ASYLUM |
Asylum
Britain top spot in Europe for refugees Tom Lawrence Daily Star, 21 June 2010 |
More asylum seekers flooded into the
UK than any other country in Europe last year.
Britain took in 12,510 refugees in 2009,
which was an annual rise of 22%. More
than a third came from Zimbabwe, despite the Government offering
£6,000 to help them return home. Refugees from Afghanistan made up the
second largest group. The latest figures
released by the EU underline how the UK has become one of the most popular
destinations for refugees. It now grants
protection status to more people a year than either Germany or France.
Britain came top of the asylum table
followed by the Germans, who let in 12,055 refugees.
France came third, allowing 10,415 asylum
seekers over its borders and Sweden was fourth with 9,085. ...
A total of 26.9% of the 44,890 asylum
applications were accepted by the Home Office, about average for the EU.
However, 30% of the denied applications
were approved on appeal, 11% higher than the EU average.
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Asylum
More than 40,000 still waiting for asylum ruling Daily Telegraph, 15 April 2010 |
An asylum backlog of more than 40,000
cases has built up, with some four years old, Home Office figures show.
The delays have developed while officials
focused on clearing a larger, historic backlog discovered in 2006.
Since then, 95,990 asylum applications
have been made, of which 40,640 have not been concluded.
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Asylum backlog
[Backlog of asylum claims] Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 7 April 2010 |
The Home Office will not clear a
backlog of 450,000 historic asylum claims by next summer as promised, MPs
warn today. The home affairs select committee said concerns by the new
chief inspector of the border agency that work was not on track "confirmed
our fears that the historic case-load of asylum applications will not be
cleared by the deadline".
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Asylum border security
We punish those we should protect The Observer, 14 March 2010 [Leading article] |
In September 2004, Tony Blair set out
a new public sector performance target. By the end of the following year
the number of failed asylum seekers being deported each month would exceed
the number of new applicants. This
benchmark has come to be known as the asylum "tipping point", the
implication being that too many migrants were taking sanctuary in Britain
under false pretences and most should be swiftly dispatched to their
countries of origin. The target was
missed, but only just, and not for want of trying. ... Some of the brutal
consequences are now coming to light. An official report last week accused
the UK Border Agency of failing to investigate claims of abuse in privately
run detention centres for failed asylum seekers. ... ...
A picture is emerging of a system in
crisis, not because it is failing to deliver its objectives but because its
zeal in pursuit of those objectives is making it inhumane.
But seen from the government's
perspective, asylum policy is a success story. In the last three months of
2009, there were 4,765 new claims, a 30% reduction in the number of
applications compared with the previous year and the lowest level since
1992. The fact that fewer people seek refuge in Britain proves, according
to Phil Woolas, immigration minister, that "our border has never been
stronger". That might be true, but the
boast contains a nasty subtext. The implication is that asylum applications
are just another kind of immigration, one of the various channels that
foreigners use to acquire the privilege of living in Britain; a breach in
the fortress wall to be defended. By
extension, the 200,000 asylum seekers whose cases have yet to be ruled upon
are viewed by many officials, and much of the public, as "illegals" in all
but name. The task is to expose their lies and throw them overboard.
Around 70% of asylum applications fail.
Even if the adjudication process is right every time that still means there
are tens of thousands of genuine refugees in Britain in a state of
desperate uncertainty. They are forbidden from working and cannot claim
benefits while their cases are being processed, a measure designed to prove
to the wider public that refugees do not take resources meant for the
indigenous population. This too reveals the official assumption that most
asylum seekers are really economic migrants.
The distinction is vital. It is Britain's
duty under the 1951 UN refugee convention to protect people fleeing
persecution. Since that treaty was signed, the world has changed
enormously. ... It is easier to condemn a
broken system than to design a perfect one. There were grounds for the
widespread suspicion a few years ago that asylum status was being
fraudulently targeted as a shortcut to British residency. That public fear
had to be addressed. But it was never proven that Britain was, as the
Conservatives liked to allege, a "soft touch". Labour simply swallowed that
charge and launched a crackdown. ... It
should be a source of national pride that Britain is thought a desirable
destination by refugees, who have throughout history enriched the countries
that welcome them. Instead, people who turn to us for help are vilified and
punished for asking. It must also be possible to distinguish humanely
between real and false claims to refugee status. The investment required is
not financial, but political. It requires a leader who will look at the
current system and say plainly what is there: cruelty, injustice and shame
throughout.
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Asylum costs, legal aid
£610 free legal aid for each asylum seeker Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 5 January 2010 |
Taxpayers are paying for hundreds of
pounds in free legal advice for every asylum seeker in Britain, figures
show. Asylum seekers receive an average
of £610 of legal advice once they have applied to stay. If the case is
taken to a tribunal, the cost of the legal advice rises by an average of
£1,670 for every application, according to a parliamentary answer.
In 2008-09, nearly 47,000 asylum cases
were heard, meaning the cost of the initial advice alone stood at an
estimated £28 million a year.
Separate figures also showed there were
currently 4,857 appeals outstanding. ...
The Ministry of Justice said legal aid
was not automatically available and each application was considered on the
basis of an individual's means.
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Asylum piracy
Pirates set free in case they claim asylum Nick Britten Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2009 |
The Royal Navy has regularly been
allowing Somali pirates to go free because of the risk they would claim
asylum if prosecuted in Europe. Pirates
terrorising ships in the Indian Ocean are often given medical checks and
life jackets and fed after being caught, before being sent on their way.
This is sometimes because, although they
are carrying guns and even holding hostages, they have not been caught in
the "act of piracy". More than 340
suspected Somali pirates have been captured by international navies in the
past year and released. Julian Brazier,
Conservative shipping spokesman, said: "The fault lies not with the
hard-pressed naval commanders, but the ridiculous rules of engagement and
operating instructions they are given by their political masters."
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Asylum
Welcome to heaven, how about a cup of tea? Mail on Sunday special investigation into why asylum seekers head to Britain Edna Fernandes Mail on Sunday, 15 November 2009 |
The latest figures from the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show asylum applications in
industrialised nations rose by ten per cent in the first half of 2009 to
185,000, compared with the same period last year.
Europe received 75 per cent of all asylum
applications, although the United States remained the largest individual
recipient with 13 per cent of the total number of applications filed in
rich nations. France ranks as the second
largest with 19,400 claims, followed by Canada (18,700), the United Kingdom
(17,700) and Germany, ranked fifth (12,000).
Over the whole of last year, Britain
received 30,500 claims, including dependants. That figure has fallen from a
peak of more than 80,000 eight years ago.
Iraqis, Afghans and Somalis make up the
biggest groups of claimants. Those heading to Europe are drawn by different
factors ranging from personal to economic to which country offers the best
chance of approval. ... Between 24 and 30
per cent of people claiming asylum in Britain win their case - and this
includes their dependants. Greece, by contrast, has a one per cent approval
rate for cases. Many of those whose applications are refused in Britain end
up staying anyway, according to the UK Border Agency.
Abdul Samad Samadi, chairman of the
Afghan Association of London, says the traffickers are keenly aware of the
commercial value of a one-way ticket to Britain. He estimates there are now
75,000 Afghans living here. He says 80 per cent of them used a trafficker.
'The asylum seekers are big business for
the traffickers. People are paying $10,000 to $20,000 per person to come to
Britain,' he says. ... The lure of
Britain is complex and there are many factors involved. But one commonly
cited reason for it being a popular destination is that this country is a
'soft touch'. How true is this? Groups
such as Migrationwatch UK, which lobbies for controls on immigration, argue
that, under European Union law, asylum seekers are meant to lodge their
claim in the first EU country they land in.
In reality, many hold out for Britain
where they believe they will get a better deal. Europe does not have a
standard asylum procedure. Sir Andrew
Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK, says that in theory, an asylum
seeker's first country of arrival is where their case should be decided.
'But that doesn't happen. Traffickers tell their clients not to allow
themselves to be identified in any other country but the UK. They say,
"Don't be fingerprinted until you get to the UK, until you arrive in El
Dorado."' ... The cost to the British
taxpayer in the last financial year was £478 million, down slightly
from £485 million the previous year. ...
Of the 30,000-plus cases a year, one
third of claimants and their dependants are approved, one third go home
either voluntarily or through enforced removals and one third remain here
illegally. These 'failed asylum seekers' are a massive political headache.
... There are more than 140,000 failed
asylum seekers still in Britain, says Migrationwatch UK's Sir Andrew. Each
year, thousands more will join them.
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Asylum European Union
EU could force Britain to take more refugees Martin Banks Daily Telegraph, 22 October 2009 |
Britain would be forced to take a
greater number of asylum seekers under European Union plans that would
create a common asylum policy with uniform criteria for deciding on cases.
Commission officials yesterday announced
that the "final building blocks" had been put in place to "harmonise"
immigration. However, critics condemned
the proposal, saying it would strip Britain of its sovereign powers to
determine asylum policy. ... But Jacques
Barrot, the European Commission's justice commissioner, said the system
would "eliminate differences" and set out procedures to follow to avoid
unequal treatment. He said the plans were
designed to ensure asylum seekers would have the same chance of being
accepted or rejected in all EU member states. ...
The EU has made it clear it would like
the allocation of asylum seekers to be "proportionate" based on population
so that each country "shares the burden" of asylum applications. ... ...
The proposals will be discussed by the
European Parliament in November.
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Asylum border security
154,000 asylum seekers to be granted 'stealth amnesty' Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 12 October 2009 |
At least 154,000 asylum seekers will
be allowed to stay in Britain after the Home Office allowed a backlog of
applications to build up, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Ministers have promised to clear the
450,000 so-called "legacy" cases, some of which date back to the 1990s, by
2011. Just under 200,000 cases have been dealt with so far, of which 63,000
immigrants have been told they could stay.
A memo seen by this newspaper contained
an official projection of how the remaining cases would be dealt with.
The memo said that by completion, 154,000
cases would have been approved for indefinite leave to remain. By contrast,
fewer than 40,000 would face removal.
Tens of thousands more asylum seekers
were unlikely to be traced at all, officials said.
Most of those allowed to stay would be
granted leave to remain under human rights laws because the delay in
dealing with their claims meant they had effectively settled in Britain.
... Damian Green, shadow immigration
minister, said: "However you look at this, this is an amnesty by stealth.
