
police powers to ensure that only legal migrants enter Britain."
Any illegal immigrant who makes it on to
British soil can claim asylum but those detected before they arrive in the
country, for example at French ports, can be refused entry. ...
The rise is believed to coincide with the
privatisation of lorry searches at French ports.
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Border controls
New country, New Year birthday Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 30 January 2009 |
Thousands of asylum seekers, illegal
immigrants and other foreigners arriving in Britain every year are being
given New Year's Day as their date of birth because officials don't know
when they were born. More than 24,000
people had Jan 1 entered as their birthday on immigration databases in
2008. Sources said attempts to guess ages meant some adults were being
classed as children and would not be deported immediately if they were in
the country unlawfully. One police
officer said: "We arrest some asylum seekers with full beard and they are
obviously not 16, but it says so on their papers and so they are convicted
as minors."
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Border controls
Immigration: Britain 'is to blame' Nick Fagge Daily Express, 28 January 2009 |
Britain was last night accused of
failing to stop the tide of illegal immigrants arriving from France.
New hard-line French immigration minister
Eric Besson condemned our lax security at the Channel Tunnel and ferry
ports which encouraged thousands to try to enter Britain illegally every
year. Speaking during a crisis visit
yesterday to Calais, where some 2,000 British-bound refugees are massed, he
said the failure of ministers in this country had created the impression
that the UK was somewhere that illegal immigrants could disappear with
little prospect of being deported. Mr
Besson said: "Our English partners must apply themselves more actively in
the reinforcement of checks and in security in Calais."
He also pledged he would never allow
another Sangatte-style refugee camp as he visited some of the makeshift
shelters scattered along the French coast.
He said: "I'll be meeting my British
counterpart over the coming days to discuss this subject precisely. Our
English partners want to see controls strictly enforced. Me too.
"I'm therefore going to propose to my
British colleague to put in place a common strategy to reinforce the checks
and make passage through the Tunnel or by the port the most watertight
possible to illegal immigration." His
comments follow those of a senior French politician, Etienne Pinte, who
earlier this month said the UK was solely to blame for the build-up of
thousands of migrants in northern France.
He condemned Britain's "inhumane and
illegal" immigration policies which he said had caused "utter misery".
Mr Pinte said: "Britain is seen as an
Eldorado by migrants across the world. It's up to Great Britain to find a
dignified and humane solution to a problem which solely concerns it."
Yesterday Mr Besson said he was
determined to achieve a lasting solution to the "refugee problem", which
had not been solved with the closure of the notorious Red Cross centre at
nearby Sangatte in 2002. ... Former Home
Office Minister Ann Widdecombe said: "Until the message gets out that if
you come to Britain with a false claim you will be dealt with quickly and
deported, there is a tremendous incentive for people to come to Britain.
"We do not have identity cards and we
have a flourishing black economy in which people can disappear. Only until
we change all of that will the message finally get out." ...
Last night a UK Border Agency spokesman
said: "We will continue to work with France one of our closest
partners in fighting illegal migration. Our shared determination has
already created one of the toughest border crossings in the world at
Calais. "In the last five years we have
stopped over 88,500 attempts from people trying to enter the UK illegally.
Around 61,000 of those were at Calais alone. ..."
[Site link] |
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Border controls visas
Visas being approved 'because a refusal means more work' Daily Telegraph, 12 January 2009 |
Immigration officers face "perverse
incentives" to grant visas to foreigners, an influential group of MPs says
today. Staff must provide far less evidence as to why they have approved an
application to come to Britain than they do if they choose to reject one.
This has led to a warning that
inappropriate applicants are being approved. It comes less than two months
after a watchdog reported that about 300,000 foreigners who should not be
granted visas were allowed in to Britain every year.
A report by the Commons home affairs
select committee today says that while the reasons for a visa refusal are
regularly reviewed, those for an approval are not.
MPs questioned whether this led to a
"tendency to be tempted to approve more applications than one should on the
basis that the work is never going to be checked". ...
Nearly two million visas are approved in
Britain each year.
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Border controls
Increased immigration fears as French charity sets up camp for illegal migrants heading to UK Daily Mail, 1 December 2008 |
A French charity has enraged UK
officials by setting up a camp to help illegal migrants bound for the UK.
The centre is in the northern French town
of Steenvoorde, which is on the main motorway heading to the ports of
Calais and Dunkirk. It has marquees with beds, toilets and kitchens.
It was set up by Terre d'Errance
Steenvoorde, a new charity and is designed for the thousands of migrants
who regularly make their way to Channel ports in the hope of reaching the
UK by ferry or train. But UK officials
believe the centre will become a magnate for thousands of unwanted
foreigners. And they fear it could cause
similar problems to Sangatte, the former Red Cross centre near Calais,
which housed thousands of migrants on their way to Britain. Sangatte was
bulldozed as part of an Anglo-French deal in 2002. The new camp was put up
on Sunday and the charity intends to apply to the local council to have it
made legal by the end of the week. It is
likely to receive the backing of local mayor Jean-Pierre Bataille who said
the village was 'an important logistical platform' on the long road from
blighted third world countries to the UK.
Charities said that increasingly tough
measures being used to rid Calais of illegal migrants had caused a
humanitarian disaster, with hundreds forced to sleep rough.
'Nobody else wants to help these people,
so we will,' said a spokesman for Terre d'Errance Steenvoorde.
'Hundreds use the village as a staging
point on their journey to England, and we want to give them accommodation
and food,' the spokesman added. Among the
camp's first residents are a group of Africans, including two men and four
women, who claim to be from the war-torn country of Eritrea.
All are dreaming of a new life in the UK,
where they hope to be able to find permanent accommodation and jobs.
'We will stay in Steenvorde for a short
while before resuming our journey to England where we want to settle,' said
one. Police said Steenvoorde had been
popular with travelling migrants since around 2000 because it was on a main
HGV route from the continent to Britain.
There is a vast lorry car park next to
the motorway, where many board lorries making there way to channel ports,
mainly Calais and Dunkirk.
[Site link] |
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Border controls national security
Web and migration threaten UK, says Reid Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 17 November 2008 |
Mass migration and the internet are
increasing threats to Britain's national security, according to John Reid,
the former home secretary. Crises that
threatened the nation happened far more than people thought, he added, and
were no longer "one-off events". The MP
for Airdrie and Shotts, who will leave the House of Commons at the next
general election, is establishing a research group called the Institute of
Security and Resilience Studies to assess the long-term threats against
Britain and other countries. Mr Reid said
international migration had increased the range of threats against Britain
since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.
"The chief characteristic of the world we
have to face is mobility," he said.
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Border controls France, Britain
Police target migrants heading for Britain Peter Allen Daily Telegraph, 24 October 2008 |
Hundreds of riot police have started
an operation to clear illegal camps in Calais used by migrants making for
Britain. In unprecedented scenes,
officers began a "clean-up" operation targeting the estimated 1,000 people
who were sleeping rough in the port. Each night, many of them try to
smuggle themselves on to lorries heading to Britain.
The police operation was prompted by an
expulsion order issued by the civil court in response to an increase in
violence and anti-social behaviour among the migrants. ...
... Local police describe drug abuse and
theft as "rampant" in the camps. ... But
Gerard Gavory, the sub-prefect of Calais, who was in charge of the
expulsion, said: "The objective was not to arrest these people.
"Each was able to pick up their
belongings and leave on their own accord if they wanted to. But later, we
reminded them that there are other solutions to getting shelter." He
admitted that while 80 migrants had been taken to a reception centre, most
were allowed to return to the streets of Calais.
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Border controls
Sham marriages ban is a breach of human rights Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 31 July 2008 |
Illegal immigrants could be able to
use sham marriages to stay in Britain after a judge decided that Government
rules banning the practice were a breach of human rights.
The ban was brought in by David Blunkett
in 2004, during his time as home secretary, amid concerns that thousands of
people a year were arranging bogus marriages to give them the right to stay
in Britain. The regulations required
people not legally settled in Britain to seek special permission to marry.
However, they were ruled illegal by the High Court in 2006 and the Appeal
Court last year. Yesterday, the Law Lords
agreed, saying they were an "arbitrary and unjust interference" with human
rights. ... Lord Bingham added that the
right to respect for family life under the European Convention gave a
measure of protection to some people having limited or no leave to enter or
stay in Britain but who married in the country. However, he conceded that
this gave "rise to an acute and difficult administrative problem" of people
who got married "to strengthen their claims for leave to enter or remain".
Home Office figures show that the number
of suspected sham marriages has fallen from 3,500 in 2004 to 400 last year.
... ... The Home Office changed the rules
in 2006. Instead of a blanket ban on foreigners who tried to get married
three months before they were due to go home, officials must consider the
merits of each case. • Foreign
students who miss more than 10 lectures in a row will be reported to the
Government under new plans to crack down on illegal immigration. However,
they will be able to avoid the new requirements if they opt to enter
Britain as a "student visitor", rather than under a student visa.
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Border controls employment, public opinion
Foreign students to be allowed to stay an extra year Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 30 July 2008 |
Foreign students will be able to work
in Britain for an extra year before being sent home, ministers will say
today. They will also unveil measures to
stop bogus colleges, which are used as fronts to allow illegal immigrants
to enter the country. Students are by far
the biggest category for long-term visitors to Britain, with 1.6 million
visas handed out in the past five years.
In 2006, 309,000 foreign students arrived
here, up nine per cent in a year, and more than double the number of
foreigners who were granted work permits.
Under the present rules, foreign students
can work for 12 months after graduating.
Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, is
expected to say today that this will be increased to two years from 2009 to
give foreign students more time to work here legally before going home. ...
Earlier this year it emerged that
immigration officers had been ordered to stop deporting foreign students
who overstay their visas. A leaked memo
suggested they are not regarded as a high enough priority.
Hundreds of thousands of students,
including many who never intended to study in Britain, could be staying
illegally. They are effectively being granted an amnesty. ...
Separately, a survey of voting priorities
found that immigration is the biggest factor influencing how people will
vote in the next election. Thirty per
cent ranked immigration as the most important election issue, beating
crime, health, the environment and education in a survey of 13,000 people
by TNS, a market research company.
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Border controls
Blank passports worth £2.5m are snatched in van hijack Graham Tibbetts Daily Telegraph, 30 July 2008 |
Thousands of passports worth
£2.5 million were stolen from an unlocked van when it was hijacked as
the driver stopped at a newsagent's shop.
The Foreign Office admitted it was a
"serious breach of security" and said an investigation had begun into the
robbery. Around 3,000 blank passports and
visa stickers known as vignettes were stolen on their way
from Manchester to RAF Northolt in London from where they were to be sent
to British embassies. ... ... Det Chief
Insp Bill McGreavy, of Greater Manchester Police, said the passports would
have been worth £2.5 million on the black market. ...
Tom Craig, a former Scotland Yard fraud
officer, told the BBC's Today programme that there were "desperate
people all over the world" willing to pay for British passports.
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Border controls
Teenage bride ban to curb forced marriages Rosa Prince and Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 23 July 2008 |
Teenage brides will be barred from
moving to Britain under plans to be announced today to clamp down on forced
marriages. The age at which young people
already based in Britain can sponsor a visa for an overseas spouse is also
being raised from 18 to 21. Liam Byrne,
the Home Office minister, will outline the measures, which are designed to
stop young women being pressurised by families into marrying older
relatives from overseas so they can obtain citizenship.
He also wants to stop the practice of
teenage girls being sent to Britain, largely from Asia, to be wed to
relative strangers.
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Border controls
Immigrants at Ostend rise 400pc Bruno Waterfield Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2008 |
The number of illegal immigrants
attempting to enter Britain from the Belgian port of Ostend has increased
fourfold in the past year. ... Dirk
Calemyn, the head of the Belgian police's maritime unit, blamed the
Schengen open-borders system being operated by some European Union members
for a "bigger influx" of illegal immigrants. "A hard stance against
refugees in neighbouring countries has been softened," he said. ...
The Belgian police have raided a number
of Ostend parks and woods in recent days and arrested "a number of
refugees" who were disturbing local residents.
"The raids have possibly caused a peak in
the statistics," said Mr Calemyn.
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Border controls employment
Creeping insecurity... Sunday Telegraph, 20 July 2008 [From the "Portcullis" column] |
More embarrassment for Jacqui Smith
in the case of the 8,000-plus illegal workers who were wrongly given jobs
as security guards. One, you will recall, even ended up protecting Gordon
Brown's car. The Home Secretary blamed
the Security Industry Authority for not carrying out basic employment
checks. But parliamentary written answers now show that 4,911 of the
workers supplied bona fide national insurance numbers.
Since July 2006 everyone given an NI
number is meant to have undergone a right-to-work test.
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Border controls crime, criminals
Foreign criminals free to enter UK Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 17 July 2008 |
Thousands of foreign criminals could
be entering Britain undetected because of a failure to implement checks
recommended by the inquiry into the Soham murders.
A report by Sir Ian Magee, a former
senior Whitehall civil servant, disclosed that 9 of the 31 recommendations
made after the inquiry into the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman
were still not in place. They included one for "improvements to checks on
overseas workers". Sir Ian said a failure
to bring this in meant that the Government had no idea how many criminals
from other countries could be on the streets.
