IMMIGRATION CONCERN

NEWS AND VIEWS - BY SUBJECT

Quotations of news and views by subject

ASYLUM

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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. ..."

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

BENEFITS AND COSTS

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. ...

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.

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.
     ...

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.
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