..." The memo, which was written in July
by Matthew Coats, head of immigration for the UK Border Agency, was signed
off by Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, and sent to Alan Johnson, the
Home Secretary.
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Asylum
Asylum rules relaxed to meet deadline Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 9 October 2009 |
Ministers agreed to quietly relax
immigration rules to clear a backlog of asylum cases, The Daily
Telegraph can disclose. Three years
ago, the Government pledged to deal with an embarrassing backlog of 450,000
historic asylum claims by 2011. However,
officials realised that in the case of 40,000 claimants, it was going to be
too difficult to remove them from Britain because they came from countries
with poor human rights records. These
included Zimbabwe, Somalia, Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Algeria, Nigeria and China. A secret memo
shows how ministers agreed that Home Office officials could change the
guidelines to grant them indefinite leave to remain.
The memo was written by Matthew Coats,
the head of immigration for the UK Border Agency, and sent in July this
year to Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, and Phil Woolas, the Immigration
Minister, who signed it off. In it, Mr Coats warns that under the existing
guidelines, the 40,000 problematic claimants cannot be granted indefinite
leave to remain. ... He suggests they
could be allowed to stay after having been here for as little as four
years, rather than 10 to 12 years as the rules stated. ...
In another setback, the memo also
discloses that the Home Office has lost track of 40,000 migrants who were
refused extensions on their visas at least six years ago and does not know
where they are.
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Asylum
Allow one group to stay, then why not everyone else as well? Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 9 October 2009 |
For the past three years, the Home
Office has been grappling with the consequences of Labour's failure in its
first eight years in office to control immigration and asylum.
So many people arrived claiming to be
political refugees that the system could not cope. ...
In 2006, the Government decided to get to
grips with this. Officials identified 450,000 of these "legacy cases" and
set a target either to reach a decision about their right to stay or to
remove them by 2011. ... In order to have a chance of hitting the deadline,
officials have had to bend the rules so that 40,000 of the hardest cases
are dealt with by simply allowing them to stay, whether they are entitled
to or not. ... There are an estimated 6.5
million "irregular" migrants in the EU alone. How to deal with these
people, many of whom are for the large part tolerated but do not have a
legal status or a right to remain, is a problem that governments will
struggle with for years to come.
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Asylum European Union
Britain's part in EU plan to share out asylum claimants between countries Roland Schilling, UNHCR Representative to the UK Daily Telegraph, 25 September 2009 [Letter to the
Editor] |
Some states, mainly on the EU's
southern and eastern flanks, such as Greece and Malta, are receiving
disproportionate numbers of asylum claimants.
Regrettably, reception conditions and
chances for refugees to find protection differ among EU countries. So
asylum seekers will move to France, and even onwards, unless better
standards are implemented across the EU. ...
Considering the long tradition of refugee
protection in Britain, as well as the competence of its institutions, this
country is well placed to encourage better practice and to share its
expertise. Of the 42 million uprooted
people in the world last year, only some 0.7 per cent entered Europe and
0.074 per cent reached Britain. Britain is not in danger of being "swamped"
by asylum claimants, as some media reports have suggested, but it is
certainly in the position to extend its support to states elsewhere in
Europe which, due to their location, bear a disproportionate refugee
burden.
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Asylum European Union
Europe to push for more asylum seekers in Britain Robert Winnett Daily Telegraph, 14 September 2009 |
A powerful new European commissioner
for human rights who is expected to push for the protection of asylum
seekers and workers is set to be appointed later this year.
The commissioner for fundamental rights
and social rights is expected to put pressure on Britain to accept more
asylum seekers from across Europe. Several Mediterranean countries claim
that they are being put under undue strain from increasing numbers of
migrants arriving from Africa. ... The
establishment of the powerful new role is a centrepiece of José
Manuel Barroso's campaign for re-election as the president of the European
Commission. Mr Barosso, who is expected to be re-elected on Wednesday,
pledged to increase the human rights role of the EU to win the backing of
liberal and socialist parties across Europe.
Europe's previous involvement in the
rights of asylum seekers and workers has proved controversial in Britain.
It is blamed for contentious legal decisions which have protected the
rights of foreign criminals. ... Although
the role of the new commissioner has not been defined, it is expected to
lead to greater intervention from Europe.
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Asylum health care
Free care for failed asylum seekers Rebecca Smith and Rosa Prince Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2009 |
Tens of thousands of failed asylum
seekers will be able to obtain free health care following a Government
rethink, it was announced yesterday. The
decision was taken to allow treatment for some asylum seekers after doctors
gave warning that they would not act as immigration officers by demanding
to check passports before providing care.
An estimated 450,000 failed asylum
seekers in Britain are currently denied free treatment on the NHS.
However, a joint review of the policy by
the Department of Health and the Home Office ruled that up to 20,000 would
now be allowed free health care, including children and those who would
"otherwise be destitute", or could not return home "through no fault of
their own". With health charities
claiming that the NHS faced the most challenging financial period in its
60-year history, ministers were last night accused of "jamming the door
open for illegal immigrants".
Migrationwatch, the pressure group, said
that over time, as many as a million foreigners could take advantage of the
rethink. The decision, details of which
were released on the day before the parliamentary recess begins, follows
five years of consultation. It was hailed by ministers as protecting the
rights of the vulnerable. ... However,
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: "No wonder they are
queuing up in Calais. These proposals amount to jamming open the door for
illegal immigrants to access the National Health Service."
He said the Government "dithered" about
the issue for years and chose "almost the last day of Parliament to
announce their surrender to the immigration lobby."
"We accept that medics cannot be used as
immigration officers. That is why we have proposed that each primary care
trust should have a small office of trained personnel who could decide
whether or not non-British nationals are entitled to NHS treatment." ...
A public consultation will be held on the
changes.
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Asylum deportation
144,000 asylum seekers here to stay Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 9 July 2009 |
At least 144,000 asylum seekers will
be allowed to stay in Britain because of a backlog of claims.
More than 63,000 subjects of 450,000
historic cases that were found to have slipped under the radar for years
have now been told they can stay. Human
rights laws mean that because they have been in the country for so long,
the Home Office would have difficulty trying to remove them.
Officials working through the so-called
"legacy" backlog have examined 197,500 cases and there has been a 32 per
cent approval rate, Lin Homer, the Chief Executive of the UK Border Agency,
told MPs yesterday. If that continues
then some 144,000 will be able to stay once all the case files have been
looked at, in what the Tories have labelled an amnesty by the back door.
... The 450,000 files in the Case
Resolution Programme were unearthed in 2006. Among them are claimants who
should have been deported as far back as the mid-1990s.
Ministers have promised to work through
all the cases by 2011, while also having to deal with all fresh asylum
claims and those failed cases still awaiting deportation.
Miss Homer told the home affairs
committee that she was confident that target would still be met.
Human rights laws will be the reason most
cases were approved, either because it is unsafe to return the asylum
seekers or because they have been here so long they now have families and
are protected under the right to family life.
The list includes 5,150 from Zimbabwe,
4,900 from Pakistan and 4,500 from Somalia.
Miss Homer also said that at least 7,000
may never be traced and their files have been archived.
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Asylum deportation
Flawed £1m asylum project results in only one family leaving Britain Alastair Jamieson Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2009 |
A £1 million government scheme
to help failed asylum seekers resulted in only one family leaving Britain,
a report has found. The UK Border Agency
pilot project ran for less than a year and was "mismanaged from start to
finish", a review by the charity, the Children's Society, claimed.
The scheme, in Kent, aimed to help
families whose asylum applications had failed by taking them out of
detention centres and placing them in a residential hostel. It was hoped
some would leave the country voluntarily while others could obtain
schooling and health care before deportation.
In a similar trial in Glasgow, failed
asylum seekers will be housed in private flats rather than held in Dungavel
detention centre.
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Asylum
New law may give asylum to 22,500 refugees Nick Fagge Daily Express, 29 April 2009 |
Controversial plans will require the
UK to accept one in eight of all migrants who set foot in any of the 27
European Union countries and demand refugee status.
It could mean an estimated 22,500 more
people coming to Britain. Taxpayers will
be expected to foot the bill for their food, accommodation and clothing,
plus legal fees while they apply for international protection.
Asylum seekers must also be given the
right to work within six months of their arrival, enabling them to claim
thousands of pounds in benefits if they cannot find a job. Their children
must also be found school places.
Migrants can only be detained as a last
resort and must not be held in secure accommodation more than 72 hours
without a judge's approval. The
proposals, supported by Labour MEPs, are part of the EU's Common European
Asylum System and will be put to the European Parliament in Strasbourg for
approval. Last night Conservative MEP
Philip Bradbourn said: "Economic migrants posing as asylum seekers would
have an easy ride under these plans.
"Once again, the EU thinks the only
answer to justified immigration concerns is to take control of asylum
policy. Controlling our borders is one of the most important roles of
government. "For more than a decade,
Labour has been unable to form a coherent immigration policy, but that
should not justify handing it to Brussels."
UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage
said: "Brussels will soon be dictating who has the right to live and work
in Britain. The EU is pushing for a common asylum and immigration policy
but it is being pushed through without proper thought."
EU member states will be forced to take
refugees or face huge fines under the proposals outlined on Monday.
Migrants will be rehoused from states
"confronted with a large number of asylum applications" such as Malta,
Greece, Italy and Spain's Canary Islands to larger countries such as the UK
a reversal of the rule that requires applicants to seek sanctuary in
the first safe country. Member states
would be compelled to accept a percentage of applicants in accordance with
their population. This would mean the UK
taking in 13 per cent of all refugees arriving in the EU or 22,500
of the 322,000 average arrivals over the last 10 years.
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Asylum
Failed asylum seekers win right to stay amid hearings 'shambles' Chris Hastings, Alex Ralph and Ian Johnston Sunday Telegraph, 19 April 2009 |
Failed asylum seekers are winning the
right to stay in Britain because of "shambolic" failings in the immigration
hearing system, ... Hundreds of appeal
hearings are going ahead without a representative from the Home Office to
defend its original decision to deny asylum.
Immigration lawyers admitted that the
situation is helping their clients to win cases they might otherwise have
lost. The disclosure could help explain
why the percentage of asylum seekers winning their appeals has risen from
17 per cent in 2005 to 25 per cent for the third quarter of 2008. ...