He said: "I'm not going to say that there
are many people at large. I just don't know." ...
Sir Ian's report disclosed that the
police make just 20 requests to Interpol each day for details about non-EU
criminals, compared with more than 20,000 a day by the French. ...
An 11,000-strong list of terrorist
suspects, held by Interpol, was hardly used, while the UK Border Agency did
not have a link to Interpol's lost and stolen documents database. France
makes more than seven million checks a year.
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Border controls EU, Europe, asylum
Analysis: Sarkozy's list of demands Alasdair Palmer Sunday Telegraph, 6 July 2008 |
Tomorrow, Mr Sarkozy will propose a
new EU "pact" on immigration. Its aim is the "harmonisation of asylum
regimes" and the strengthening of EU border controls while also
increasing the number of immigrants permitted to work in the EU because of
their useful skills. His aim is a common European asylum system.
He also wants to outlaw national
amnesties for illegal immigrants. France was angered when more than two
million illegal immigrants were allowed to stay in Spain and Italy under a
series of amnesties between 2003 and 2007.
Britain says it will never give up its
right to determine who can stay within its borders. But it will back
measures to curb the flow of illegal immigrants into the EU (...)
for the simple reason that many of them find their way to Britain.
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Border controls
Tories plan border force of 30,000 Daily Telegraph, 2 July 2008 |
The Conservatives would create a
border police force 10 times bigger than one under discussion by Labour
ministers, David Cameron said. Mr Cameron
has given his support to a report by Lord Stevens of Kirkwelpington, who as
Sir John Stevens was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, calling for a
new force with sweeping police-style powers to tackle terrorism, organised
crime, immigration and smuggling. The
suggested Border Protection Service would have 30,000 officers and
civilians dwarfing government plans for a 3,000-strong border force.
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Border controls
Tories to unveil plan for border police force James Kirkup Daily Telegraph, 30 June 2008 |
A border police force would be
established to patrol all airports, major seaports and the coastline under
Tory plans to be announced this week. ...
The Tories say they want a harder
approach to illegal immigration, which has surged in the past decade and
has stretched police forces tackling gun crime, drug and people trafficking
across Britain. The Tories will make
their announcement in the wake of a report from HM Inspectorate of
Constabulary, which raised fears about the protection of British ports. The
HMIC study warns that dozens of small ports and airports have been stripped
of Customs officers. Targets imposed by
central government have forced Customs managers to focus resources on a few
large airports and ports, the HMIC found. It also raised concerns that all
the Customs' inshore cutters are on loan to other government agencies, and
said that even forces in landlocked countries such as Switzerland have
larger fleets than Britain.
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Border controls
Foreign relative bond plan ditched Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2008 |
Ministers have scrapped plans to
force people to pay a cash bond for foreign relatives who visit Britain.
Liam Byrne, the immigration minister,
floated the idea of a "financial security" last December. Yesterday, the
Home Office unveiled plans for "sponsored family visitor visas", whereby
Britons who sponsor a relative could be sent to jail for up to 14 years, or
fined £5,000, if the relative stays in the country too long.
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Border controls police
New police force to protect UK borders Daily Telegraph, 24 June 2008 |
A new 3,000-strong police force
dedicated to securing Britain's borders was unveiled yesterday by the Home
Secretary. Jacqui Smith said that senior
officers had proposed a single force, run by its own chief constable, which
will include uniformed officers on patrol and Special Branch to fight
terrorism. The move signals a harder
approach to illegal immigration, which has surged in the past decade and
has stretched police forces tackling gun crime, drug and people-trafficking
across Britain. The force will protect Britain's 71 international and major
regional airports, 10,500 miles of coastline and 27 major ports.
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Border controls employment
Migrant plan unveiled as seven escape Richard Edwards Daily Telegraph, 20 June 2008 |
Jacqui Smith unveiled measures to
tackle illegal immigration yesterday as seven people broke out of a
detention centre. The Home Secretary
launched the strategy by joining police carrying out dawn raids in London.
... Among the measures, Miss Smith
announced that the UK Border Agency would "name and shame" employers who
hire illegal immigrants. However, within hours, news had emerged of a
security breach at the Campsfield detention centre in Oxfordshire. Three
people were still on the run last night.
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Border controls employment
Migrant workers 'find it easy to get British work permit despite controls' Angela Monaghan Daily Telegraph, 28 May 2008 |
Migrant workers find Britain is still
one of the easiest countries in which to obtain a work permit, despite the
introduction of a new system designed to tighten UK border controls, new
research has found. Britain came 16th out
of 20 global economies ranked in descending order, with one being the
strictest, in a survey by Sarah Buttle Associates (SBA), the business
immigration experts. ... A new
points-based system (PBS) was introduced in February and will be rolled out
on a phased basis through the rest of this year and 2009. SBA expects the
UK to move up the rankings as the system becomes more established. ...
Almost 70 companies employing more than a
total of two million people took part in the survey.
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Border controls
Immigration van 'fleet' just one vehicle Rosa Prince Daily Telegraph, 27 May 2008 |
Government claims that illegal
immigrants would be rounded up in a fleet of vans have been dismissed as
"spin" after it emerged that just one "mobile detection unit" is currently
in operation. In January, Liam Byrne, the
Immigration Minister, announced the radical measure to fight mass illegal
immigration, claiming that a "fleet" of mobile detection vans would detain
illegal immigrants on the spot when attempts to smuggle them into the
country were foiled. The suspects would then be transferred to detention
centres. However, six months on, Damian
Green, the shadow immigration minister, has learned that just one unit is
currently in operation, in Poole in Dorset. ...
In March, Mr Byrne said that the
enforcement budget for detaining bogus arrivals would be doubled, repeating
the promise to send out a "fleet" of mobile detection vans.
...
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Border controls numbers
Immigration count 'is not fit for purpose' James Kirkup Daily Telegraph, 23 May 2008 |
Hundreds of thousands of short-term
immigrants are not included in official statistics because the system for
counting population changes is "not fit for purpose," a parliamentary
inquiry has found. The counting system is
so unreliable that it is not even possible to know the true population of
Britain, MPs will report today. The
Treasury Sub-Committee warns that the failure to correctly count the number
of foreigners coming into Britain is undermining Government policies and
putting unfair pressure on many local authorities and taxpayers.
After taking evidence from officials,
council leaders and academics, the MPs identified a fundamental weakness
with the International Passenger Survey, the main tool used by the Office
of national Statistics (ONS) to measure immigration and emigration.
The survey, which is based on around
4,000 interviews each year, was designed to monitor tourism and business
travel, but it has come to play a central role in immigration policy.
"It is clear from the evidence we have
received that the survey is not fit for this new purpose," the MPs say.
The ONS is overhauling its collection
methods to track the movements of short-term migrants. But the MPs found
that there are still major shortcomings, suggesting that hundreds of
thousands of people are being omitted.
The ONS estimated that there were only
43,000 short-term migrants in England and Wales in the year to June 2005,
with just 16,000 of these in Greater London. But the MPs point out that
other measures of the workforce suggest a much higher number: there were
235,640 new national insurance number registrations in Greater London alone
during 2005/06.
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Border controls
New rules would have barred 20,000 migrants Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 7 May 2008 |
Tougher rules on immigration that
would have prevented an estimated 20,000 unskilled workers entering Britain
last year were unveiled by the Home Office yesterday.
The new restrictions form part of the
Government's points-based immigration system which is being introduced this
year to ensure that only those with skills the country needs are allowed
in. They will apply to "skilled" workers from this autumn and follow new
rules already announced to apply to "highly skilled" migrants. Those for
students will follow later. ... Home
Office analysis suggested that 12 per cent of non-European migrants who
arrived last year under the existing work permit scheme would have been
refused about 8,000 individuals.
Another 12,000 would have been kept out
under tougher rules applied to groups such as sportsmen and sportswomen,
performers and charity workers wanting to come to the UK on a temporary
basis.
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Border controls police
One in four forces sets free illegal migrants Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 23 April 2008 |
One in four police forces is
routinely releasing illegal immigrants and telling them to make their own
way to the nearest immigration office, figures show. ...
Figures obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act show that 10 out of 43 forces in England and Wales do not
detain suspects if the Immigration Service is unavailable. Instead, they
release them with directions to the nearest immigration office.
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Border controls
Bulgaria is 'back door' into Britain for east Europeans Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 22 April 2008 |
More than 1,000 Moldovans, Ukrainians
and Russians are applying every month for Bulgarian nationality
prompting claims that many are then heading straight to Britain.
The news comes after figures showed that
the numbers of Bulgarians and Romanians visiting Britain rose by 77 per
cent in 12 months. They are allowed to
visit as many times as they want after their countries joined the European
Union in January last year. The number
who can work here is strictly limited by quotas but the big rise in
visitors fuelled suspicions that many were choosing to stay in Britain and
work in the black economy. Boyko Rashkov,
Bulgaria's deputy justice minister, said more than 250 applications for
Bulgarian citizenship were being processed by the Ministry of Justice in
Sofia each week. ... Many of the
applicants, who declare that they are of Bulgarian origin, are from
Moldova, Ukraine, Macedonia and Russia. There are also a large number of
people from Asian countries applying for Bulgarian citizenship. ...
Mr Rashkov said he needed more staff to
cope with a backlog of applications, which has jumped to 61,000.
"Our staff just cannot deal with all the
work", he said. ... Sir Andrew Green, the
chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said: "It is quite clear that these people
seeking Bulgarian citizenship are doing so in order to obtain access to the
European labour market. "In many cases
that market will be Britain since the controls imposed by the Government on
Bulgarians and Romanians leak like a sieve."
Figures from the Office for National
Statistics showed that 200,000 people from Bulgaria and Romania visited
Britain in the year to the end of July 2007, compared with 113,000 visitors
in the previous 12 months.
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Border controls employment
Points system for immigration 'will cause chaos' David Litterick Daily Telegraph, 7 April 2008 |
The Government's new immigration
system will result in chaos and leave business facing extra costs, leading
lawyers have claimed. The
Australian-inspired "points system" is intended to make it easier for
businesses to hire skilled and qualified workers, but Sarah Linton, a
partner at Bryan Cave and head of the firm's employment practice in London,
believes the proposals are ill thought out.
"Far from introducing new controls, much
of the responsibility for managing the system will be passed to employers,
to be known as sponsors, who face onerous compliance and reporting
obligations," she said. ... The CBI has
broadly supported the new points-based migration system, but has attacked
the level of the charges which deputy director-general, John Cridland said
could leave smaller business facing an increase of 580pc.
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Border controls
Border force can't arrest drug runners in ports Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 1 April 2008 |
Officers from the new border force
will not be able to arrest people caught in possession of drugs or a gun,
it emerged last night. Analysis of the
legislation governing the force's powers shows that an officer can only
detain a suspect for three hours and must then "arrange for a constable to
attend as soon as is reasonably practicable". ...
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, will
unveil the 25,000-strong force on Thursday as part of the new UK Border
Agency, signalling a hardening approach to illegal immigration.
The agency was set up to protect
Britain's 71 international and major regional airports, 10,500 miles of
coastline and 27 major sea ports.
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Border controls employment
Home Office in illegal immigrants cover-up David Leppard Sunday Times, 30 March 2008 [The headline in the newspaper is "Home Office in migrants cover-up"] |
Hundreds of illegal immigrants
including a suspected murderer and other criminals are working in
care homes in Britain, a leaked Home Office report has disclosed.
In some homes more than half the
employees have entered the country illegally and are now being entrusted
with caring for old and vulnerable people. The immigration intelligence
report found that one illegal worker was a murder suspect from the
Philippines and others had been involved in the "abuse and mistreatment" of
elderly people. The report, which was
produced more than two years ago, warned that the problems were
"widespread" and "significant". But officials say its findings have been
ignored. "Very few of these cases are
acted on," one official said. "Ministers have turned a blind eye in the
obscene interests of costs. These cases are not seen as a priority and most
of them simply go to the bottom of the pile." ...
The 22-page intelligence report examined
110 investigations into the employment of suspected illegal immigrants in
care homes in the south and southwest of England.
The situation was so bad, the report
notes, that "there is potential for embarrassment if the immigration
service is not seen to be actively addressing this issue". Many of the
illegal workers were using false names and forged identity documents to
bypass police criminal records checks. The suspected Filipino murderer had
used fraudulent references to get a job at a care home in Plymouth.
The report discloses that Home Office
ministers had failed to tackle the problem because most of the illegal care
home workers were from countries such as Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South
Africa, which were not on the priority list identifying those who should be
targeted. This restriction "does not
allow the immigration service to take any form of action", it says.
Offenders are rarely brought to court because of a lack of resources.