Over the last two weeks, reporters from
this newspaper attended 25 hearings around the country. At 24 of them, no
Home Office Presenting Officer (Hopo) who is tasked with putting the
department's case before the immigration judge was present.
In the one remaining hearing, the officer
turned up late and admitted that she was unprepared.
Senior sources close to the hearings have
said the Home Office is failing to properly defend about a third of cases
which come to appeal.
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Asylum costs
Failed immigrant loses NHS test case Auslan Cramb Daily Telegraph, 31 March 2009 |
Failed asylum seekers are not
automatically entitled to free treatment on the NHS, one of Britain's most
senior judges has ruled. Individual
hospitals have the discretion to decide whether to treat penniless patients
who are not British residents, and should use it in the most urgent cases,
the judge said. In the case of a
Palestinian man refused free treatment for a liver condition, Lord Justice
Ward ruled that it was not right to say that a failed asylum seeker who had
been in the country for more than a year had "lawfully resided" in Britain
for that period, and thus qualified for NHS care.
The ruling at the Appeal Court in London
was made in a test case brought by a 35-year-old, identified in court only
as YA, who was told he was not eligible for free treatment at West
Middlesex University Hospital and was charged £9,000. He was refused
leave to remain in Britain but had no travel documents, so could not return
to the Middle East.
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Asylum
Asylum magnet Daily Telegraph, 25 March 2009 |
Britain was the third most popular
destination for asylum seekers, the UN said yesterday. Some 159,000 people
claimed asylum in Britain between 2004 and 2008, with the US and France
receiving more out of the top 44 industrialised nations.
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Asylum
Synod votes for asylum amnesty Martin Beckford Daily Telegraph, 14 February 2009 |
More than 300,000 asylum seekers
should be allowed to stay in Britain indefinitely, the Church of England
said. The Church's governing body, the
General Synod, voted overwhelmingly in favour of an amnesty for asylum
seekers whose cases were still being decided. It said all those who wanted
to live in Britain should be allowed to work.
The Synod added that a solution must be
found to the "intolerable" situation of people who were refused the right
to remain but could not return to their home countries, and that children
and families must no longer be detained in immigration removal centres. The
Rev Ruth Worsley, a priest in the diocese of Southwell and Nottingham who
tabled a motion on the issue, said: "The financial cost to our country, as
well as the human cost which leaves people in limbo for years, not knowing
what their future might hold, seems unconscionable.
"The Gospel tells us that we are not a
tribal nation but a global family."
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Asylum deportation
Asylum seekers 'face one in 10 chance of removal' Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 23 January 2009 |
Asylum seekers who were told that
they could not stay in Britain could face just a one in 10 chance of being
removed, the Government's auditors said yesterday.
There was also no system in place to
track those granted asylum, even though their cases were supposed to be
reviewed after five years. Their report
suggested that the Home Office was going to miss its promise of clearing a
backlog of 450,000 asylum cases by 2011.
Tens of thousands could not be dealt with
because of "external factors," either in the person's home country or in
Britain, the National Audit Office said.
The report found that 70 per cent of
escorted removals were cancelled and thousands of emergency documents
obtained to help return failed asylum seekers remained unused. The backlog
of new asylum cases coming to Britain that had not been dealt with doubled
last year. The auditors found that of
those who applied for asylum between January 2007 and February last year
and were refused by new regional teams, between just seven and nine per
cent were removed by August last year. In comparison, about 98 per cent of
those under the detention fast-track system were removed.
A Home Office spokesman said: "This in no
way reflects the total number of failed asylum seekers removed in 2007.
"In fact, we removed more than 13,700
people compared to an intake of 17,500 that's a removal rate that's
closer to eight out of 10."
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Asylum crime
80 foreign murderers welcomed to Britain: Albanian killers allowed to stay despite being on Interpol 'wanted' list Sue Reid and Arthur Martin Daily Mail, 23 January 2009 |
Eighty foreign killers are exploiting
the chaotic asylum system to set up home in Britain, it was revealed
yesterday. The convicted murderers from
Albania have been given British passports despite being officially listed
as 'wanted' by Interpol. Most slipped
across the Channel from Calais to Dover hidden in the back of lorries on
ferries. They used bogus names and false papers to claim asylum, often
pretending to be from the war-torn Balkan republic of Kosovo.
The scandal came to light when Albania's
chief of police complained that 100 criminals from his country have been
granted British citizenship and now live here.
The police chief said the criminals have
been allowed to stay even though the Albanian government has informed the
Home Office of the true identities of the men and their crimes, which also
include rape and robbery. Many of the
convicted criminals have been living in the UK for up to ten years and have
started new families here. As the
revelations exposed the shambles within the asylum system yet again,
campaigners expressed their outrage. Sir
Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch, said: 'It is a real concern that people
accused of, or even convicted of, very serious crimes should apparently
find it so easy to gain asylum in Britain.'
Rose Dixon, of victim group Support After
Murder and Manslaughter, added: 'I'm astounded. If this is correct, I'm
appalled that these people are walking the streets of Britain. I think we
should be told a lot more about this.'
After the Home Office was informed about
the true identity of the asylum seekers, extradition proceedings against
them were lodged by the Albanian Government.
But complex legal arguments and the need
to find interpreters and psychologists has led to lengthy delays.
Albanian criminals use myriad loopholes
in the extradition laws to avoid being sent home.
Their lawyers often claim they will
suffer human rights abuse on their return, or that trials in their absence
were unfair because they could not give their side.
The situation is even more complicated if
they have become British citizens. Under the Human Rights Act 1988, this
gives them further protection against being removed because their family
life would be disrupted. ... Ahmet
Prenci, the Albanian chief of police, said he felt as if all his force's
hard work in tracking down the culprits had been in vain.
'We have made a list of our people who
are hiding in the UK,' he said. 'There are 100 criminals, and more than 80
per cent are wanted for murder and have been convicted in absentia.
'They have been given British citizenship
despite our efforts to extradite them to serve prison sentences in our
country. 'We are working intensively to
identify, locate, and then to arrest wanted Albanian people in Britain.
Unfortunately, many have British passports obtained after they claimed
asylum by pretending to be Kosovans. 'We
are unhappy that the courts repeatedly refuse extradition of these
criminals. There is no reason for an Albanian citizen who has been involved
in a crime not to be punished.'
[Site link] |
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Asylum deportation
90% of failed asylum seekers remain in UK... and backlog of undecided cases doubles in a year Matthew Hickley Daily Mail, 23 January 2009 |
As many as nine out of ten failed
asylum seekers are being allowed to stay in Britain despite having no right
to remain, a report from a Government watchdog reveals today.
The backlog of illegal immigrants
awaiting deportation is growing fast as the UK Border Agency fails to keep
pace with the number of rejected applicants. The number of unprocessed
cases is also growing. And Government
rules stating that all successful asylum seekers must have their cases
reviewed after five years - to see if their country is now safe enough to
return to - have descended into farce, because the Border Agency has no way
of tracking those living in Britain and no plans for a review.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling
called the report, from the National Audit Office, a 'shocking indictment
of the shambles that is our immigration and asylum system'. Meanwhile, the
Commons Public Accounts Committee, to which the NAO reports, claimed the
Agency was 'struggling to cope.' ...
Today's report acknowledges that the
£800million-a-year system is now 'better organised than before', but
highlights grave problems which in many cases are getting worse.
A surge in the number of asylum claims
saw the backlog of undecided cases more than double in a year, to almost
9,000. The NAO tracked more than 25,000
claims lodged from January 2007 to February 2008, of which almost 14,000
were refused. But of 10,719 cases
processed in the seven regions around the UK, only 918 - less than 10 per
cent - had actually been deported by the following August.
The rate was higher for 3,000 false
claimants who were fast-tracked in detention. Including these claims, the
overall removal rate was just one in four.
A severe shortage of detention spaces is
making removals harder, the report warned, with much of the available
capacity taken up by foreign criminals who have completed their sentences
and are awaiting deportation. The NAO
also highlighted glaring inefficiencies, including:
Seventy per cent of planned
deportations - where security staff accompany deportees on flights home -
are cancelled, often due to lack of proper coordination, leading to
'additional work and costs'. The
Agency often has to buy emergency travel documents from foreign governments
to deport failed asylum seekers, but 13,000 of these have been wasted
because individuals absconded, or because the papers expired.
Since 2005, Britain has granted
asylum for five years only - after which cases should be reviewed in the
hope that some immigrants will be able to return home.
But astonishingly the Border Agency 'has
no process' to track refugees living in Britain and 'no plans in place to
review these cases'. There are 8,000 due
for review next year. Last night, the
Agency's chief executive Lin Homer confirmed there was 'no requirement' for
asylum seekers to tell officials when they move house.
Sir Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch,
said: 'This is a shameful performance for the expenditure of hundreds of
millions of pounds. It is no surprise that asylum seekers, many of them
bogus, are queuing up in Calais.'
[Site link] |
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Asylum
180,000 to stay in asylum fiasco Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 10 December 2008 |
At least 180,000 asylum seekers
caught up in the claims backlog fiasco are likely to be allowed stay in
Britain. More than 50,000 out of 450,000
who were found to have slipped under the net in 2006 have so far been
permitted to stay, Lin Homer, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency,
told MPs. If the 40 per cent approval
rate continues, at least 180,000 will have been freed to stay once the
backlog is cleared. Applicants whose cases have been ignored for up to a
decade or more are now expected to be given the green light because sending
them home would breach their human rights after they have effectively
settled here. Some of the files date back
to the mid-1990s. The list includes
thousands of people from Turkey and Pakistan. Critics said the move was
effectively an amnesty by stealth. ...
The 450,000 files in the Case Resolution
Programme were unearthed in 2006 after the foreign prisoners scandal.
Among them are claimants who should have
been deported years ago. Ministers have
promised to work through all the cases by 2011, while also having to deal
with all fresh asylum claims and those failed cases still awaiting
deportation. ... Normally, just 10 per
cent of asylum claims are granted in the first instance, although more are
approved on appeal. Human rights laws
will be to blame for most cases, either because it is unsafe to return the
asylum seekers or because they have been here so long they now have
families and are protected under the right to family life.
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Asylum border security
Children left at British ports Daily Telegraph, 4 October 2008 |
Children as young as three have been
found abandoned at British ports and airports, it emerged yesterday.
Home Office figures show 3,525
unaccompanied children under 18 applied for asylum in 2007, a two per cent
increase on the previous year. Many of the youngsters were from
Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Children were
abandoned at Southampton docks, airport and service stations, Hampshire
county council reported. The youngest was three years old.
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Asylum deportation
Rejected asylum seekers can stay Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 25 July 2008 |
Hundreds of thousands of asylum
seekers whose cases were lost or overlooked by the Home Office and expected
to be allowed to stay in Britain in what critics call an "effective
amnesty". More than 100 foreign prisoners
also remain on the run two years after the Government pledged to deport
them, it was disclosed yesterday. The
Home Office was engulfed in scandal two years ago when a backlog of 450,000
case files were found lying around in boxes, some dating from the mid-1990s
and beyond. They included many would-be
refugees whose cases had been rejected as bogus but who had not been
deported. Figures released yesterday show
that two years later officials have processed only 90,000 of the files, and
almost half 43 per cent of the applicants have been told they
can stay in Britain permanently. Many of the cases are still considered
unfounded, but the asylum seekers and their families have been living in
Britain for so long that the courts are likely to block any efforts to
deport them on human rights grounds. All
those allowed to stay will be able to claim benefits and seek citizenship,
regardless of the merits of their original claims.
The figures also show that only 308 of
the 1,013 criminals who were supposed to have been ejected from the country
have gone.
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Asylum
Asylum refugees' treatment 'inhuman' Patrick Sawer Sunday Telegraph, 29 June 2008 |
An inquiry will tomorrow brand
Britain's asylum system inhumane and urge the Government to improve the
treatment of refugees. The Independent
Asylum Commission, whose members include senior clergy, lawyers and
academics, will make 46 recommendations to the Home Office, including ways
to speed up the handling of claims. The
recommendations, which follow a two-year inquiry, aim to address the
failings of the system from the moment claimants are first interviewed.
The report says a "culture of disbelief"
persists among officials which is stacking the odds against genuine
refugees. The effect of post-traumatic
stress as a result of rape and torture is not considered carefully enough
by those interviewing claimants, say the commissioners.
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Asylum benefits and costs
Judge backs free NHS care for 11,000 asylum seekers Daily Telegraph, 12 April 2008 |
As many as 11,000 failed asylum
seekers could qualify for free NHS treatment after a High Court judge
declared that current regulations were "unlawful".
The ruling by Mr Justice Mitting applies
to asylum seekers who have had their claims turned down but who have become
"ordinarily resident" in Britain because it would be unsafe for them to
return to their native country. It
follows a legally aided case brought by a Palestinian asylum seeker who was
initially refused free treatment for chronic liver disease. ...
The refusal was in line with NHS charges
regulations introduced by the then health minister John Hutton in 2004.
The Department of Health was immediately
given permission to appeal.
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Asylum deportation
Number of asylum deportations falls Daily Telegraph, 27 February 2008 |
The number of failed asylum seekers
being deported has slumped to a six-year low just as the number
arriving in Britain has leapt to its highest level since 2005.
Home Office figures showed that the
number of failed asylum seekers removed from Britain dropped by more than a
quarter in the past year, down to 13,595.
The news came as the number of asylum
seekers arriving in Britain leapt by a fifth last year to the highest level
since 2005. This includes a 40 per cent rise in the second half of 2007.
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Asylum border controls
Now wrongdoers have the grass on their heads to fear Richard Gray Sunday Telegraph, 3 February 2008 |
Criminals who claim they were not at
the scene of a crime can now be betrayed by their hair.
Forensic scientists have developed a
technique that allows them to track a person's movements by analysing
samples of head and body hair. The
technology relies on the distinct chemical "fingerprint" of air and water
in different countries, and even in different regions of the UK.
Each location has a unique cocktail of
atoms known as isotopes in the air and water which get into the body when
we eat, drink and breathe. As hair grows,
it incorporates these isotopes, providing a record of where a person has
been. ... The Home Office is believed to
be interested in using the technique to weed out illegal immigrants who
claim asylum using false documents. By analysing hair and nail clippings,
immigration officers could determine when asylum seekers are telling the
truth about the countries they claim to come from.
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Asylum deportation
Smith admits asylum error Daily Telegraph, 24 December 2007 |
The Home Secretary has admitted that
the number of failed asylum seekers whose deportation flights are postponed
because of their disruptive behaviour is almost double the figure
previously released. Jacqui Smith has
apologised after stating that there had been 1,173 such cases over two
years when the real figure is nearly twice as high.
In a letter to David Davis, the shadow
home secretary, Ms Smith wrote: "It has now come to light that some of this
information was incorrect and the figure is in fact 2,079.
"Please accept my sincere apologies for
the error." A Home Office spokesman said
the mistake was down to an administrative error.
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Asylum repatriation
Asylum returners take cash and stay Ben Leapman Sunday Telegraph, 23 December 2007 |
Failed asylum seekers are drawing
benefits to which they are not entitled by claiming that they are about to
return home only to continue to live in Britain for years.
The scam, which may have cost taxpayers
millions of pounds, has come to light with the cases of four migrants who
signed up for the Home Office's voluntary repatriation programme and who
then went on to live off state handouts worth tens of thousands of pounds.
They took advantage of a scheme that
offers asylum seekers £4,000 to go home and set up in business. Last
week The Sunday Telegraph revealed that £36 million of
taxpayers' money had been spent helping 23,000 asylum seekers to start
enterprises including an ostrich farm in Iran and a vineyard in Albania.
However, millions more has been spent on
supporting those who have signed up for the scheme but are still in the UK,
some with no intention of returning home.
Asylum seekers whose claims have been
rejected, and whose appeal rights have been used up, are given 21 days'
grace before being stripped of benefit entitlements and told to leave the
country. However, if they agree to go
home via the Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme (VARRP),
they become eligible for "Section Four support", an emergency handout
consisting of free food vouchers worth £35 a week, plus free
accommodation, with council tax and utility bills paid, worth about
£100 a week. Most receive the
benefit for two or three weeks until flights home have been arranged by the
International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the agency that runs the
assisted return scheme on behalf of the Home Office. ...
The IOM said it always passed on to the
Home Office the names of applicants who failed to leave the UK.
The Home Office could not say why it had
failed to stop payments in the four cases. It was also unable to say how
many more migrants might be in similar positions or how much it spends on
Section Four support.
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Asylum deportation
Had a bad day? Take it out on an asylum-seeker Alasdair Palmer Sunday Telegraph, 23 December 2007 |
... the Home Office's Border and
Immigration Agency (BIA). They arrived at four in the morning at the foster
home of a 15-year-old Iraqi asylum claimant in order to bundle him onto a
plane out of Britain. ... ... It is an
example of the bungling inefficiency that too often characterises the BIA.
Its officials had known of J's arrival in the UK since April, and had tried
to visit him in May, but J had not been at his address when they called.
They then seem to have forgotten about him for nearly seven months, so that
by the time they went back at 4am on November 8, the six-month time limit
on removals in such cases had expired. That fact alone, said the judge,
made the removal of the boy unlawful. The
BIA's outrageous behaviour was wholly, and foreseeably, counter-productive:
J will now have to be brought back to the UK, and will probably end up
having his claim for asylum here approved. ...
... More than 20,000 children under 18
have arrived in Britain to claim asylum over the past few years: the Home
Office won't say how many of those claims have been refused, still less how
many children have been deported. Other agencies such as social and health
services often refuse to co- operate with the BIA's attempt to identify and
remove failed child asylum seekers. It makes the job of enforcing the law
doubly difficult, and they mostly fail.
There is a backlog of at least 200,000
people whose claims for asylum have been investigated and found to be
without merit, but who have not left Britain. Many of them will not only
never be removed: they will get their families into Britain, under the
"right to family" reunion enshrined in the Human Rights Act. In asylum law,
two wrongs make a right: if you can get here and stay here, you get the
right to bring your family here. ... We
need a tough asylum policy: one that makes sure that the law is enforced
fairly and effectively. But this should not be confused with a brutal,
inhumane 0one enforced by officials who behave in outrageous fashion. At
the moment, however, we are getting the worst of both worlds: a feeble,
ineffective policy, coupled with occasional bouts of outrageous behaviour
from the officials charged with enforcing it.
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Asylum deportation
Immigration 'amnesty' for 160,000 Rosa Prince Daily Telegraph, 18 December 2007 |
More than 160,000 illegal immigrants
due for deportation may be given asylum and allowed to stay in Britain amid
claims that the Government has embarked on a secret "stealth amnesty".
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary,
disclosed last night that more than a third of the backlog of illegal
immigrants reconsidered for deportation had actually been granted leave to
remain since 2006. Over the past 18
months, the Government has reassessed only the cases of 52,000 illegal
immigrants out of a backlog of 450,000. Of that 52,000, 19,000 have been
allowed to stay sparking fears that asylum could finally be granted
to 164,000 previously due to be deported if the present rate of "amnesty"
continues. The Conservatives said that
despite previous Government plans to deport those here illegally, only
16,000 had so far been sent home three per cent of the total
backlog. Miss Smith disclosed the damning
figures in a letter to the Commons home affairs committee, sent on the eve
of MPs' Christmas recess. ... Many
records covered people who had already left the UK, had died or were EU
citizens with a right to reside here. Miss Smith said 900 caseworkers had
been appointed to deal with the backlog.
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Asylum deportation
We can't buy our way out of asylum failure Sunday Telegraph, 16 December 2007 [Leading article] |
So since 1999 the Home Office has
operated a scheme which today hands failed asylum seekers £1,000 to
leave Britain, and then gives them a further £3,000 towards setting up
a business in their own country. The Government may have been proud of the
programme, but it evidently did not feel proud enough to inform the public
of its workings: today, we report the details of some of the scheme's
beneficiaries, and what they did with their money, for the first time. ...
The principal problem with any such
scheme is that it rewards, and therefore provides an incentive for, bogus
asylum claims precisely the behaviour that it was meant to diminish.
... The reward scheme itself has not
worked and should be abandoned, not least because it would send a strong
signal that law-breaking will not be tolerated. The money should be used to
deport failed asylum seekers, not to reward them. Only a small fraction of
those whose asylum claims have been refused since 1997 have actually left
the country. Although the Government deports about 1,000 failed
asylum-seekers every month, there is still a backlog of 240,000 people
whose claims for asylum have been rejected. Because around 1,000 additional
claimants are added to the "rejected" list every month, the Government's
deportations have made no impact on the huge backlog.