"There is no deterrent factor for those involved in these activities," the
report states. ... The report, which has
been leaked by Whitehall officials exasperated that little has been done
about the problem, reveals: that
58 of 113 employees of a firm running two homes in Hampshire and Wiltshire
were suspected illegal offenders;
that 36 of 58 people at a Southampton care agency were working illegally,
mostly using fake identity papers;
and that 22 of 55 foreign
nationals who applied for employment through a Salisbury agency were
immigration offenders The document says
the proliferation of untrained and unqualified illegal migrants, many with
unknown backgrounds, poses a direct risk to some of the estimated 480,000
elderly and vulnerable people in the 21,000 care homes in England and
Wales.
[Site link] |
Up |
Border controls marriage visas
Thousands 'are given marriage visas without proper checks' Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 26 March 2008 |
Thousands of foreign spouses are
being granted marriage visas to Britain without their stories being checked
out properly, it emerged yesterday. MPs
were astonished to discover that interviews are not routinely conducted
with British fiancés, fiancées, wives or husbands to ensure
that the marriage is legitimate and not forced.
Meg Munn, the Home Office minister, said
the volume of applications made interviews impractical.
Each year, more than 40,000 marriage
visas are granted and there is concern that many are intended to get around
immigration rules. Last year, 17,000
marriage visas were issued for spouses from the Indian sub-continent.
The Commons home affairs select committee
is investigating the extent to which British girls are being forced into
marriage. Although applicants for visas face rigorous checks, including
interviews, the same is not true for the British sponsor.
Documents, such as passports and birth
certificates, are checked to verify their identities, but they are not seen
by officials. Mark Sedwill, the head of UK visas, told the committee that
there would only be an interview if there was a suspicion that the marriage
was forced. ... Bob Russell, the Liberal
Democrat MP for Colchester, accused the Government of complacency.
He said interviews could help detect
whether a marriage was forced or genuine and should at least be carried out
on applicants from the Indian sub-continent.
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Border controls
Migrants given rail tickets and told to travel to Croydon Sophie Borland Daily Telegraph, 11 March 2008 |
Nine illegal immigrants disappeared
after they were given free train tickets by police and told to make their
own way to a detention centre more than 60 miles away. ...
Cambridgeshire police say they were
acting under instruction from officials at the Border and Immigration
Agency, a Home Office department. But
officials at the agency denied such guidance was issued and insisted they
had asked for the nine to be held in custody so that they could be
interviewed.
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Border controls
Poor fences at Calais 'let 1,500 a year into Britain' Stephen Adams Daily Telegraph, 5 March 2008 |
Up to 1,500 illegal immigrants a year
are entering Britain because of poor fencing at Calais, a Lords committee
has found. High-tech scanners are being
bypassed by "determined" immigrants, the committee found. The immigrants
are climbing over fences to sneak aboard lorries after the vehicles have
been checked. ... The peers made their
discovery during a visit to Calais and other ports to investigate the state
of Britain's borders. ... The report said
the poor fencing was the "one weak point in an otherwise excellent system".
... A spokesman for the Border and
Immigration Agency defended its record and said it was not "complacent":
"Our borders are some of the toughest in the world. Last year we searched
over one million lorries and prevented a record 18,000 attempts by illegal
immigrants to cross the channel."
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Border controls
Border force 'to close at weekends' Daily Telegraph, 3 March 2008 |
Fears were raised last night that the
Government could be opening the door to terrorists and illegal immigrants
after it emerged that border officials may not be able to arrest foreign
criminals at weekends. The new Border and
Immigration Agency has been told to keep a skeleton staff on duty at the
weekend and on bank holidays, under plans which come into force on April 1.
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Border controls
Britain has lost control of borders, says judge Daily Telegraph, 23 February 2008 |
A judge yesterday bemoaned Britain's
loss of border controls "for the first time since 1066" and the deportation
centres set up to cope with the result.
He said he could not help but have
"sympathy" for detainees held in the "limbo of boredom and uncertainty"
offered by such places. Judge Christopher
Elwen's comments came after he cleared four foreign nationals of
orchestrating a multi-million-pound "rampage" in a detention centre. ...
Passing sentence, the judge said: "In the
last few years this country, perhaps for the first time since 1066, lost
control of its borders and one of the unfortunate consequences of this has
been the existence of detention centres such as Harmondsworth.
"One cannot but have sympathy for the
hundreds of detainees who have been held in such places in a limbo of
boredom and uncertainty while the administrative procedures grind on."
However, he said everyone in this country "enjoys the protection of the law
and in return must obey it".
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Border controls
MP to oppose plan to abolish Commonwealth visa privilege Daily Telegraph, 22 February 2008 |
Britain is proposing to sever its
historic ties to tens of thousands of Commonwealth nationals who have an
automatic right through descent to live and work here.
This week's Home Office Green Paper
charting new pathways to citizenship suggests the ancestry visa might be
abolished. The visa enables people aged
17 or over whose grandparents were born in the UK to come for four years
and eventually apply to stay. Those entering under the ancestry route have
free access to the labour market. ... In
a letter to The Daily Telegraph today, Austin Mitchell, the MP for
Great Grimsby, says the plan shows a "contempt for the historic
associations between Britain, New Zealand and Australia".
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Border controls security
Government accused of cover-up after illegal immigrant caught in Commons Melissa Kite Sunday Telegraph, 10 February 2008 |
An illegal immigrant was able to work
at the House of Commons using a fake identity pass in a serious breach of
security. The Government stands accused
of a cover-up after leaked documents, ..., showed that Liam Byrne, the
immigration minister, was informed immediately of the case of the Brazilian
woman, a cleaner, when she was arrested at Parliament 10 days ago. Yet the
Home Office confirmed the security breach one of the most serious to
affect Westminster only after being contacted by this newspaper last
night. A letter marked "restricted" and
"urgent" was sent to Mr Byrne and Lin Homer, who heads the Border and
Immigration Agency, on January 31, warning them that a woman who had
absconded from Heathrow airport three years earlier had been arrested at
Westminster that day. Elaine Chaves
Aparecida was detained by police after a random check on her security pass
showed that it belonged to someone else. She had been working there, since
December 3 last year as the employee of a cleaning company, Emprise
Services. Under questioning, Miss Chaves,
31, admitted that she had run away from immigration officials at Heathrow
Terminal 4 in December 2004 before she could be refused entry.
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Border controls
Laura Clout and Richard Edwards Daily Telegraph, 9 February 2008 |
Last week, Tony Smith, the regional
director of the Border and Immigration Agency, said 13,000 illegal
immigrants were caught every year concealed in lorries at major ports,
particularly from Calais.
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Border controls deportation
Compulsory ID cards for migrants Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 31 January 2008 |
Compulsory identity cards will be
introduced for all non-European Union migrants this year, Liam Byrne, the
immigration minister, said yesterday. ...
Mr Byrne said he had set a target of
introducing the cards for foreign immigrants by the beginning of November.
Speaking to council chiefs in London, Mr
Byrne said that newcomers would be held to account if they broke the rules
"whether that is overstaying their visa or breaking the law".
He added: "That means automatic
deportation for those who commit a serious offence.
"This year we will deport more foreign
prisoners than last year and I am afraid we will build more
detention centres to increase the numbers we remove."
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Border controls
French block X-ray search for stowaways Daily Telegraph, 24 January 2008 |
France will not let British border
guards in Calais use X-rays to search for illegal immigrants in lorries
unless they get written permission from the stowaways.
French border police have outlawed the
use of the scanners, claiming that they could violate European health and
safety laws. British immigration
officials have been told that if they want to use the machines they must
clear it with those they are trying to find an almost impossible
solution.
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Border controls
Treaty 'will shift power to Europe' Toby Helm and Bruno Waterfield Daily Telegraph, 21 January 2008 |
The EU Reform Treaty backed by Gordon
Brown paves the way for "a massive and fundamental" shift of power to
Europe, a senior Labour MP charged by Parliament with assessing its impact
will tell the Commons today. The comments
from Michael Connarty, the pro-European chairman of the all-party European
Scrutiny Committee, will mark an explosive start to five weeks of
Parliamentary debate on the Treaty and stoke the growing clamour for
a referendum. ... Mr Connarty backs the
new treaty because he wants a stronger Europe but said he had decided to
speak out because the British and other governments had not told the people
of Europe the truth. On criminal law,
immigration and border controls, the treaty had set up mechanisms for
national vetoes to be steadily eroded and authority transferred from
British ministers and UK courts to Europe.
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Border controls
Rich migrants avoid the English test Rosa Prince Daily Telegraph, 18 January 2008 |
Wealthy foreign businessmen will be
exempt from new requirements to learn English before moving to Britain if
they can prove they have at least £1 million in the bank.
The proposal is part of the Government's
new points-based scheme for gaining residency, designed to encourage
greater integration into British culture by immigrants.
However, the very rich, such as Russian
oil billionaires, will not need to pass strict language tests under a quota
system, as long as they can prove they have £1 million in a "regulated
financial institution and disposable in the UK".
The new system for highly skilled
workers, which comes into force in less than three months, also requires
millionaire businessmen and women to invest £750,000 within three
months of their entry into Britain.
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Border controls
Fingerprint plan for migrants Daily Telegraph, 14 January 2008 |
Migrants entering Britain on visas
will have their fingerprints taken, the Government will announce today.
The checks will be used to screen out
criminals or those likely to outstay their visas and will apply to three
quarters of the world's population. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, is to
unveil the scheme today as part of plans to reduce illegal immigration and
identity fraud.
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Border controls Europe
Asylum seekers sweep across EU after border control ends Michael Leidig Sunday Telegraph, 6 January 2008 |
Thousands of asylum seekers are on
the move across Europe as a result of the relaxation of internal border
controls. A new system intended to make
it easier for European Union citizens to move between member countries has
led to a dramatic rise in illegal immigrants.
At the Traiskirchen refugee camp in
Austria, numbers have more than doubled, from 300 to 770, since the rules
were changed just before Christmas. ...
Almost 2,000 soldiers still patrol
Austria's borders, but they are powerless to check the passports of new
arrivals. ... German police, who opposed
the opening of the borders, have also reported a sharp increase in the
number of illegal migrants entering the country.
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Border controls Europe
Police warning as politicians hail end to borders Harry de Quetteville Daily Telegraph, 21 December 2007 |
European leaders will take down
border posts across the continent today, as the passport-free Schengen zone
is extended to nine former Eastern bloc countries.
But while politicians have begun three
days of celebrations, police forces have given warning that the move will
hamper the fight against terrorism, organised crime and illegal
immigration. ... The prospect has caused
uproar among German police on their country's border with Poland at
Frankfurt Oder, which until now has marked the outer limit of the Schengen
zone. They fear that Poland's security
forces will be overwhelmed by the new arrangement.
"The Poles are doing their best, but the
task is impossible," said Lars Wendland, a spokesman for a union of border
police at Frankfurt Oder. ... The joint
concerns of the German and Polish police forces are reinforced by worries
over the Schengen II computer system, which is intended to provide detailed
information on those crossing the border to member police forces.
"We were promised by the EU that we would
only open borders if the Schengen II database had been established," said
Mr Wendland. "But it's not running yet."
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Border controls Europe
On EU's new border, illegal immigrants 'are coming and coming and coming' Gethin Chamberlain Sunday Telegraph, 16 December 2007 |
Just one porous border will stand
between most of Europe and tens of thousands of illegal immigrants under
changes that take effect on Friday.
Hungary and Poland are among nine recent
additions to the European Union who will join most other members in
throwing open their EU frontiers to travel without a passport. ...
Border officials have already reported an
upsurge in people trying to cross the EU's new outer frontier. Britain has
not signed up to the Schengen zone, but many of those heading for the
eastern frontier say they want to cross the Channel. ...
On its visit to the border between
Hungary and the Ukraine, The Sunday Telegraph found evidence of
serious weaknesses in controls over immigrants from outside the EU.
Officials said that they caught fewer than a third of those attempting to
cross illegally.
The intention is to make it easier for
European citizens to move around, but word has spread quickly to those
dreaming of a new life in the West. Somalis, Afghans, Iraqis, Mongolians,
Georgians and Kosovan Serbs and Albanians are beating a path to the border,
eager to try their luck.
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Border controls terrorism
Too many loopholes in Britain's border security for terrorists Steve Farrow Daily Telegraph, 12 July 2007 [Letter to the Editor] |
As an ex-entry clearance officer who
worked in the High Commission's visa section in Islamabad for two years, I
worked closely with representatives from bona fide colleges and
universities from Britain. Most of them complained of the large numbers of
overseas students, particularly from Pakistan, who failed to show up for
their courses. The Home Office proposal
of closing one loophole by demanding that foreign students have a "sponsor"
is risible. The majority of student visa applications that we processed in
Islamabad had some form of bogus documentation supporting the application,
much of which we were unable to verify due to work constraints. This
"loophole closure" will not in any way stop the abuse.
The 379 Pakistani students who failed to
show up at Portsmouth University is only the tip of the iceberg and we are
now beginning to pay the price for the Government's immigration policy.
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Border controls
Uniforms for passport teams 'will deter illegals' George Jones Daily Telegraph, 24 July 2006 |
Uniformed border control officers are
to be introduced at ports and airports, John Reid, the Home Secretary,
announced yesterday. In addition, the
budget for immigration enforcement will double to £280 million by the
end of 2010 to try to clamp down on illegal immigrants.