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Asylum politics
'Cover-up' over £35m asylum centres that were never built Robert Watts Sunday Telegraph, 4 November 2007 |
Botched plans to detain thousands of
asylum seekers in the depths of the countryside have wasted £35
million of taxpayers' money. Officials at
the Home Office have also been accused of a cover-up after scores of
documents about the proposed centre disappeared.
Labour ministers originally planned to
build four holding centres in rural areas five years ago. But the plans
were shelved three years later after opposition from the Refugee Council,
the Red Cross and thousands of local residents.
A report this week by the National Audit
Office, the public spending watchdog, will for the first time lay bare the
full cost to taxpayers of the ditched policy. It will announce on Thursday
that ministers spent around £35 million on a proposed asylum centre in
Oxfordshire alone - £10 million more than initially thought.
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Asylum
Asylum crisis getting worse say officials Ben Leapman Sunday Telegraph, 14 October 2007 |
The asylum system is in turmoil, and
claimants could now be offered a backdoor amnesty to remain in Britain, a
leaked Home Office memo has revealed. The
document raises fears that a government target to speed up the processing
of new claims could lead to existing cases being given "lower priority",
potentially allowing thousands of claimants to stay in the country
indefinitely. The memo, seen by this
newspaper, says unrest is spreading in detention centres, a growing number
of claimants are going missing before cases are decided and the number of
failed asylum seekers being deported is declining.
The concerns are highlighted in a
"performance report" to ministers from the Border and Immigration Agency
(BIA), which enforces the asylum system. ...
Home Office figures show that only 23,610
people claimed asylum last year, the lowest annual total since 1993.
However, the Government missed its deportation target with only 6,780
failed asylum seekers removed in the first half of this year, down from
10,345 in the same period last year. With
fewer than 3,000 places in immigration detention centres, most asylum
seekers are given free housing while their claims are processed, making it
easy for them to abscond.
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Asylum
Daily Telegraph, 9 October 2007 |
Britain is the top European
destination for asylum seekers, according to figures released by the EU
yesterday. In 2006, Britain received 27,850 applications for asylum, more
than France (26,300), Sweden (24,300) and Germany (21,000).
Britain received 3,000 fewer applications
than in 2005. The greatest number of asylum applicants came from Eritrea,
with 2,725 applying to stay, followed by Iran (2,675) and Afghanistan
(2,650).
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Asylum immigration
Asylum backlog won't be cleared until 2011 Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 22 August 2007 |
In the second quarter of this year,
the number of asylum applicants removed because they were not considered
legitimate refugees fell by more than a third to 3,280, compared to the
same period last year when 5,260 were deported.
This means that the Government's
"priority" target to remove more failed asylum seekers than there are new
applicants has been missed. ... Ministers
said they will clear the backlog of 450,000 cases by 2011. But at current
rates, it would take 30 years. Separate
figures published yesterday showed that the number of eastern Europeans who
have registered to work in Britain since May 2004 is close to 700,000. More
than 50,000 arrived in the three months to June this year, mainly from
Poland. The figures do not include the self-employed or the families of
workers, so the true total could be much higher.
In addition, 9,335 people arrived in the
second quarter of the year from Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the
European Union on January 1. Another 3,980 came under the agricultural
workers scheme.
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Asylum
£10m of Diana fund to help asylum seekers Caroline Davies Daily Telegraph, 20 August 2007 |
The Diana Memorial Fund is marking
the 10th anniversary of the Princess's death by earmarking up to £10
million of its remaining £25 million funds on promoting the rights of
refugees and asylum seekers. The money,
to be spent over the next five years, will help fund organisations that
support the plight of young asylum seekers in particular, and will lobby
for the rights of those under 25. ... "We
have been supporting the cause of refugees and asylum seekers right from
the very start," said Paul Hensby, the fund's campaign manager. ...
The fund, which received up to £20
million in donations in the immediate aftermath of the princess's death,
has sponsored Refugee Week for the past three years and intends to do so
next year. ... Fifty unaccompanied
children seeking asylum arrive every week. ...
Critics of the scheme include Lord
Tebbit, the former Conservative cabinet minister, who said: "We spend vast
sums already on asylum seekers and Government figures show that 90 per cent
are not genuine cases. ..."
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Asylum amnesty
Amnesty plan for asylum seekers Ben Leapman Sunday Telegraph, 5 August 2007 |
Hundreds of thousands of failed
asylum seekers may be allowed to settle permanently in Britain under a
"back-door amnesty" scheme. The
Government wants to clear a backlog of 450,000 "legacy" cases of immigrants
turned down for refugee status but never expelled.
A 1,000-strong Home Office team has been
set up to examine cases, giving priority to those who may now qualify for
UK residency because such a long time has passed since their initial
rejection. The first 6,000 families on
the list were sent questionnaires last month asking about their current
circumstances. Insiders close to the scheme said those who gave the "right"
answers would be granted "leave to remain".
Asylum seekers who cannot be traced are
expected to be simply struck off the "legacy" list, giving the impression
that officials have made progress in tackling the backlog. They would no
longer be sought actively for removal, even though they would remain
illegal migrants - liable for deportation if caught. ...
The Borders and Immigration Agency (BIA),
a branch of the Home Office, aims to consider all "legacy" cases by 2011.
It will not say how many it expects to be allowed to remain. Those granted
leave-to-remain status will be able to live and work freely in the UK, and
claim benefits. After five years they can apply for a British passport. ...
Liam Clifford, a former immigration
officer and head of the consultancy globalvisas.com, said: "While the Home
Office talks tough, it is preparing for one of the biggest mass grants of
residency rights to asylum seekers in history. The word is out at street
level that completing the questionnaire will result in the right to stay in
the UK. The BIA simply does not have the resources to investigate each case
properly, so it will grant all the applications it can in order to clear
the backlog." Ministers insist the scheme
does not amount to an amnesty because decisions are being taken on a
case-by-case basis.
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Asylum
450,000 Asylum Seekers to be Allowed to Remain in UK Press Dispensary, 30 July 2007 [Press release] |
It has come to the attention of
leading immigration consultancy www.globalvisas.com that the Home Office is
preparing to grant over 450,000 asylum seekers 'Indefinite Leave to Remain
in the UK (ILR)'. All cases that were
pending in the system before the Immigration and Nationality Directorate
obtained agency status in April 2007 are to be considered for ILR to clear
the backlog. The Home Office will begin with families, many of whom have
had children since arriving in the UK, increasing the exact numbers to an
unknown figure. Director Liam Clifford,
says: "The Borders and Immigration Agency or BIA simply does not have the
resources to tackle the problem and cannot investigate each case properly
so it is going to grant all the applications it can in order to clear the
backlog. "In another admission of its
inability to cope, the Home Office has given current instructions to
prosecute anyone claiming NAS (National Asylum Support) benefits and
working illegally earning over £4,000. However, this cannot be
achieved because of a lack of resources. In our experience, and from what
we are being told, officers now only deal with cases where people are
illegally earning in excess of £20,000 p.a. Even in these cases, the
Home Office and Department of Work and Pensions can only afford to slap the
person on the wrist as no other options are available to them.
"While the UK Home Office talks tough and
claims that biometrics and joint agency co-operation will reduce
immigration of low skilled migrants and terrorists, they are preparing for
one of the UK's biggest mass grants of Leave to Remain for asylum seekers
in history. The Home Office has said that this will not be called an
amnesty as it may create the wrong impression. However, the word is out at
street level that completing the questionnaire which the Home Office is
about to send out to 450,000 people and families will result in the right
to stay in the UK. "With a record number
of people emigrating overseas and UK PLC unable to attract the right skills
it desperately requires, why does the government continue to present
barriers for highly skilled people to come here, while being lenient on
those immigrants who are of no benefit to our economy, and may actually
burden the public purse and local council resources?
"In recent years, many of our corporate
clients have been finding it more difficult to deal with the immigration
process for highly skilled workers and work permits, which is about to get
worse with commercial partnerships, biometrics, compliance audits and
off-shore visa processing. In spite of this asylum seekers can arrive with
no checks or controls and receive benefits and Leave to Remain."
[Site link] |
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Asylum deportation
Big fall in number of deportations Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 23 May 2007 |
The number of failed asylum seekers
removed from the country has fallen by a third in a year - despite a
promise from Tony Blair to speed up deportations, official figures showed
yesterday. In September 2004 he pledged
to accelerate the removal of an estimated 250,000 asylum seekers who had
exhausted all legal processes. There was
a surge in deportations after John Reid took over as home secretary and
demanded better enforcement of the law.
But in the first quarter of this year,
3,370 asylum applicants were removed - 34 per cent fewer than in the same
period last year.
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Asylum Australia, USA
US to swap asylum seekers with Australia Nick Squires Daily Telegraph, 19 April 2007 |
Australia and the United States will
swap asylum seekers under a contentious scheme to deter migrants from
seeking asylum in either country. Under
the exchange scheme, asylum seekers will lose the chance of choosing their
destination. The boat people held by Australia on the remote Pacific island
of Nauru will be sent to the US, while Cuban and Haitian refugees held at
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba will be sent to Australia. ...
Under the agreement, the two countries
would swap 400 asylum seekers - 200 from each country - this year and in
2008. The policy will be reviewed in 2009.
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Asylum immigration
200,000 'lost' asylum seekers may be allowed indefinite stay Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 2 April 2007 |
More than 200,000 failed asylum
seekers may stay in Britain indefinitely because they cannot be traced.
Officials have conceded that nearly half
of the 450,000 "legacy cases" in which the applicants are left in limbo may
never be cleared. Ministers have flatly
ruled out an amnesty and have pledged to remove everyone not entitled to be
here within five years. Some "legacy"
cases date back 15 years and experts believe the Government will not be
able to fulfil its pledge to clear the backlog by July 2011. Officials
attending a recent meeting to discuss the legacy policy were told that half
of the 450,000 are "untraceable". They
were also told that 18,000 foreign nationals who have committed crimes in
Britain were earmarked for deportation, the first time an official figure
has been given.
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Asylum
Failed asylum seekers allowed to reapply Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 19 January 2007 |
Hundreds of failed asylum seekers who
have exhausted all avenues of appeal have been allowed to reapply, new
figures show. They include 80 repeat
applications from Afghanistan and 30 from Turkey.
A Commons written answer disclosed that
in the past two years, 520 applications had been received from people who
had previously been rejected both in the initial stage and at appeal.
Liam Byrne, the immigration minister,
conceded that the figures were not normally published and were based on
"internal management information". Under
the 1951 Refugee Convention, signatory countries are obliged to consider
the asylum application of anyone to assess whether they have a
"well-founded fear of being persecuted", even if the individual had
previously been turned down. ...
According to the National Audit office,
in 2003 the average cost of processing an initial asylum application was
just over £3,000. An appeal costs another £4,500.
This includes support and accommodation
costs of around £147 for each week an application is in process, or
more if the applicant has dependants. The annual cost of running the asylum
system is more than £1.5 billion.
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Asylum Irish Republic
Ireland bars Romanians, other EU nationals from claiming asylum Associated Press, 18 January 2007 |
Ireland will no longer process asylum
applications from citizens of Romania or other European Union members, the
government announced Thursday in a further tightening of the country's
immigration laws. Justice Minister
Michael McDowell said he had decided to end Ireland's practice of
permitting citizens of other EU states to access Ireland's support system
for asylum-seekers because his department received 220 applications from
Romanians over the past week. He said the
Romanian asylum-seekers were all deemed to have been trying to settle in
Ireland in hopes of finding jobs, medical care and housing, not to escape
persecution. "I am taking this firm
action now in order to prevent the institution of asylum and our asylum
determination process being resorted to for purposes other than those for
which they are intended," he said. The
decision means that asylum-seekers who are citizens of the other 26 EU
nations will be refused permission to stay in state accommodation for
asylum seekers. They also will not receive welfare payments specified for
asylum-seekers. Until now, asylum-seekers
from other EU states often were permitted to receive benefits until their
claim could be considered and in almost all cases rejected by
the government-appointed Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner.
... Ireland used to grant citizenship to
any child born in Ireland a policy similar to United States
citizenship law but at odds with the European norm. Irish voters tightened
the right to citizenship in a 2004 referendum, permitting Irish-born
children the right to an Irish passport only if at least one of their
parents has been resident here for a minimum of two years.
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Asylum cost
£40m annual bill for keeping failed asylum seekers here Toby Helm Daily Telegraph, 30 December 2006 |
Taxpayers are footing a £40
million-a-year bill to house and feed almost 6,000 asylum seekers the
courts have ruled should not be allowed to stay in this country, Government
figures show. The admission by ministers
that so many are receiving state help has led to claims that John Reid has
failed to bring the asylum system under control - having promised to get
tough on immigration when he became Home Secretary in the spring.
In a written parliamentary answer to
Damian Green, the Tory immigration spokesman, the Home Office admitted it
cost £129 a week to keep each of 5,980 asylum seekers whose
applications were rejected by the courts but who had subsequently asked for
help. Of these, 2,375 are from Iraq,
which Tony Blair and ministers insist is now largely safe.
Last night the Home Office said those
allowed to stay with state support were either "destitute" or had some
other legitimate reason preventing them returning home. ...
The 5,980 receiving state help form only
a small part of an estimated 280,000 failed asylum seekers in this country.
The vast majority are not in touch with the authorities.
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Asylum Switzerland
Swiss vote to bring in tougher asylum law Kate Connolly Daily Telegraph, 25 September 2006 |
Swiss voters overwhelmingly backed a
law yesterday that will introduce some of the toughest restrictions of any
European country on asylum seekers. Under
new regulations the home of the Red Cross and many international welfare
agencies will severely curtail access for non-European refugees and
migrants. ... Two thirds of Swiss voters
supported the law change which, among other things, requires all those
seeking refugee status to present a passport to authorities within two
days, ... Workers from outside the
European Union and the European Free Trade association will only be
accepted if they have special skills.
Asylum applications in Switzerland have
fallen sharply over the past few years, dropping by more than 50 per cent
over the past two years to 10,000.
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Asylum
A fifth more children in care pushes annual cost to £1.65bn Ben Leapman Sunday Telegraph, 10 September 2006 |
The number of children being taken
into care has risen by 20 per cent in the past decade while the cost of
dealing with youngsters removed from their natural parents has soared to
£1.65 billion a year. ... The
findings were disclosed in a report commissioned by the Department for
Education and Skills, and released on its website this month with no other
publicity. ... Among those in care are
2,900 asylum-seeker children who have been abandoned.
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Asylum amnesty
Up to 80,000 bogus asylum seekers granted 'amnesty' James Slack Daily Mail, 8 September 2006 [In the first sentence, 'it has emerged night' was probably intended to be 'it has emerged' or 'it emerged last
night'] |
Up to 80,000 bogus asylum seekers
have been granted an 'amnesty' to live in Britain, it has emerged night.
They have been in the UK for so long the
Government has decided not to even bother considering their claims.
It is the last shocking indictment of
Home Office incompetence. Officials had
lost track of up to 30,000 of the claimants, or did not even know they were
here in the first place. Sir Andrew
Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said: "This amounts to an amnesty by
default. "It is Home Office inefficiency
that has led to these claims being granted."
The shambles dates back to 2003, when
then Home Secretary David Blunkett announced a desperate plan to clear the
spiralling asylum backlog. He said
families which had applied for refugee status before October 2000 and had
been in the UK for four years could stay and be given full rights to work.
Mr Blunkett asked his officials to trawl
for who might be eligible and made a prediction that 15,000 families, or
50,000 people, would benefit. But the
Daily Mail can reveal that the exercise, which is now on the verge of being
completed, has already led to 24,030 families being given indefinite leave
to remain. It is the equivalent of almost
80,000 people, with another 500 family cases still to be considered.
Most of the clams are likely to have been
bogus - Government statistics show fewer than one in ten applicants whose
claims are actually processed is granted asylum.
But, simply by staying in the country for
long enough without having their claims considered, they will now be
allowed to stay. Equally alarming is the
Government's woeful underestimate of who may be eligible. It follows
revelations of up to 450,000 asylum claims sitting in boxes, waiting to be
dealt with. Almost 10,000 of the families
granted an amnesty, or 30,000 people, were either not known to officials or
had had their paperwork lost. ... The
amnesty, known as the Family Indefinite Leave to Remain exercise, will be
an acute embarrassment to the Home Office.
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Asylum fraud
Inquiry into 'cash for asylum' claims Nicole Martin Daily Telegraph, 28 July 2006 |
The Home Office is to investigate
allegations that an immigration officer helped bogus asylum seekers to
enter Britain in return for cash. Joseph
Dzumbira, 35, who works for the Immigration and Nationality Directorate,
allegedly told an undercover newspaper reporter that he received up to
£2,000 for providing fake documents to foreigners wanting to be
granted refugee status. ... Mr Dzumbira,
31, allegedly told The Sun: "I know Nigerians are claiming to be
Zimbabweans. No one checks." ... Lin
Homer, director-general of the IND, said: "The Home Office will not
tolerate fraud and corruption from its staff. We take these allegations
very seriously and will investigate immediately."
Keith Best, the director of the
Immigration Advisory Service, a charity helping refugees, said: "The system
is set up in a way which allows corruption to take place."
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Asylum deportation
Removal papers Nicky Charles Daily Telegraph, 26 July 2006 [Letter to the Editor] |
John Reid tells us that the asylum
backlog will be cleared in five short years. Among his proposals are
uniforms for border guards and additional staff recruitment (report, July
24). That's all well and good, but until
he tackles the issue of removability, all his bluster will come to naught.
To a greater or lesser extent, Immigration and Nationality Directorate
staff shy away from dealing with removals to China, Iran, Pakistan, India,
Kenya, Jamaica, Ghana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Algeria, Angola, Egypt,
Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Turkey and Nigeria.
This is not because they feel insecure
without a nice shiny uniform, but because the authorities of those
countries refuse to accept their nationals back without a travel document -
which their British representatives won't issue within an acceptable time
scale. Until he resolves this issue, then his promised revolution will go
unnoticed by the public at large. I write
as a serving chief immigration officer.
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Asylum
Who is Mr Reid trying to hoodwink over asylum? Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2006 [Leading article] |
For John Reid, the Home Secretary, to
predict that the backlog of asylum-seekers in this country will be cleared
"within five years and hopefully sooner" suggests he has either lost his
grip on reality or that he is being profoundly cynical. We tend towards the
latter. Only a politician prepared to take the British public for fools
could make such a preposterous promise. Ever since Labour came to office,
its handling of asylum has been negligent in the extreme. At current rates,
it would take more than 40 years to clear the backlog. Nothing that has
come out of Mr Reid's welter of announcements this week instils any
confidence that this rate will improve.
Admittedly New Labour inherited a
fast-growing problem in 1997. The previous Tory government had been forced
to declare an amnesty for 30,000 asylum-seekers because of its inability to
process their claims. But instead of tackling the crisis with rigour, the
incoming Labour Government reacted with torpor. By the end of its first
term in power, the battle was lost. Public disquiet led Labour to promise,
in its 2001 manifesto, to deport 30,000 failed asylum-seekers a year - a
promise it was forced to abandon the following year, by which time 100,000
applications were being received annually. An analysis by the National
Audit Office found that in the decade to May 2004, 363,000 applications for
asylum were turned down, but just 79,500 failed applicants were deported -
that is, barely one in five. ... Labour
seeks to mitigate its shameful record of failure to control the nation's
borders by claiming that it is now removing more failed asylum-seekers than
ever before. Not true. Last year, the figure was 15,055 removals - two
years earlier, it was 17,895.
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Asylum
Reid faces dangers in Home Office shake-up Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 20 July 2006 |
After less than three months on the
bridge of the Home Office, John Reid yesterday tried to steer his rusting
ship of state off the rocks on which it spectacularly foundered a few
months ago. ... The Immigration and
Nationality Directorate is to be hived off to become a quasi-independent
agency where long queues, backlogs and piles of uncompleted case documents
will no longer be tolerated. As an
example of where the IND has lost its way, the Home Office let it be known
that it had "seriously underestimated" the number of failed asylum
applicants still in the country. It now
concedes that there are 450,000 outstanding files whereas in the past it
had acknowledged half that. Mr Reid said this backlog would be dealt with
in five years, although that did not mean that those who were turned down
would be removed. Indeed, no amount of
technical restructuring will enable the Home Office to deport such a large
number of people. Yet after floating the
idea of an amnesty for all illegal overstayers a few weeks ago, that option
was firmly shut off yesterday.