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Border controls asylum
A return to the days of tougher border controls Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 20 July 2006 |
People leaving the country are to be
counted out at the borders for the first time since embarkation controls
were abolished in 1998. ... Further
details will be announced within days.
The move comes after the Home Office
acknowledged that it had up to 450,000 outstanding case files for asylum
seekers. While some of these may be for
people who are now EU citizens, or who have died or returned home, it
represents far more than an estimate of 283,000 produced by the National
Audit Office last year, which ministers insisted at the time was 50,000 too
high. In his reform package yesterday,
John Reid, the Home Secretary, said this backlog would be sorted out
"within five years". However, he admitted this was not a guarantee that
everyone turned down for asylum would be removed from the country.
Port controls started to be dismantled
under the Tories in 1994. The remaining checks were removed under Labour in
1997. Since then, it has no longer been a
requirement to show a passport on leaving the country, though selective
checks still occur and airlines carry out their own.
The loosening of border controls, which
saved an estimated £3 million a year, cut off a valuable source of
intelligence for police and the security services in the investigation of
terrorism.
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CITIZENSHIP |
Citizenship alienation
British youths most alienated in Europe Daily Telegraph, 24 January 2009 |
British youths feel more alienated
than those in any other European country, a survey has found. Interviews
with more than 40,000 Europeans found that British 16- to 24-year-olds had
the lowest levels of trust and belonging. Overall, Britain came 13th out of
22 countries in the New Economics Foundation's survey. Denmark topped the
happiness league.
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Citizenship immigration
Passports for '275,000 migrants every year' Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 15 January 2009 |
Up to 275,000 passports could be
handed out to foreigners every year under new rules on "earning"
citizenship to be published today.
Migrants looking to settle in Britain
will be expected to apply for citizenship rather than staying "in limbo" on
some form of leave to remain. Tens of thousands will be "fast tracked" to
settlement each year if they carry out voluntary or community work, under
the Borders, Immigration and Citizenship Bill.
"Earned citizenship" will even allow some
foreign criminals to be given a British passport and full access to
benefits within a decade of arriving.
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, has
signalled that she wants every migrant looking to settle to apply for
citizenship. Currently, officials say,
only 60 per cent of people given the right to remain permanently apply for
citizenship. More than 164,000 people
were granted citizenship in 2007. Had all applied, that could have meant
275,000 new citizens. At present, anyone
who has been in Britain for five years can apply to settle permanently but,
under the new rules, they will then enter a probationary period.
Those carrying out voluntary work such as
fund-raising or running children's sports clubs could earn citizenship just
a year later. Others may have to wait
three years, but even criminals will get a passport after five, providing
their offence was no liable to jail or deportation. The Bill will also
include a levy on visa fees, intended to contribute towards schools,
hospitals and other services migrants will use. First announced last year,
it is expected to come into force from April, and to be up to £20.
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Citizenship nationality, naturalisation
Citizenship Daily Telegraph, 4 December 2008 |
Immigrants will have to "earn their
right to stay" in Britain under planned new laws. Applications for
citizenship will be set back if the applicant commits crimes or fails to
learn English, as part of what ministers say will be a "firm but fair"
immigration system. A Borders, Immigration and Citizenship Bill will alter
rules on granting British nationality. The centrepiece will be measures to
establish a formal "path to citizenship".
Progress will be slowed if migrants don't
make an effort to integrate or if they commit even minor crimes, the Home
Office said. The rules could also fast-track applications for some would-be
citizens. At the moment, there is a
standard five-year qualifying period for naturalization.
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CRIME |
Crime policing
Stop-and-search cuts knife crime Daily Telegraph, 19 May 2009 |
Serious knife crime and teenage
killings in London dropped significantly after police almost doubled the
number of stop and search operations. The
Metropolitan Police said that violence with knives was down by a third and
the number of teenage murders had almost halved compared with last year.
Officers have searched 24,000 young
people every month and arrested 10,266 people, 90 per cent of whom were
charged.
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Crime racism, USA
Face facts on frisks Heather Mac Donald New York Post, 19 May 2009 |
The New York Civil Liberties Union
last week lodged another "racial-profiling" complaint about the NYPD,
pointing to statistics for the first three months of 2009: 52 percent of
all people stopped for questioning by the police were black, whereas 9
percent were white. It would be
illuminating if the NYCLU suggested what the proper percentage of stops
should be for the various racial and ethnic groups. Doing so might force it
to acknowledge the following facts about crime in New York: Blacks commit
about 68 percent of all violent crime in the city, according to police
records, though they are just 24 percent of the city's population.
That crime number comes from victims and
witnesses when they report attacks to the police. According to data from
victims and witnesses, blacks commit about 82 percent of all shootings and
72 percent of all robberies. Whites commit about 5 percent of all violent
crimes, though they make up 35 percent of the city's population, and commit
1 percent of shootings and about 4 percent of robberies.
Now, given these crime rates, whom
exactly does the NYCLU think the NYPD should be stopping? Police
enforcement activity can reflect criminal behavior or population ratios
not both. If stop-and-frisks
mirrored the city's racial, rather than crime, demographics, as the NYCLU
seems to think they should, the police would be ignoring where crime is
actually occurring and who its victims and perpetrators are. Recall that
victims and witnesses report in 1 percent of all shootings in the city that
the perpetrator was white. ... The same
proportion of stops of blacks and whites 12 percent results
in a summons or an arrest, suggesting that the police use the same
behavioral factors in deciding whom to stop. ...
Just because a stop doesn't yield
evidence of a crime, however, doesn't mean that it was unjustified. A high
percentage of stops are made because the suspect appeared to be casing a
victim or property or acting as a lookout. The officer's surmise may well
have been correct, and the stop effective in breaking up criminal activity,
without the stop producing grounds for arrest. Even if the subject is
innocent, his actions and their context could have properly raised the
officer's suspicions. ... Here's a
suggestion for the NYCLU: If you want to lower the rate of police activity
in black neighborhoods, put some effort into lowering the crime rate.
Attacking the police for fighting crime is a dangerous distraction.
[Site link] |
Up |
Crime education
Foreign students 'use fake results' Graeme Paton Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2009 |
Foreign students are being admitted
to British universities with bogus qualifications, the higher education
watchdog has been told. Lecturers said
they uncovered evidence of students getting places on the basis of "forged
or false" certificates. Some claimed
their suspicions were only aroused when undergraduates and postgraduates
from overseas struggled to cope with course demands.
When challenged by university officials,
many students implicated "agents" peddling bogus qualifications in their
home countries. The disclosure is made in
a report by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, which vets
standards at British universities.
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Crime
Crime is costing us £3,000 a year each Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2009 |
Crime costs every household
£3,000 a year, with worse to come during the recession, a study has
found. A decade of unprecedented spending
on law enforcement has failed to stop Britain having one of the highest
crime rates in Europe, according to Policy Exchange, a centre-Right think
tank. It is estimated that, since 2005,
an additional 100,000 children a year have been punished for new crimes,
with robberies, drug offences and criminal damage among youngsters all
rising sharply. ... The report, Less
Crime, Lower Cost, estimates that crime costs Britain more than
£78 billion a year, ... ... In the
past decade, the number of children appearing in court for robbery alone
has increased by 76 per cent.
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Crime policing
Officers stripped of stop and search terror powers over fears of angering Muslims Daily Mail, 8 May 2009 |
Scotland Yard is scaling down its use
of controversial powers which allow officers to stop and search people
without reasonable grounds for suspicion.
Stung by criticism that the practice has
alienated ethnic minorities, the Metropolitan Police is changing its policy
on when Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 can be employed.
In future its use will be restricted to
policing 'iconic' or strategically important sites, such as Buckingham
Palace and Parliament, and to specific operations.
In other cases officers will be told to
use Section 43 of the Act, which requires them to have reasonable suspicion
that the person they are stopping is a terrorist.
The Met increased its use of the Section
44 powers following the car bomb attacks on a nightclub in Haymarket,
Central London, and Glasgow Airport in June 2007.
Since October of that year the force has
carried out 154,293 stop and searches.
But Government figures released last week
showed that black and Asian people were targeted disproportionately.
Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who
took over as the force's anti-terror chief last month, highlighted the
concerns in a recent report to the Met Police Authority.
He wrote: 'The power is seen as
controversial and has the potential to have a negative impact, particularly
on minority communities.'
[Site link] |
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Crime police
Blacks bear brunt of rise in stop and search Richard Ford and Sean O'Neill The Times, 1 May 2009 |
Black people are almost eight times
as likely as whites to be stopped and searched a decade after the Stephen
Lawrence inquiry branded the police "institutionally racist".
Use of ordinary stop and search tactics
in England and Wales rose sharply to more than one million in 2007-08, the
highest figure since 1998. The rise has
had a disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities. When Stephen Lawrence
was murdered in 1993 black people were six times as likely to be stopped
and searched as whites. By 2006/7, that had risen to seven times.
Figures published by the Ministry of
Justice yesterday for stops and searches in 2007/08 under Section 44
counter-terror laws were even starker. The number of people stopped and
searched tripled in a year to 117,000 but fewer than 1 per cent were
arrested for alleged terrorism-related offences.
There was a 322 per cent rise in black
people stopped and searched, 277 per cent in Asians and 185 per cent in
white people under anti-terror laws.
Civil liberty campaigners and politicians
accused police of heavy-handedness and said that vastly increased use of
their powers threatened to alienate large sections of the community.
Cindy Butts, who is leading the
Metropolitan Police Authority's race and faith inquiry, said that she was
concerned about the "huge disproportionality" revealed by the figures. ...
The official figures on race and the
criminal justice system revealed increases in police stops and searches in
relation to both ordinary and terrorist crimes. Black people were nearly
eight times as likely to be stopped and searched per head of population as
whites. Asians were twice as likely to be searched.
Nearly 90 per cent of the searches under
counter-terror powers were carried out in London by the Metropolitan
Police. Vernon Coaker, the Police Minister, said that the increase in
anti-terror stops and searches was in part linked to the failed bombings in
Haymarket. London, in 2007.
[Site link] |
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Crime border security, abuse of visas
Former Apprentice star Saira Khan: 'Why I shopped my cousin to MI5' Saira Khan Daily Mail, 25 April 2009 |
A joyous reunion after two years,
which was how long it had been since my husband Steve Hyde and I had seen
my cousin Kamran Mumumtaz on a visit to his village in the Pakistan region
of Azad Kashmir. Kamran's arrival for a
six-month holiday in Britain ... ... It
has not only caused a huge family rift, but has also opened my eyes to some
of the darker practices among some people in my community.
I am referring, in particular, to the
widespread belief that it is entirely acceptable to use travel and study
visas to circumvent normal immigration rules.
Fifteen days after he had landed, Kamran
packed his bags ... and disappeared. ...
Like many before him it is
impossible to say how many because no official records are kept of those
who abscond he has been absorbed and is being protected by a
community that is as colossal as it is impenetrable.
The Government has estimated that there
are up to 570,000 illegal immigrants in Britain, but with so many visas
being applied for with malicious intent, that figure could run to millions.
Not that there is any attempt by the Government to chase it down.
Although there are no official figures
for the number of overstayers from Pakistan, or from anywhere else for that
matter, there is enough anecdotal evidence to show that it is a growing
problem. In 2007, at Portsmouth University alone, 379 students from
Pakistan were unaccounted for when their visas expired. ...
Immigration Minister Phil Woolas has
admitted that the student visa system is 'the major loophole in Britain's
border controls', but I think the entire visa system is one big loophole.
And that is largely because I've
discovered, to my disgust, that there is no system in place to monitor
those who fail to go home when their visas expire.
In any case, those who do get caught
simply apply for asylum. And the bureaucratic process to deport them is
then so drawn out, they invariably end up staying.
I grew up in Nottingham in a very
tight-knit Asian community and regard myself as a moderate Muslim.
Although I have since integrated into
British society, I've maintained my contact with this community through
family and friends. I am appalled to learn the extent to which they think
it's OK to bend or break immigration laws. ...
Our initial application in March last
year was declined because the authorities, rightly as it turned out,
suspected that Kamran would not go back. ...
His uncle from Hounslow, who is a taxi
driver, came to visit one night. By then I had learned that the uncle had
gained his visa to get into this country by marrying a British girl of
Pakistani origin. That's another route many Pakistanis use to get here. ...
I am writing this article because I have
no confidence that the authorities will do anything. ...
Most Pakistanis talk about blood and clan
loyalty. They have no respect for British laws unless it suits them.
... The systematic breaking of our
immigration laws is a dirty little secret for many of Britain's minority
communities.
[Site link] |
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Crime USA
America's Most Dangerous Cities Zack O'Malley Greenburg Forbes, 24 April 2009 |
In March 2008, Kwame Kilpatrick was
charged with eight felonies, including perjury and obstruction of justice.
In August, he violated his bail agreement and was thrown in jail. His
actions were deplorable for anybody, but Kilpatrick was no Average Joe
he was the mayor of Detroit.
Unfortunately for the Motor City,
Kilpatrick, 38, is just one ripple in the area's sea of crime. Detroit is
the worst offender on our list of America's most dangerous cities, thanks
to a staggering rate of 1,220 violent crimes committed per 100,000 people.
... To determine our list, we used
violent crime statistics from the FBI's latest uniform crime report, issued
in 2008. The violent crime category is composed of four offenses: murder
and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated
assault. We evaluated U.S. metropolitan statistical areas geographic
entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for use by
federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal
statistics with more than 500,000 residents.
Though nationwide crime was down 3.5%
year over year in the first six months of 2008, the cities atop our list
illustrate a disturbing trend: All 10 of the most dangerous cities were
among those identified by the Department of Justice as transit points for
Mexican drug cartels.
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Crime multiculturalism, USA
Why has child molestation committed by illegal aliens become an epidemic? Dave Gibson Examiner.com, 21 April 2009 |
Contrary to what President Bush often
claimed, family values do stop at the Rio Grande for many illegal aliens.
In addition to suppressing wages, bankrupting our hospitals, and
over-crowding our jails and public schools, illegal aliens are preying upon
our children. ... In fact, a study
conducted by the Violent Crimes Institute reports that between 1999 and
2006, there were nearly 1,000,000 sex crimes committed in the United States
by illegal aliens. Using U.S. Department
of Justice, Immigration, as well as state and local law enforcement data,
Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute determined that
there are no less than 240,000 illegal alien sex offenders currently inside
the U.S. ... So why does the crime of
child molestation seem to be so prevalent among illegal aliens from Mexico?
The answer may lie within the age-old Mexican culture of "machismo,"
as well as within the actual laws of that country.
The crime of rape or child molestation is
incredibly under-reported in Mexico, because there is so much shame placed
upon the victim as well as the difficulty in proving the case. A 2002
Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post article, reporter Mary Jordan
detailed the case of a 16 year old Mexican girl who had reported being
raped by three policemen in 1997. When Yessica Yadira Diaz Cazares and her
mother went to the police station to report the rape, she was laughed at by
the officers and actually jailed overnight. ...
After Yessica's death, the national human
rights commission pursued the case, resulting in the conviction of two of
the accused officers. The crime of
kidnapping a woman for the purpose of rape and marriage against their will,
or "rapto" as it is known in Mexico is actually a minor crime and rarely
ever prosecuted. A Mexican legislator actually called the practice
"romantic." Of course, this crime if committed in the United States would
elicit felony charges and a penalty of 20 years to life in prison.
While rape is a serious crime in the
United States, many Mexican nationals cannot understand why they are
prosecuted on this side of the border. Often, a small payment of $10 to $20
to the victim's family will settle the matter back in Mexico.
The most troubling and telling reason
behind the growing epidemic of child molestation at the hands of Mexican
illegal aliens, is the fact the age of sexual consent throughout the
majority of Mexico is 12 years of age!
The only other nation in the world which
boasts such a disregard for childhood innocence is Zimbabwe, where the age
of consent is also 12. ... In order to
bring charges of rape in most Mexican states, the law requires that the
girl prove that she is a virgin, and that the charge of statutory rape be
dropped if the rapist wishes to marry his victim.
Of course, when discussing the issue of
illegal immigration, this dirty little secret is never talked about by our
politicians, nor is the impact that such an attitude towards the abuse of
children could have on this nation by offering amnesty to millions of
Mexican nationals.
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Crime Norway
Immigrants behind most cases of aggravated sexual assault Rolleiv Solholm The Norway Post, 17 April 2009 |
The Oslo Police have over the past
three years investigated 41 cases of aggravated sexual assault, which
resulted in rape. All of them were carried out by non-western immigrants to
Norway. The police now urge that more
efforts be put into preventive measures among men with immigrant
background. The police have investigated
all reported cases of aggravated sexual assault over the past three years,
and have gained a clear impression of the offenders:
Most of the rapists have a Kurdish or
African background, NRK reports. The cases of aggravated sexual assaults
all have one thing in common, namely the use of gross violence.
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Crime Norway
30,000 asylum seekers arrive without passports Rolleiv Solholm The Norway Post, 17 April 2009 |
33,000 asylum seekers have arrived in
Norway without a passport or ID documents since 2005, and most of them are
still in Norway, according to Aftenposten. The Aliens Office (UDI) will now
refuse them work permit. According to the
police, there are several reasons why a large number of asylum seekers
dispose of their ID documents. One is
that many fear that it may be revealed that they have earlier applied for
asylum in other countries. Earlier this
year, the Department of Labour instructed the UDI to refuse work permit to
asylum seekers without ID documents.
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Crime USA, illegal immigrants
Mexicans total 32% of immigrants Jennifer Harper Washington Times, 17 April 2009 |
A record 12.7 million Mexican
immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2008, a 17-fold increase since 1970,
according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Hispanic Center.
"About 11 percent of everyone born in
Mexico is currently living in the U.S.," the study said.
Mexicans now account for 32 percent of
all immigrants living in this country - which continues to be a haven for
the world's tired, huddled masses. "No
other country in the world has as many total immigrants from all countries
as the United States has immigrants from Mexico alone. Other than the
United States, the country that hosts the largest number of immigrants is
Russia, with 12 million foreign born," the study said.
The majority of Mexican citizens in the
U.S. - 55 percent - are here illegally. And Mexicans comprise a majority
(59 percent) of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants now within our
borders. ... And while they can be found
in all 50 states, California, Texas, New York and Florida are still the top
destinations. Less likely spots such as New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Idaho
and Missouri now hold from 25,000 to 45,000 illegal immigrants each.
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Crime USA
Illegal immigrants cashing in on federal tax credits, study shows. Kevin Mooney Washington Examiner, 16 April 2009 |
Large numbers of illegal immigrants
file tax returns using phony Social Security numbers to cash in on the
federal Earned Income Tax Credit, thanks to lax government management,
according to the author of a new study.
"Technically, only people authorized to
work in the U.S. are eligible for the credit, you need a valid Social
security number," said Ed Rubenstein, a financial analyst and economist,
speaking at a news conference Tuesday at the National Press Club.
"But identity theft, stolen Social
Security numbers, and other scams effectively nullify the restriction. As a
result, illegal aliens actually receive the EITC at even greater rates than
legal immigrants," Rubenstein said. The
IRS makes little or no effort to verify the authenticity of Social Security
numbers, or existence of dependant children, Rubenstein said.
This makes it possible for illegal
immigrants to claim children still living in Mexico as dependents and for
parents living illegally in the U.S. to file separate returns claiming the
same children as dependents under the EITC, Rubenstein said.
The EITC was created to boost work
incentives for poor families with children. Childless households received a
maximum $438 payment in 2008, while the maximum available to families with
two or more children was $4,824. "From a
distance, the EITC looks like a winner," he said. "The devil is in the
details. For starters, the program is dominated by fraud."
Illegal immigrant households are more
than three times as likely to receive EITC than native-born American
households, Rubenstein said. Higher
fertility rates evident among the immigrant population accounts for this
disparity, he said. "Even a tiny increase
in the fertility rates, if maintained over the decades, will have enormous
consequences," Rubenstein said. "The role of EITC in the nation's
demographic destiny cannot be denied."
Rubenstein also cited figures from the
General Accounting Office (GAO) showing that as many as a third of all EITC
claims are "improperly paid."
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Crime illegal immigrants
Boris Johnson's backing boosts illegal immigrant amnesty campaign Hélène Mulholland The Guardian, 15 April 2009 |
A London rally demanding an amnesty
for illegal immigrants living in the UK will be staged during May bank
holiday after receiving backing from Boris Johnson.
Strangers into Citizens, a three-year
national campaign by an umbrella group of civic bodies, has seized on the
Tory London mayor's support for an "earned amnesty" for illegal immigrants
who have been living in the city for several years.
A spokeswoman for the campaign said
Johnson was not expected to attend the event, which will take place in
Trafalgar Square, but added that his support for the cause had helped raise
its public profile. The broad-based
campaign is being staged by the country's largest alliance of civic
institutions, the Citizen Organising Foundation, which includes London
Citizens and Birmingham Citizens. The
spokeswoman said the decision to stage a rally had been triggered by
concern that the recent rows over "British jobs for British workers" and
the recession had left migrants particularly vulnerable.
"People who are already vulnerable to
exploitation might more vulnerable," she added.
Johnson first voiced his support for the
idea of an earned amnesty during the mayoral election last April, despite
opposition from both the Labour government and the Conservative party.
The mayor commissioned a study, conducted
by the London School of Economics earlier this year.
Its interim findings suggested that the
number of "irregular residents" and their children in Britain at the end of
2007 was in the range of 525,000 to 950,000, with a central estimate of
725,000. This compared with a Home Office
estimate, based on the 2001 census, of between 310,000 and 570,000, with a
central estimate of 430,000. The study
said there were a further 175,000 "quasi-legal" migrants whose right to
remain depended on the future determination of their migration status.
The LSE research found that between 57%
and 75% of irregular residents in Britain live in London.
Johnson has argued that an earned amnesty
in the capital would allow people currently in the city illegally to
integrate and contribute more fully to society.
The Strangers into Citizens campaign
wants immigrants across the UK who have been in the country for four or
more years to be admitted to a two-year pathway to full legal rights
"leave to remain" during which they would work legally and
demonstrate their contribution to UK economy and society.
After that two-year period, subject to
knowledge of English and employer and community references, they would be
granted permanent leave to remain.
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Crime USA, illegal immigrants
A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States Jeffrey S. Passel and D'Vera Cohn Pew Hispanic Center, 14 April 2009 |
Unauthorized immigrants living in the
United States are more geographically dispersed than in the past and are
more likely than either U.S. born residents or legal immigrants to live in
a household with a spouse and children. In addition, a growing share of the
children of unauthorized immigrant parents 73% were born in
this country and are U.S. citizens. These
are among the key findings of a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center, a
project of the Pew Research Center, ... A 2008 report by the Center
estimated that 11.9 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the United
States; it concluded that the undocumented immigrant population grew
rapidly from 1990 to 2006 but has since stabilized. In this new analysis,
the Center estimates that the rapid growth of unauthorized immigrant
workers also has halted; it finds that there were 8.3 million undocumented
immigrants in the U.S. labor force in March 2008.
Based on March 2008 data collected by the
Census Bureau, the Center estimates that unauthorized immigrants are 4% of
the nation's population and account for 5.4% of its workforce. Their
children, both those who are unauthorized immigrants themselves and those
who are U.S. citizens, make up 6.8% of the students enrolled in the
nation's elementary and secondary schools.
About three-quarters (76%) of the
nation's unauthorized immigrants are Hispanic. The majority of undocumented
immigrants (59%) are from Mexico. Significant regional sources of
unauthorized immigrants include Asia (11%), Central America (11%), South
America (7%), the Caribbean (4%) and the Middle East (less than 2%).
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Crime multiculturalism
Asian men in burkhas rob jewellers Gerry Braiden The Herald, 6 April 2009 |
Two Asian men wearing traditional
female Muslim dress and carrying handbags have robbed a jewellery shop in a
possible copycat of an international spate of thefts. The pair wore black
Muslim dress, including headwear which completely covered their faces, as
well as sunglasses, when they carried out the attack.
The raid on the ATAA Jewellers in
Glasgow's Great Western Road resembles thefts in Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin,
Frankfurt and London, where a robber has dressed as a wealthy Muslim woman
to take jewellery worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. ...
The two suspects are described as Asian,
around 5ft 10in to 6ft in height. They were both wearing sunglasses and
carrying handbags.
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Crime
One-in-six rapes carried out by foreign attackers Nick Fagge Daily Express, 6 April 2009 |
Foreigners carried out one in six
rapes in Britain last year, police figures have revealed.
And migrant workers, illegal immigrants
and even tourists were responsible for up to a third of all sex attacks in
some areas. In Greater London, the worst
area affected, foreigners were charged in connection with one in three
rapes, statistics obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show. Other
areas with large immigration populations Cambridgeshire, Merseyside,
Hertfordshire, Avon and Somerset also recorded high numbers of
non-UK citizens charged with sex attacks. ...
But police say it is increasingly
difficult to bring foreign rapists to justice due to the large number of
migrant workers and illegal immigrants now living in Britain.
One senior police officer said: "You
always have the risk of flight but with an illegal immigrant it is even
more difficult because there is no record of them having come into the
country in the first place."
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Crime stabbing
Knife attacks on children rise by 72pc in a decade Alastair Jamieson Daily Telegraph, 23 March 2009 |
The number of children taken to
hospital with stab wounds has risen almost three quarters in the past
decade, according to government figures.
Opposition parties said the statistics
demonstrated the "scale of Britain's knife crime culture". They come amid
growing concern about violent attacks involving children.
Last year 22 teenagers were killed in
knife attacks in London alone. Government
statistics show that a total of 49,837 people, including 4,510 children,
were admitted to hospital for stab wounds between 1996-97 and 2006-07, the
last year for which figures are available.
The Liberal Democrats, who obtained the
statistics, said the annual number of children treated for stab wounds
increased 72 per cent over the period, while the number treated for gunshot
wounds fell 30 per cent.