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Asylum fraud
Huge rise in student visas raises fear of asylum fraud Brendan Carlin Daily Telegraph, 14 June 2006 |
Labour's immigration policy was under
fresh attack last night after the Government admitted that it had no firm
data on how many foreign students left the UK after the completion of their
courses. The admission came after Douglas
Carswell, the Conservative MP for Harwich, discovered a huge increase in
the number of student visas issued to people from just five countries.
Separately, the Foreign Office disclosed
yesterday that as many as 180,000 people living in Pakistan and Bangladesh
could be holding British passports and be able to live here - 135,000 more
than official estimates.
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Asylum repatriation
Asylum cheats get £3,000 to go home Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 6 June 2006 |
Thousands of failed asylum seekers
are being paid millions of pounds to return to their home countries because
it is cheaper than trying to deport them.
An offer under which rejected applicants,
or those who agree to withdraw their asylum request, are paid £2,000
in cash and £1,000 "benefits in kind" was taken up by almost 2,000
people in the first four months of the year.
Liam Byrne, the immigration minister,
said yesterday that the scheme had been so successful that it would be
extended for another six months. The £2,000 cash payment was
introduced in January as an addition to a £1,000 resettlement grant in
an effort to encourage more would-be refugees to abandon their attempts to
stay in the country. As a result, the uptake more than doubled.
The £3,000 bill compares with the
£11,000 average cost of a forced deportation.
Only those who applied for asylum before
Jan 1 this year are eligible for the enhanced package and they must leave
the country between July 1 and the end of the year.
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Asylum
Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 18 May 2006 |
The reality is that things are worse
than they were under the Tories, not because they were any better at
managing matters but because the numbers involved are so much higher than
10 years ago. The surge in what became
known as "bogus" asylum seeking and illegal immigration began in the early
1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall made it easier to travel to Western
Europe through the former Eastern Bloc countries.
What had been a manageable trickle of
arrivals became a cascade that the system struggled to deal with. In 1988,
there were 4,200 applications; in 1995, there were 44,000. Rapidly, the
backlog of asylum applications awaiting to be processed shot up to more
than 60,000. The Tories got into such a
pickle that they even introduced an amnesty allowing 30,000 people who had
been in the country a long time to stay even if they were not bona
fide political refugees because it had taken so long to process their
claims. By 2002, the annual number of
applications had risen to more than 100,000. Tough measures have reduced
this figure to below where it was in 1997. ... ...
The Tories also abolished embarkation
controls - the paper check on people leaving the country to go to other
European Union states from sea ports and small airports.
When Labour took office, the remaining
controls to the rest of the world, about 60 per cent of the total, were
also scrapped. Since them it has no longer been an absolute requirement to
show a passport or other travel document to immigration authorities on
leaving. ... The Government says it is
removing more people than ever before. That is just not true. In 2005, the
figure was 15,055 whereas in 2003 it was 17,895. The main reason for this
was the expansion of the EU. However, the current figure is a lower
proportion of the number who are here who should not be than in 1997.
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Asylum
Revealed: How asylum seekers use your taxes to smuggle in relatives Nick Fagge Daily Express, 17 May 2006 |
Taxpayers are unwittingly funding an
illegal people-trafficking scam, allowing waves of immigrants into Britain,
a Daily Express investigation can reveal.
Benefits paid to immigrants in the UK are
being sent to France, where friends and relatives use the cash to pay to be
smuggled on board ships and lorries bound for Britain. ...
Sir Andrew Green, of Migration Watch,
said: "Asylum seekers in Calais are already in a safe country and should
stay there. "The only reason they press
to come to Britain is because we are a soft touch. It's time that changed."
... The problem has also been highlighted
by a five-year inquiry by the French Security Services (DST) into financial
transfer fraud. DST agents have found
that migrants are increasingly appealing to their British "sponsors" for
help after they become stranded on the streets of Calais.
British-based immigrants then send money
to them to allow the next new wave of migrants to complete their journey to
the UK. ... Immigrants in the UK are
entitled to £40 a week from the publicly funded National Asylum
Support Service while their applications to stay are being processed.
Migrants are also provided with a flat, a
room in a shared house or bedsit - at an average cost of £95 a week.
If they are granted refugee status the payout increases to £60 a week
as income support. This is apart from other Government hand-outs, such as
child benefits, housing benefit, council tax rebate and free school meals
as they become entitled to all the trappings of the welfare state. ...
Charity workers in Calais told of a
logjam of migrants currently trying to smuggle themselves into Britain.
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Asylum
Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 16 May 2006 |
Since Labour took office in 1997
Britain has received applications for asylum from more than 500,000 people.
The numbers have fallen in the last three years from a record of more than
100,000 in 2002. ... The number of
illegal immigrants cannot be quantified but the Government recently
estimated that as many as 280,000 failed asylum seekers may be in the
country who should not be. ... The
removal of unsuccessful applicants is in decline, from 17,800, including
dependants, in 2003-4, to 14,250 last year.
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Asylum
How one-tenth of all asylum seekers find a home in Britain Steve Doughty Daily Mail, 19 April 2006 |
Britain took in almost one in ten of
the world's asylum seekers last year, a United Nations report said
yesterday. Over the past five years it
has admitted nearly a third of a million - the highest total in Europe. ...
'Despite a sharp fall, the UK remained
the third largest asylum-seeker receiving country in 2005, accounting for 9
per cent of all requests lodged in the industrialised world,' the analysis
found. Researchers from the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said over the past five years only
America has taken more asylum seekers. ...
Although Britain tops the European toll
over the last five years, Britain slipped into second place behind France
last year. ... But, the report by UN High
Commissioner Antonio Guterres says refugee numbers have been dropping
worldwide and that numbers applying for asylum in EU countries have fallen
by almost 50 per cent over the past five years. ...
The UN figures show that Britain has
accepted more than 325,000 asylum seekers since 2001.
Mr Guterres acknowledged the claims for
help of genuine refugees around the world had been harmed by abuse of
liberal asylum rules by those trying to migrate for economic reasons.
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Asylum
Bungled asylum policy could take 18 years to sort out Daily Telegraph, 14 March 2006 |
More than 400 freed criminals are
among thousands of failed asylum seekers whose whereabouts are unknown to
the Government. A report from a
parliamentary watchdog published today says the Home Office has so bungled
the removal of would-be political refugees who have had their applications
turned down that it could take 18 years to clear the backlog.
The department keeps no figures on how
many failed applicants are still in the country. Its best estimate is
between 155,000 and 283,500. They include 403 foreign nationals released
from prison in the past five years without deportation proceedings being
completed. ... "As time elapsed, the
Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) found it harder to locate and
remove failed asylum seekers," says the report.
"Many applicants evaded removal action or
moved on without informing the directorate of their new address and hence
it knew the addresses of only some 25 per cent of failed asylum
applicants." ... The committee suggests
taking a leaf out of Holland's book by encouraging voluntary resettlement
and adopting a tougher line on deportations. But the policy has caused huge
controversy in the Netherlands which the Government would be reluctant to
provoke here.
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Asylum
Drive to clear asylum backlog 'in chaos' Daily Telegraph, 1 March 2006 |
Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor,
admitted last night that he had abandoned a drive to recruit 100
much-needed asylum judges after a series of errors by Government officials.
The judges were being taken on to deal with a backlog of appeals by
asylum-seekers. ... He told the Commons
constitutional affairs select committee that he ordered officials to
abandon the programme begun at the end of last year after inconsistencies
emerged in the way applicants had been treated. ...
Figures published yesterday confirmed a
continuing fall in applications for political asylum, which are now at
their lowest level for 10 years. There were 25,720 applications in 2005,
not including dependants, a fall of 24 per cent on the previous year.
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Asylum
Judges scathing of efforts to streamline immigration Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2006 |
The Government's efforts to get to
grips with the immigration system were criticised by two leading judges
yesterday. His Honour Henry Hodge, the
chairman of the immigration and asylum tribunal, told MPs that it was often
pointless to order the return of people whose appeals were rejected because
nothing then happened. ... Addressing the
Commons home affairs select committee, Judge Hodge acknowledged the
difficulties that officials faced in trying to arrange repatriation,
especially as many of the migrants' home countries refused to take them
back. ...
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Asylum
Asylum seekers offered £2,000 to return home Daily Telegraph, 13 January 2006 |
Thousands of asylum seekers are to be
offered millions of pounds in cash to return to their home countries under
a scheme announced yesterday by the Home Office.
The Government expects to spend about
£6 million over six months encouraging around 3,000 refugees, who have
been refused permission to stay or are awaiting decisions, to return home.
As an incentive, they will be offered up
to £2,000 cash and a further £1,000 worth of help "in kind" for
reintegration, to fund education or training. A pilot scheme will make the
cash available to those who agree to leave in the six months between this
month and June. The Home Office is
advertising the scheme to 54,000 people receiving benefits and
accommodation from the National Asylum Support Service and will publicise
it in asylum detention and reporting centres.
Tony McNulty, the immigration minister,
said in a written statement to the Commons ...
"It is anticipated that such an offer
could increase the number of predicted returns from about 1,950 to over
3,000 for the six-month period." Mr
McNulty added that the £3,000 cost per person was "good value for
money" compared with the £11,000 average cost of a forced deportation.
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Asylum
Fast-track deportees 'free to abscond' Sunday Telegraph, 8 January 2006 |
Thousands of asylum seekers on the
brink of deportation are to be sent to Liverpool under a secret Home Office
scheme. They include illegal workers
caught in swoops, people who claimed asylum after overstaying visitor
visas, and applicants from "safe" countries with good human rights records.
Their cases will be fast-tracked for a
decision within two weeks, after which many will be sent straight back to
their homelands. Yet despite the
incentive to abscond, they will not be kept in detention centres but will
live rent-free in flats or hotels, coming and going as they please.
The only curb on their movement will be a
request to report regularly to a local immigration office. ...
The Home Office claimed that the
initiative appeared to be working but officials could not say how many
people had been deported, granted asylum, or had simply disappeared.
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Asylum
Asylum case backlog costs taxpayer £500m Daily Telegraph, 8 February 2005 |
The taxpayer could have saved
£500 million if the Home Office had put proper procedures in place to
speed up asylum applications, a Commons committee says today.