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Crime prisons
Prisons must be set free from this cycle of failure Iain Duncan Smith Sunday Telegraph, 22 March 2009 |
Two-thirds of all prisoners are
re-convicted within two years and half are re-convicted within a staggering
12 months. This comes at enormous extra cost to the police and the courts
and of course to us, the victims of repeat offending. In financial
terms, it amounts to at least £11 billion a year.
These figures remain very high despite
all the promises. The Government set up the National Offender Management
Service (NOMS) with the primary task of reducing the reoffending rate. This
organisation has cost the taxpayer some £18 billion since 2004, yet
despite that massive investment, it has made no impact.
In 1997, when Labour attacked the
Conservatives for locking too many people up in prison, the prison
population stood at over 60,000. Their pledge accompanied by the
slogan "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" was that a
Labour government would not only tackle crime but reduce the prison
population as well. Yet after 12 years and endless criminal justice bills,
the prison population now stands at some 83,000: our prisons are bursting
at the seams. No wonder spending on prisons has risen by a quarter, with
the cost of maintaining a prisoner now around £40,000 per year. ...
Over three quarters of prisoners
interviewed admit to taking drugs in prison, yet because hardly any are
tested, the official figure for drug taking is a risible 9 per cent.
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Crime Netherlands
[Netherlands] Two out of Three Serious Teenage Criminals are Immigrants NIS News Bulletin, 18 March 2009 |
Two out of three serious teenage
criminals are children of parents born outside the Netherlands. In most
cases, no prison sentence is imposed, it emerges from a study sent to
parliament by Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin.
In the research, 447 case files of
youngsters aged from 12 to 17 were studied. All the files involved cases in
which the perpetrator was convicted of a crime for which the maximum jail
sentence is 8 years or more. These were murder, manslaughter, robbery with
violence, extortion, arson, public acts of violence and sexual crimes.
Only just over one-third (37 percent) of
the convicted youngsters are white Dutch. Two-thirds are of immigrant
origin, meaning that they themselves or their mothers were born abroad.
"The most prevalent group of youthful
immigrants (among the perpetrators) are young Moroccans (14 percent),"
according to the report. For another 14 percent, the parents' country of
birth could not be determined. A further 8 percent of the young criminals
came from Turkey, 7 percent from Surinam and another 7 percent from the
Netherlands Antilles, 9 percent from the category 'other non-Westerners'
and 4 percent, 'other Westerners.' The
report also reveals that most offenders did not have to go to jail.
Although detention was imposed in 69 percent of the cases - whether or not
in combination with community service - the sentences were largely
suspended. Some 25 percent of offenders
only received suspended detention. Another one-third received a combination
of suspended and real detention and just 11 percent, only an unconditional
prison sentence.
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Crime drugs
Cannabis cultivation is growing Daily Telegraph, 11 March 2009 |
The number of cannabis factories
raided by police has risen sharply in the past five years, it has emerged.
Twenty-nine forces said they had
uncovered more of the drug being grown, including Gwent, which detected no
factories in 2004 but 151 last year. The
largest force in the UK, the Metropolitan Police, reported an increase from
206 to 654, while West Midlands saw a rise from 174 to 672.
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Crime
Crime by foreigners has doubled in five years David Barrett Sunday Telegraph, 8 March 2009 |
Crime committed by foreign nationals
has doubled in five years, police figures show.
Records disclosed by 10 forces reveal a
120 per cent rise in the number of non-Britons arrested, charged or
convicted of offences between 2003 and 2008.
And figures from 20 forces, covering more
than half the population of England and Wales, show that foreigners
committed or were accused of more than 70,000 offences last year
pointing to a nationwide total of more than 100,000 offences if all 43
forces had provided figures. ... The
increase in crime committed by foreigners comes despite an overall fall in
the number of offences recorded during the five-year period.
However, the rise has coincided with a
sharp increase in the number of migrants to Britain since eight former
Eastern Bloc countries, including Poland, became part of the European Union
in 2004. ... ... Among the forces which
did not provide data, 12, including Greater Manchester, Thames Valley and
Essex, claimed not to record criminals' nationality, while 11 failed to
respond. Among the 15 forces which gave a breakdown by type of offence,
there were 120 murders last year for which a foreign national was the prime
suspect, and 426 rapes or attempted rapes.
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Crime
Trail of crime by 65 killers who were freed early Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 5 March 2009 |
Scores of killers released on
licences from life sentences have gone on to commit serious crimes,
including murder, over the past decade, the Government has admitted.
According to Ministry of Justice figures
65 prisoners who were released on licence from a life sentence have
committed a further offence since 1997.
The offences included two murders, a
suspected murder, one attempted murder and three rapes. ... ...
Typically 30,000 prisoners are on release
at any one time, with 1,300 of those in the most serious risk category.
Harry Fletcher, the general secretary of
the National Association of Parole Officers, said there were insufficient
resources to monitor them all.
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Crime racism
Schoolyard 'race attack' almost killed my son Olga Craig Sunday Telegraph, 22 February 2009 |
When Henry Webster, a 15-year-old
rugby player, was beaten at school by a gang of Asian teenagers, he was so
badly injured that it was said to be a "miracle" he survived.
The attack was witnessed by 100 pupils
and filmed on a mobile phone. But it has
taken two years, much of it spent lobbying and letter writing, for his
mother Liz to force education authorities to take action.
Mrs Webster, 44, has now met Ed Balls,
the Schools Secretary, who recommended an inquiry into the attack. ...
... "It has been an excruciating wait.
The school might say otherwise but the fact is that the attack on my son
was a racial one," Mrs Webster said. "The
school knew there were tensions there have been numerous similar
attacks before but nothing was ever done. Everything was swept under the
carpet. "Neither Henry nor I are racist.
But I feel my son was badly failed by a school that believes racism is only
something that is carried out by white pupils."
It took a sustained campaign before the
review was instigated by Mr Balls. After
a meeting with Mrs Webster, he wrote to her saying it was "unacceptable
that there has not been any full investigation of such a serious incident
which left your son with permanent injuries." ...
... The case has highlighted the extent
of racist incidents in schools and in particular, it is claimed, the
reluctance by some to treat attacks as racist when they are carried out by
minority cultures.
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Crime
Killers from abroad who find refuge in Britain David Barrett Sunday Telegraph, 1 February 2009 |
Eighty foreign murder suspects are
found in Britain each year after evading justice in their homelands,
according to Scotland Yard figures. They
are among 1,000 foreign nationals a year targeted by a specialist
Metropolitan Police squad after their governments apply to have them
extradited for offences overseas. The unit handles extradition for all of
England and Wales. The figures will raise
concerns about the strength of Britain's border controls. Some of the
wanted individuals are convicted criminals sentenced to terms in foreign
jails, while others are crime suspects who fled to Britain before they
could be brought to trial.
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Crime
Violent offenders 'escaping jail under Labour' Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 31 January 2009 |
More than half of all violent or
repeat offenders are escaping a prison term, according to a report
yesterday that severely criticised government claims to be tough on crime.
The Institute for the Study of Civil
Society (Civitas) said it was likely that any future rise in crime would
not be due to the recession but "the Government's failure to imprison
serious, violent and persistent offenders."
The think tank found that 60 per cent of
offenders convicted on more than 15 previous occasions are not sent to
prison after being found guilty of a serious, indictable offence in a Crown
Court. The report also found that more
than 70 per cent of criminals convicted of "violence against the person" in
2007 were not jailed. Using official
government figures, Civitas showed that the number of robbers sent to
prison has fallen from 72 per cent in 2002 to 54 per cent in 2007. ...
The report also found a big fall in the
number of serious criminals who were jailed, down from 85,151 in 2002 to
74,037 in 2007. This means that just 24
per cent of all serious offenders were jailed.
If the same sentencing standards in 2002
had been applied five years later, an additional 10,000 criminals would
have been in prison rather than "free to endanger members of the public",
the report said. In 2002, 143,000
cautions were issued. In 2007 the figure was 205,000. ... ...
But a Ministry of Justice spokesman said:
"Since 1997, crime has fallen by more than a third and those who commit
crime now have a greater chance of being convicted. ..."
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Crime
Poland's petty criminals create £3m headache for British courts Daily Telegraph, 31 January 2009 |
Trivial extradition requests from
Poland for offenders including a man who snatched a 20p sleeping pill and
another who stole a Christmas tree are clogging the court system and
costing up to £3 million a year. The
number of extradition cases being dealt with in British courts has reached
record levels, and have doubled in the past two years. Of the 1,067
requests made last year from abroad to track down foreign fugitives, almost
half came from Poland, where the legal system requires a trial for every
criminal allegation.
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Crime USA
FBI: Burgeoning gangs behind up to 80% of U.S. crime Kevin Johnson USA Today, 30 January 2009 |
Criminal gangs in the USA have
swelled to an estimated 1 million members responsible for up to 80% of
crimes in communities across the nation, according to a gang threat
assessment compiled by federal officials.
The major findings in a report by the
Justice Department's National Gang Intelligence Center, which has not been
publicly released, conclude gangs are the "primary retail-level
distributors of most illicit drugs" and several are "capable" of competing
with major U.S.-based Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
"A rising number of U.S.-based gangs are
seemingly intent on developing working relationships" with U.S. and foreign
drug-trafficking organizations and other criminal groups to "gain direct
access to foreign sources of illicit drugs," the report concludes.
The gang population estimate is up
200,000 since 2005. Bruce Ferrell,
chairman of the Midwest Gang Investigators Association, whose group
monitors gang activity in 10 states, says the number of gang members may be
even higher than the report's estimate.
"We've seen an expansion for the last 10
years," says Ferrell, who has reviewed the report. "Each year, the numbers
are moving forward." The report says
about 900,000 gang members live "within local communities across the
country," and about 147,000 are in U.S. prisons or jails. ...
Assistant FBI Director Kenneth Kaiser,
the bureau's criminal division chief, says gangs have largely followed the
migration paths of immigrant laborers. ...
One group that continues to spread
despite law enforcement efforts is the violent Salvadoran gang known as
MS-13. Michael Sullivan, the departing
director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, says
the gang's dependence on shocking violence to advance extortion,
prostitution and other criminal enterprises has frustrated attempts to
infiltrate and disrupt the insular group's activities.
"MS-13's foothold in the U.S. is
expanding," Sullivan says. Kaiser says
the street gang is in 42 states, up from 33 in 2005. "Enforcement efforts
have been effective to a certain extent, but they (gang members) keep
moving," he says. MS-13 is the
abbreviation for the gang also known as Mara Salvatrucha. The group gained
national prominence in the 1980s in Los Angeles, where members were linked
to incidents involving unusual brutality.
Since then, it has formed cells or
"cliques" across the U.S., says Aaron Escorza, chief of the FBI's MS-13
National Gang Task Force. ... Davidson
County, Tenn., Sheriff Daron Hall, whose jurisdiction includes Nashville,
says MS-13 started growing there about five years ago, corresponding with
an influx of immigrant labor. Last April,
county officials began checking the immigration status of all arrestees.
"We know we have removed about 100 gang members, including MS-13," to U.S.
authorities for deportation, Hall says. ...
Escorza says a "revolving door" on the
border has kept the gang's numbers steady about 10,000 in the U.S.
even as many illegal immigrant members are deported.
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Crime discrimination, USA
City accused of bias against blacks, Hispanics in ex-con jobs ban Thomas Zambito New York Daily News, 27 January 2009 |
A city ban on hiring ex-cons for
hospital jobs is unfair to blacks and Hispanics, a city woman claimed in a
complaint to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Shanae Leath, who was convicted for her
role in a mugging nine years ago, lost her shot at a clerical job at
Bellevue Hospital when her record came to light. Leath, 28, said the city
Health and Hospitals Corp. ban discriminates. ...
Leath's attorney Justin Swartz says the
Health and Hospitals Corp.'s "blanket ban" on hiring applicants with
criminal convictions disproportionately affects Hispanics and
African-Americans.
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Crime police
Four in 10 serious criminals given just a caution Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 22 January 2009 |
Four in 10 serious offenders are
being let off with a caution, ... In some
police force areas more than half of offenders who could expect to face a
crown court are instead given a "slap on the wrist".
The number of cautions being given to
violent criminals has risen by 82 per cent in five years. Cautions given to
burglars have increased by a quarter over the same period while cautions
for robbers and sex offenders have gone up by almost half. ...
Even when crimes are dealt with, many
offenders are escaping with soft punishments. Cautions are supposed to be
handed out for lesser offences but have increasingly been given for more
serious crimes. They can only be used if the offender admits guilt, but he
then avoids the shame of a court appearance and the likelihood of a harsher
sentence. It is left to the discretion of
the police as to whether the action is recorded on the Police National
Computer. This approach means that some offenders who have been cautioned
do not receive a criminal record. ... In
2007, the most recent figures available, 40 per cent of criminals guilty of
the most serious offences were given a caution 205,100, compared
with 313,300 who were dealt with in the courts. It was the second year
running that the proportion had reached that level.
The figures relate to those guilty of
either an indictable offence a crime that would normally be dealt
with in a crown court or a so-called either-way offence, which can
be dealt with by magistrates or crown courts. ...
The number of cautions for violence
against the person went up by 82 per cent between 2003 and 2007, from
28,760 to 52,335. Some 56 per cent of violent offenders now escape a court
appearance in this way.
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Crime asylum
Asylum seeker who killed ex-marine escapes deportation Daily Telegraph, 19 January 2009 |
A failed asylum seeker who killed a
former Royal Marine in a hit-and-run crash has escaped deportation because
of a loophole which means his crime is not considered "serious enough" by
the Home Office. Jean Mukadi, who has had
asylum applications rejected three times and failed a driving test seven
times, was jailed for four months after fatally injuring Simon Lawrence
while driving without a licence or insurance. But he was not sent back to
his native Democratic Republic of Congo because foreign offenders can only
be deported if they have been jailed for at least 12 months or if they have
been convicted of serious gun or drug crimes.
It means that Mukadi, 33, can remain in
Britain while he fights a lengthy appeal against the decision to deny him
asylum.
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Crime racism, USA
Blacks and Latinos make up about 80% stopped and questioned by NYPD, study finds Christina Boyle and Tina Moore New York Daily News, 16 January 2009 |
The NYPD is on pace to stop and
question a record half a million citizens this year - about 80% of them
black or Latino, a new report says. The
Center for Constitutional Rights, citing NYPD data obtained in a suit, said
the vast majority of those stopped and questioned in 2005 through June 2008
weren't charged with any crime. In 2007,
for instance, the last complete year of data, cops arrested only 5.8% of
the 472,096 people they stopped (27,632).
"The New York City Police Department
continues to prey on African-American and Latino communities in New York
City," Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional
Rights, said. The center obtained half of
the 2008 data but projected that 543,982 people will be stopped in the
entire year if the NYPD maintained its pace.
Cops made fewer than 400,000 stops in
2005. ... Commissioner Paul Browne, the
NYPD's chief spokesman, said the number of minorities who were singled out
under the policy is consistent with overall descriptions by race provided
by victims and surviving witnesses of crime.
He pointed to a RAND Corp. study that
found no racial profiling in its examination, "and warned against the kind
of simplistic comparisons made by the center."
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Crime
Foreign drivers evade justice Daily Telegraph, 6 January 2009 |
Thousands of foreign-registered
drivers escape punishment for driving offences because police cannot trace
them. In London alone, more than 24
foreign-registered vehicles are caught speeding on camera every day. Police
show that speed cameras were activated by foreign-registered vehicles 8,880
times in 2007-8. However, the force
admitted the "majority" of drivers escape legal action because officers are
almost powerless to identify them. Senior officers could only find four
examples of foreign drivers who have been prosecuted for serious driving
offences.
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Crime USA
The Times's Crime Confusions Persist: Error and distortion at the paper, Heaven help us, of record Heather Mac Donald City Journal, 5 January 2009 |
The New York Times has been
furiously penning policy briefs to the Obama administration. A recent
editorial on black crime compresses within a few hundred words decades of
failed thinking on public safety. ... A
new study of homicide among young black males prompted this latest
editorial. James Alan Fox and Marc Swatt of Northeastern University found
that the number of homicides committed by black males under the age of 18
rose 43 percent between 2002 and 2007, while the number of gun homicides by
this same group rose 47 percent. Homicides by white youth during that
period decreased slightly. But more significant were the different homicide
rates that the report calculated, which no news story dared to divulge.
Whereas the report's graph for white homicides over the last 30 years plots
the rate in increments of 10, the black rate is demarcated at intervals of
100. The highest homicide rate for whites over the last three decades was
32 homicides committed per 100,000 males between the ages of 18 and 24
(reached in 1991), whereas the highest homicide rate for blacks was
approximately 320 homicides per 100,000 males between the ages of 18 and 24
(reached in 1993). Even this apparent
ten-to-one disparity between black and white homicide rates doesn't tell
the full story. Fox and Swatt include Hispanic homicides in the white rate,
though they do not disclose that they are doing so (both the inclusion and
the silence about it follow FBI practice). Hispanic crime rates are between
three and four times that of whites meaning that if one excluded the
Hispanic homicides from the white rate, the black-white differential would
be even larger than ten to one. The
Times responds to the report with the key strategies of liberal
apologetics. Strategy Number One: strip moral agency from favored victim
groups. Bad things happen to favored victim groups because of forces
outside their control; good things also happen to favored victim groups
because of outside forces above all, wise government programs. Any
expectation that members of a favored victim group can take responsibility
for their lives must be expunged. Strategy Number Two: Never let the
following controversial and dangerous word enter a discussion of the
underclass "marriage." The
editorial initially conceals the Northeastern study's findings. The report,
it writes, suggests that "violent crime among young people may be rising";
then, as if in a stray afterthought, the editorial adds that the "study
also shows that the murder rate for black teenagers has climbed noticeably
since 2000 while the rate for young whites has scarcely changed on the
whole and, in some places, has actually declined." That finding the
rising juvenile black homicide rate is the study's actual import, of
course. But the Times would rather contradict itself than lead with
the politically incorrect truth. Such
evasions are trivial, however, compared with the misleading information
that the Times pumps out about the causes of, and effective
responses to, crime. ... ...
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Crime multiculturalism, USA
Khat is it more coffee or cocaine? Cynthia Dizikes Los Angeles Times, 3 January 2009 |
For centuries the "flower of
paradise" has been used legally in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as
a stimulant and social tonic. But in the
United States khat is illegal, and an increased demand for the plant in
cities such as Washington and San Diego is leading to stepped up law
enforcement efforts and escalating clashes between narcotics officers and
immigrants who defend their use of khat as a time-honored tradition.
In the last few years, San Diego, which
has a large Somali population, has seen an almost eight-fold increase in
khat seizures. Nationally, the amount of khat seized annually at the
country's ports of entry has grown from 14 metric tons to 55 in about the
last decade. Most recently, California
joined 27 other states and the federal government in banning the most
potent substance in khat, and the District of Columbia is proposing to do
the same. "It is a very touchy subject.
Some people see it like a drug; some people see it like coffee," said
Abdulaziz Kamus, president of the African Resource Center in Washington,
D.C. "You have to understand our background and understand the significance
of it in our community." Increased
immigration from countries such as Ethiopia, Yemen and Somalia has fueled
the demand in this country and led to a cultural conflict. ...
In the Horn of Africa and parts of the
Middle East, khat is a regular part of life, often consumed at social
gatherings or in the morning before work and by students studying for
exams. Users chew the plant like tobacco or brew it as a tea. It produces
feelings of euphoria and alertness that can verge on mania and
hyperactivity depending on the variety and freshness of the plant.
But some experts are not convinced that
its health and social effects are so benign. A World Health Organization
report found that consumption can lead to increased blood pressure,
insomnia, anorexia, constipation and general malaise. The report also said
that khat can be addictive and lead to psychological and social problems.
"It is not coffee. It is definitely not
like coffee," said Garrison Courtney, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement
Administration. "It is the same drug used by young kids who go out and
shoot people in Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is something that gives
you a heightened sense of invincibility, and when you look at those
effects, you could take out the word 'khat' and put in 'heroin' or
'cocaine'." ... The United Kingdom
determined last year that evidence does not warrant restriction of khat. In
the United States, the substance has been illegal under federal law since
1993. But the world supply of khat is
exploding. Countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya now rely on it as a major
cash crop to bolster their economies. Khat is Ethiopia's second largest
export behind coffee.
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Crime employment
Foreign sex offenders could work in schools Martin Beckford Daily Telegraph, 2 January 2009 |
Sex offenders could be cleared to
work in English schools under a "major loophole" in child protection
measures. Crimes committed by immigrants
in their home countries, or by Britons abroad, will go unnoticed by the
Independent Safeguarding Authority because the Criminal Records Bureau,
which checks applicants for a criminal background, cannot access records
from most foreign governments. This could
mean that convicted paedophiles or even murderers are cleared to work in
schools, hospitals or care homes. ...
Critics say ministers must address the
problem before the scheme begins in October, because 12.5 per cent of the
UK workforce comes from abroad.
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Crime USA
Fugitives make off with Medicare millions Jay Weaver Miami Herald, 1 January 2009 |
Alcides Garcia, former president of a
Hialeah medical equipment company, escaped to Cuba in September just before
he was to face trial in a $10.7 million Medicare fraud case, according to
the FBI. Jorge Ramirez, the one-time
owner of a Miami clinic that treated blood disorders, was arrested in
December and charged with defrauding $42.2 million from Medicare. Ramirez
and two codefendants Eugenio and Maricel Hernandez, accused of $73
million in Medicare fraud had been indicted a year ago. The FBI said
they all fled to Cuba. Garcia, Ramirez
and the Hernandezes are among dozens of Cuban immigrants who continue to
evade prosecution by fleeing to their native country. Prosecutors say they
bilked the taxpayer-funded health insurance program out of millions through
complex Medicare fraud schemes that have been operating with lax oversight
in South Florida for over the past a decade.
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Crime France
More than a thousand cars torched on New Year's Eve France24.com / Reuters, 1 January 2009 |
Update: The French press reported
that the Interior Ministry released a final "verified" count of 1,147
vehicles burned in France over New Year's Eve. The number is up 30.64% from
last year's total, 878.
At least 445 cars were torched over the
night of New Year's Eve in France, a 20 percent rise on last year, but
there were relatively few clashes with police, the Interior Ministry and
police said on Thursday. Car burnings are
regular occurrences in France but the registering the New Year's Eve total
has become something of a tradition since they achieved symbolic status in
the violent rioting that shook many of the country's poor suburbs in 2005.
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Crime stabbings
Fatal stabbings hit record level as five victims die every week Tom Whitehead and James Kirkup Daily Telegraph, 29 December 2008 |
Fatal stabbings have risen to their
highest level for at least three decades, with five people a week now dying
from stab wounds. Figures due to be
published in the new year show that deaths from stab wounds reached 277
last year after increasing by more than a third under Labour.
That is the highest annual death toll
since at least 1977 the earliest year for which figures are
available when it stood at 135. ...
Data obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act shows some 277 fatal stabbings in England and Wales for
2007-08. It is the equivalent of five
children or adults dying after being attacked with a knife or sharp object
every week. The total is also up 38 per
cent on the 201 fatalities from sharp objects in 1998-99. ...
A separate study of hospital admissions
across Britain by The Daily Telegraph has shown a growing trend in
serious injuries from stabbings. ... The
data shows that roughly 7,420 people were admitted after being stabbed
during 2006-07.
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Crime USA
Study: Murders among black youths on rise MSNBC.com / Associated Press, 29 December 2008 |
The number of young black men and
teenagers who either killed or were killed in shootings has risen at an
alarming rate since 2000, a new study shows.
The study, to be released Monday by
criminologists at Northeastern University in Boston, comes as FBI data is
showing that murders have leveled off nationwide.
Not so for black teens, the youngest of
whom saw dramatic increases in shooting deaths, the Northeastern report
concluded. Last year, for example, 426
black males between the ages of 14 and 17 were killed in gun crimes, the
study shows. That marked a 40 percent increase from 2000.
Similarly, an estimated 964 in the same
age group committed fatal shootings in 2007 a 38 percent increase
from seven years earlier. ... The FBI
reported 10,067 arrests in murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases in
2007. Half of the people arrested 5,078 were black. Almost 10
percent of black people arrested for murder were under age 18, the FBI data
show. The number of young white men who
committed gun-related homicides also rose over the same period, the
Northeastern study showed, but not as dramatically. In 2007, an estimated
384 white males age 14 to 17 shot someone to death, up from 368 in 2000.
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Crime USA
Illegal baby boom hits Big Easy Chelsea Schilling World Net Daily, 29 December 2008 |
After the devastation of Hurricane
Katrina, illegal aliens flocked to New Orleans from other U.S. cities to
find work but three years after the storm, the most violent city in
America is festering with crime while schools are overcrowded and immigrant
births are ballooning. The New Orleans
Economic Development office estimates the city's Hispanic population has
more than tripled since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. It has risen
from 15,000, or 3.3 percent of pre-Katrina residents, to 50,000, or 15
percent of today's population. Tulane
University and the University of California, Berkeley, released a 2006
study revealing that almost half of the city's construction labor force was
Hispanic. At least 54 percent were found to be illegal aliens, and 90
percent had lived elsewhere in the U.S. before migrating to New Orleans.
As WND reported earlier, News reports
indicate a flood of illegal aliens is moving South from states such as
Arizona and Oklahoma where immigration crackdowns have made life
more difficult for them, and the slow housing market has made jobs scarce.
In New Orleans, families are multiplying faster than hospitals and schools
can accommodate them. The Associated
Press interviewed Kevin Work, a doctor who opened new prenatal offices and
hired bilingual employees so he could make a living delivering New Orleans'
Hispanic babies. He performs "thirty to
forty deliveries a month," he said. Work
told the AP he has helped illegal alien mothers give birth to at least
1,000 babies since the storm hit in August 2005. He said he provides
payment plans to help the families afford the births, or they are covered
by government programs such as Medicaid.
In 2004, Emergency Medicaid cost
taxpayers $1.7 million in Metro New Orleans, according to the report. Now
the government program covers five times as many people, and the cost is
more than 4.5 times what it used to be at $7.8 million. ...
Meanwhile, the city's streets have
reportedly become some of the most dangerous places in the nation. A study
conducted by Congressional Quarterly recently labeled New Orleans the most
violent city in the U.S. Likewise, Foreign Policy listed it as third among
its top five "murder capitals" of the world behind only Caracas,
Venezuela and Cape Town, South Africa.
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Crime USA
Child Maid Trafficking Spreads From Africa to U.S. Rukmini Callimachi ABC News / Associated Press, 28 December 2008 |
The trafficking of children for
domestic labor in the U.S. is an extension of an illegal but common
practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to
work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end
life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they will at least
be better fed in the home of their employer.
The custom has led to the spread of
trafficking, as well-to-do Africans accustomed to employing children
immigrate to the U.S. Around one-third of the estimated 10,000 forced
laborers in the United States are servants trapped behind the curtains of
suburban homes, according to a study by the National Human Rights Center at
the University of California at Berkeley and Free the Slaves, a nonprofit
group. No one can say how many are children, especially since their work
can so easily be masked as chores. Once
behind the walls of gated communities ... these children never go to
school. Unbeknownst to their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves, ...
... Tens of thousands of children in
Africa, some as young as 3, are recruited every year to work as domestic
servants. They are on call 24 hours a day and are often beaten if they make
a mistake. Children are in demand because they earn less than adults and
are less likely to complain. In just one city Casablanca a
2001 survey by the Moroccan government found more than 15,000 girls under
15 working as maids. The U.S. State
Department found that over the past year, children have been trafficked to
work as servants in at least 33 of Africa's 53 countries. Children from at
least 10 African countries were sent as maids to the U.S. and Europe. But
the problem is so well hidden that authorities including the U.N.,
Interpol and the State Department have no idea how many child maids
now work in the West. ... In Germantown,
Md., a Nigerian couple used their daughter's passport to bring in a
14-year-old Nigerian girl as their maid. She worked for them for five years
before escaping in 2001. In Germany, France, the Netherlands and England,
African immigrants have been arrested for forcing children from their home
countries to work as their servants.
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Crime
Half of violent crimes being punished with only a caution Daily Telegraph, 27 December 2008 |
Half of all violent criminals are let
off with a caution, new figures indicate.
Police issued warnings to 53,000
offenders last year who had committed violence against the person.
The figure was almost as many as the
61,000 that were prosecuted. The
statistics were released by Alan Campbell, the justice minister, in a
written parliamentary answer to his Conservative counterpart, Edward
Garnier, the shadow justice minister. ...
Home Office figures show that violent
offences have nearly doubled from 502,000 in 1998 to 961,000 last year.
Earlier this week it emerged that almost
four out of 10 crimes including offences such as sexual attacks,
violent robberies, harassment, burglary and drug incidents are not
being investigated because police officers believe that they cannot be
solved.
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Crime prison overcrowding
Inmates freed early get cash Rosa Prince Daily Telegraph, 26 December 2008 |
Thousands of foreign prisoners have
been released from jail before the end of their sentence and given cash to
compensate for the loss of food and board.
Figures released by the Conservatives
show that 2,196 foreign offenders have been invited to take part in the
early release scheme, called End of Custody Licence, since its introduction
15 months ago to address prison overcrowding.
As well as walking free after having
served less than half of their sentence, each released prisoner is entitled
to about £7 a day to compensate for missing out on the state-provided
food and lodging they would have received in jail.
Offenders released on End of Custody
Licence receive an initial payment of £46, followed by the subsistence
allowance of £47.12 a week, up to a cap of £168.24.
The disclosure, in a written
parliamentary answer from the Ministry of Justice, follows pledges by
Gordon Brown that foreign nationals who offended in Britain "will be
deported" and "will pay the price".
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Crime education
Police called to 40 acts of violence in schools every day Graeme Paton and Jon Swaine Daily Telegraph, 23 December 2008 |
Police are being called out to deal
with 40 violent incidents in schools every day, research has found, adding
to fears over a breakdown in classroom discipline.
Figures obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act show that officers responded to more than 7,300 calls from
schools during the last academic year.
The Metropolitan police attended on 2,698
occasions while officers in the Thames Valley were alerted 697 times. The
total for England could have been more than 10,000 because a third of
police forces failed to supply data. The
figures, obtained by the Conservatives, come amid growing concern about bad
behaviour among pupils. The gang culture
witnessed on many inner-city streets is said to be spilling over into
schools, with more pupils bringing knives into lessons. ...
The Tories obtained data from 25 of
England's 39 police forces during the 2007/8 school year of 190 days.
Separate figures from the Association of
Teachers and Lecturers showed a rise in exclusions for violence. Last year,
more than 1,000 children aged five and under were suspended for attacking a
classmate. The total number of suspensions for assault rose by 2,720 to
65,390. A spokesman for the Department
for Children, Schools and Families said it did "not recognise" the Tory
figures. "The overwhelming majority of schools are safe and behaviour is
very good," she added.
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Crime politics
Brown is accused of spin over knife crime Andrew Porter Daily Telegraph, 13 December 2008 |
The Prime Minister was embroiled in a
row about spin last night after the head of the statistics authority
criticised ministers for releasing "selective" knife crime figures against
their advice. Both No 10 and the Home
Office were severely criticised by Sir Michael Scholar, the head of the UK
Statistics Authority, for pressurising officials compiling the figures. In
a damning letter, Sir Michael said Thursday's release of the data on
stabbings was "premature, irregular and selective".
He told Jeremy Heywood, the Permanent
Secretary at No 10, that the figures on hospital admissions for stabbings
had not been properly checked. ... It is
a major embarrassment for Mr Brown, who announced when he became Prime
Minister that he would ensure more honesty after years of accusations that
Labour used data to spin results in areas such as health and crime.
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Crime knife crime
Knife crime falls in areas targeted by police Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 12 December 2008 |
Knife crime has fallen across 10
hotspots targeted by police, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, claimed.
Figures from the areas involved showed
that the number of youngsters admitted to hospital with stab wounds fell by
more than a quarter between July and September compared with last year. The
number of serious injuries and deaths of youngsters in the same period fell
by nearly a fifth. Ten areas were in the
Tackling Knives Action Programme which involved greater use of stop and
search. Fewer youngsters were caught with knives, down from one in 30 to
one in 65. Police carried out 105,000 searches between June and October and
seized 2,200 weapons. But the Home Office
refused to give a force-by-force breakdown of the success or to say what
proportion of those found with weapons received a prison sentence.
Meanwhile, four of the ten forces
reported increases in knife offences in some form.
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Crime European Union
Foreign offenders slip police net Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 5 December 2008 |
Thousands of foreign offenders could
be in Britain without police knowledge because half of the countries in the
EU are unable to provide criminal records. ...
The disclosure came almost two years
after it emerged that more than 27,000 foreign convictions had not been
entered on the police national computer. This meant that convictions abroad
did not show up on police or employment vetting checks.
It could be another three years before
effective systems are in place to share criminal data between all EU
nations.
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Crime USA, racism
The truth about 'hate crimes' and the racial justice racket Ron Smith Baltimore Sun, 3 December 2008 |
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a
thriving business. The Alabama-based "nonprofit" firm has become a font of
riches for founder Morris Dees and his associates. Its last tax return
(2005) showed it took in nearly $111 million in donations the previous four
years alone and reported assets of $189.4 million at the end of 2005.
Its business is fundraising, and its
success at raking in the cash is based on its ability to sell gullible
people on the idea that present-day America is awash in white racism and
anti-Semitism, which it will fight tooth-and-nail as the public interest
law firm it purports to be. That might lead a skeptic to wonder why it
spends little on litigation and why Mr. Dees pockets a lot of money sent in
by panicked donors who buy into the smear campaigns against organizations
or prominent individuals who question racial preference programs.
To me and to other observant
conservatives, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a clever scam,
relentlessly cultivating for profit the fear that this nation is filled
with Klansmen and rife with people eager to perpetrate genocide. If you're
curious about this organization and its legitimacy, spend some time on the
Internet and assess it for yourself, ... ...
"Hate crimes," as trumpeted by the likes
of the Southern Poverty Law Center, are a questionable legal construct used
almost exclusively against whites.
Hateful or not, interracial violent crime
is overwhelmingly black on white or black on Asian. The Department of
Justice's figures show that between 2001 and 2003, blacks were 39 times
more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than the reverse. Of
the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year
involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15
percent. You won't hear about that from
the Southern Poverty Law Center or see it on the evening newscasts, because
the truth is one thing and the liberal agenda is another.
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Crime prison overcrowding
Early prison releases hit record levels Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2008 |
More than 42,000 prisoners have been
let out of jail early to ease overcrowding as releases hit record levels.
Some 2,775 inmates were released up to 18
days early last month - the highest total since the controversial End of
Custody Licence scheme began in June last year.
It takes the total number of inmates let
out without completing their full jail terms to 42,181. ...
Among those who have been let out under
the scheme are more than 8,000 violent criminals, almost 4,000 burglars and
more than 1,000 robbers.
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Crime
Only one in seven offences leads to criminal charges Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 28 November 2008 |
Only one in seven crimes results in a
criminal being charged and more than half of offenders are never taken to
court, figures show. The number of
criminals being sent to prison is at its lowest level since Labour came to
power, while the number receiving a caution has risen by more than a
quarter. On-the-spot fines have also
increased, even though only half are paid without further court action,
while offenders being sent to custody fell by one per cent last year.
It also emerged that only one in five
burglars who fell into the "three strikes and out" category was being
handed the recommended three-year minimum term.
A total of 4.95 million crimes were
recorded by the police last year but only 673,227 suspects were charged or
summonsed to court. Those cases accounted for 49 per cent of the 1.37
million offences that were solved during the year.
The rest were dealt with by other
out-of-court measures, including cautions (26 per cent) and fines (10 per
cent), meaning more than half of offenders did not go to court for their
crimes. Some 95,206 people were jailed
last year, the lowest figure since 1997 and a sign of the impact of the
pressure courts have been under to send fewer people to prison because of
the overcrowding crisis. In contrast,
363,000 offenders were given a caution, a four per cent rise on 2006 and 28
per cent up on the 282,100 handed out in 2007.
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Crime asylum
Lawyers are 'concocting stories for asylum seekers' David Barrett Sunday Telegraph, 23 November 2008 |
Law firms are submitting concocted
asylum claims, coaching clients in false stories and even offering to alter
fingerprints to help them avoid detection, it has been discovered.
The "asylum industry", which was
criticised last week by Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, costs the
taxpayer an estimated £105 million a year. However, it is plagued by
unscrupulous legal advisers. A firm in
the heart of London's Bangladeshi community suggested that its clients
could buy a range of illegal services.
"The firm offered a whole file with a new
name and a concocted story that would be signed and sent to the Home
Office," said a spokesman for the UK Border Agency (UKBA).
"They even offered an introduction to a
man who could, it was claimed, alter their fingerprints." This could stop
applicants who have had their claims refused being identified. Staff also
overheard one barrister telling a client to "go home and learn his story".
... The Legal Services Commission (LSC)
confirmed there are 263 firms authorised to receive Legal Aid for asylum
and immigration work, with spending running at about £76 million a
year. A further £23 million a year
goes to two not-for-profit organisations, which provide free legal advice.
The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal has a
budget of £112 million a year, although asylum cases make up less than
six per cent of its caseload, at a cost of around £7 million.
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Crime deportation
400 foreign criminals freed in error can stay in Britain Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 21 November 2008 |
Up to 400 criminals involved in the
scandal over wrongly-released foreign prisoners, including some of the
worst offenders, have been told they can stay in Britain, the Home Office
disclosed yesterday. Less than a third of
the 1,013 convicts, who were released without first being considered for
deportation, have been sent home, two and a half years after the scandal
broke and subsequently cost Charles Clarke his job as home secretary.
Many more could end up staying in Britain
because 90 are still missing, 31 are in prison again and 160 are still
going through the legal process. The
figures emerged as Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, admitted that too
many migrant workers have been let into the country under previous
government policies. He also made another
attack on asylum lawyers as he disclosed the case of a Nigerian who had his
claim rejected four times and was removed, only to be brought back because
his solicitor lodged a judicial review.
Moves to ban individuals taking out
multiple judicial reviews will be contained in the forthcoming Queen's
Speech, he said.
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Crime
Million violent crimes a year, but fewer than half are solved Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 18 November 2008 |
Fewer than half of almost one million
violent crimes committed each year are solved by police, it became clear
yesterday. The detection rate for
offences of violence stood at 49 per cent last year, according to official
figures issued in a parliamentary answer.
When labour came to power, almost three
quarters of violent crimes were solved.
The figures, which mean that every year
hundreds of thousands of victims do not see justice done, caused a fresh
dispute last night over policing priorities.
Rank-and-file police leaders and
opposition politicians said too much time was taken with red tape or
chasing lesser crim |