A surge in applications in 1999 and 2000
overwhelmed the staff and infrastructure at the immigration and nationality
department, allowing huge backlogs to build up. ...
In recent years the number of asylum
applications has fluctuated from a peak of 84,130 applications in 2002 -
not including dependants - to just under 50,000 in 2003.
In 2002/3 the cost of running the system
was £1.86 billion, half of which was spent on supporting applicants.
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Asylum
Sandy Bruce-Lockhart Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2005 |
The rising number of asylum seekers
in Kent ... In 1996 ... we had just 50 asylum seekers a year arriving. By
2000, this had escalated to 15,000 a year coming into Kent alone.
Our council's budget on asylum - covering
everything from housing to education - was less than £250,000 in 1996,
and rose last year to £53 million. ...
Over the past five years, we have also
seen an unprecedented increase in children arriving into Kent without their
parents, entirely on their own, either as asylum seekers or as potentially
illegal immigrants. The first thing that these bemused children do, when
arriving in Kent County Council's children's reception centres, is to phone
home so that the second half of the fee owed to traffickers for their
passage can be released ... A few years ago, we were receiving just three
or four a year of these unaccompanied children, typically aged between 12
and 17, but last year the figure rose to about 100 a month.
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Asylum
Brussels: We'll halt Howard's curb on migrants Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2005 |
The European Commission threatened
last night to block Michael Howard's programme of tough immigration
controls if the Tories win the election.
These would include setting an annual
limit on the number of asylum seekers. ...
Europe's intervention on what has become
a major issue in the election campaign took Westminster aback. MPs and
officials were unaware of how much national sovereignty on immigration and
asylum had been transferred to Brussels. ...
A rolling wave of protocols and
directives - one in force, one coming next month, a third next year and a
fourth in 2007 - have overridden national laws on where governments keep
asylum seekers, how they treat them, and how many appeals they are allowed.
If a future British government were to
enact laws that contravened EU regulations, the commission would begin
"infringement proceedings". These would be followed, if resistance
continued, by legal action in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
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Asylum
Sunday Telegraph, 15 August 2004 |
The Department for Constitutional
Affairs is spending £10,000 offering advice on how to claim asylum.
The leaflets are in Welsh. - Daily Express
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Asylum fraud
Alleged asylum fraud linked to Mugabe regime Daily Telegraph, 21 June 2004 |
Police and immigration officers are
investigating an organisation, set up with National Lottery money to help
immigrants, after claims that it forged documents and provided false life
histories for 1,000 Zimbabwean asylum seekers. ...
Among those who have abandoned Zimbabwe
is Stalin Mau Mau, once a Zanu-PF parliamentary candidate, and the leader
of a gang accused of forcing white farmers off their land.
He says he entered Britain legally, but
his status is now being investigated by the Home Office, as are his
businesses, which include a supermarket in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.
... Like most Zanu-PF candidates, he
roused his supporters at campaign rallies with one consistent chant: "Down
with the whites!" ... About 1.1 million
Zimbabweans live in Britain, according to an official estimate from the
Harare regime.
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Asylum legal aid
Solicitors hand out gifts to grab lucrative asylum jobs Sunday Telegraph, 6 July 2003 |
Solicitors and immigration advisers
are offering newly arrived asylum seekers free gifts, including video
recorders and mobile telephones, as an inducement to sign up with them.
The gifts - which are against the law -
are being handed out because of the intense competition between lawyers to
secure the extremely lucrative work. Last year, more than £175 million
of taxpayers' money was spent on legal aid for asylum seekers, with most of
it going to solicitors. The practice has
been uncovered by John Scampion, the official Immigration Service
Commissioner, ... ... Each asylum seeker
is entitled to full free legal aid throughout the asylum process, which can
drag on for years through countless hearings and appeals.
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Asylum
Lawyers accused of 'milking asylum law' Daily Telegraph, 22 February 2003 |
Human rights lawyers are "cynically
milking" the legal aid system to fight hopeless cases on behalf of asylum
seekers, a judge said yesterday. They
have been running up thousands of pounds in court costs, paid by the
taxpayer, said Mr Justice Maurice Kay, despite having no chance of success.
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Asylum
We're a job centre, not a safe haven Alasdair Palmer Sunday Telegraph, 1 December 2002 |
Only about one in eight of those
whose claims for asylum are rejected by the courts are actually deported.
The message has gone out that if you can get to Britain, you can stay here.
The Lords Committee that reported on the issue last week concluded that
there was "no prospect" of reducing, or even controlling, illegal
immigration without a radical re-think of asylum policy. ...
Even though illegal immigrants are not
officially allowed to work, they do so.
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Asylum
Asylum seekers reach record 100,000 a year Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2002 |
Record numbers of asylum seekers are
arriving in Britain despite intensified ministerial efforts to stop them.
... When dependants are added, there were
nearly 30,000 applications between July and September. The total for the
year, including children, seems certain to pass 100,000 for the first time
- easily the highest in the EU. ...
Beverley Hughes, the immigration
minister, said the system known as exceptional leave to remain, which
allows people to stay even when they are not judged to be genuine refugees,
was being scrapped. It will be replaced by "humanitarian protection" to be
granted only in cases of genuine hardship.
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Asylum finance
Asylum seekers' group will get lottery cash Sunday Telegraph, 20 October 2002 |
A controversial grant of
£340,000 from the National Lottery for a group campaigning against the
deportation of asylum seekers will be given the go- ahead this week despite
fierce public protests. The Community
Fund has been told that there are no legal grounds for rescinding the grant
to the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns.
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Asylum
42,000 asylum seekers win right to stay The Times, 1 August 2002 |
Record numbers of asylum-seekers are
being allowed to stay in the UK ... The
number of refugees remaining legally in the country increased to a record
42,000 last year. The new figures reveal that thousands are successfully
appealing against the initial rejection of their claims for asylum. ...
Mr Blunkett ... His department is facing
an overspend on the asylum system of almost £600 million, bringing the
total annual bill for dealing with asylum to more than £1 billion. ...
Mr Blunkett has already abandoned a
pledge to remove 30,000 failed asylum- seekers and their dependents from
the country after being told by officials that the figure was unrealistic.
He dropped the target, set by his
predecessor Jack Straw before the last general election, after the Home
Office admitted it had been able to remove only 1,000 failed applicants a
month. ... The figures show that 92,000
asylum-seekers and their dependents arrived in the UK compared with 88,300
in Germany, the second most popular destination. The UK figure was a drop
of 7,000 on the previous year. ... The
overall proportion of applications resulting in an asylum-seeker being
allowed to stay in the country legally reached 42 per cent compared with 33
per cent a year earlier.
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BENEFITS AND COSTS |
Benefits and costs health services
Relying on foreign locums puts patients in danger, doctor says Daily Telegraph, 30 June 2010 |
Patients are put at risk because of
the NHS's "scandalous" reliance on foreign locums who often exaggerate
their qualifications to get work, a senior doctor has warned.
Prof Chris Isles, of Dumfries and
Galloway Royal Infirmary, said inexperienced overseas doctors were paid
"eye-watering" sums of up to £70 an hour for stand-in shifts. Writing
in the British Medical Journal, ...
"We pay lip service to patient safety by
allowing this scandalous state of affairs to continue," he wrote.
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Benefits and costs welfare state
Welfare states can't have open borders Mark Landsbaum The Orange County Register, 4 June 2010 [Updated on 7 June, 2010] |
Someone's got to say it. What's
missing amid the impassioned fervor surrounding illegal immigration is
common sense. ... Ideally, employers
should be free to hire whomever they choose. Employees should be free to
seek work anywhere. National borders impede this mutually beneficial
arrangement by regulating immigration, consequently distorting job markets
by perverting supply and demand. Even so, that's not the central problem of
illegal immigration. Rather, the problem
is rooted in well-intentioned institutional evils. As Milton Friedman said:
"You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state."
It follows that you can't build a fence
high enough, or deport enough illegal immigrants, or punish businesses
enough to completely discourage people from seeking to substantially better
their lives, especially if what they stand to gain is free to them, and
particularly if they don't have much to begin with.
If jobs were the only issue, the market
would largely self-correct whatever problems are posed by illegal
immigration. But it's not just jobs. Most of the world lives in conditions
that make "poverty" in the contemporary United States look extravagant.
About 43 percent of America's "poor" own
their homes, which, on average, is a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath
with garage, says the Census Bureau. About 80 percent of U.S. poor have air
conditioning. It was only 1970 when merely 36 percent of the entire
population enjoyed air conditioning. In the 1940s, my parents slept on the
porch to cope with Illinois' stifling summer nights. ...
About three-fourths of poor Americans own
a car, and almost a third have two. A whopping 97 percent of U.S. poor
households have color TV, and more than half own two or more. Three-fourths
have a VCR or DVD player, and 62 percent get cable or satellite TV. That's
poor in America today. ... Then there's
the fact that no one is turned away from health care in America for lack of
ability to pay. Hungry? Food stamps. Can't pay the rent? Subsidized housing
and free shelters. Before you send hate
mail, understand that this is not to say there isn't poverty, suffering,
hunger and need in America. It's to say that, relatively speaking, the U.S.
looks like paradise to substantially poorer people around the world. ...
Add up everything the U.S. provides at no
cost to recipients health, education, welfare, food stamps,
subsidized housing, etc. We're fortunate to be insulated by two oceans, or
else many, many more desperate poor would flood across our borders to take
advantage. And none of that even takes
into consideration the lure of jobs, vastly more plentiful and better
paying here than in impoverished nations.
The point is not whether we should turn
these people away. The point is they have every reason to want to come. And
you would, too. As long as we provide
such stuff for free, people who don't have it will come to get it. The more
vital the free stuff, the greater the attraction. The more generous we are
in doling it out, the more entitled they will feel. ...
... Whether immigration would increase a
little or a lot, the fact remains we can't afford open borders while we
operate a welfare state. Neither can we afford to dangle free benefits
before a desperate world that regards being poor in America as having
arrived in paradise.
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Benefits and costs
Think tank: Immigration beats aid in reducing world poverty Danny Sriskandarajah and Laura Chappell The Sunday Times, 23 May 2010 [Danny Sriskandarajah and Laura Chappell work with the
Institute for Public Policy Research] |
A new report by the Institute for
Public Policy Research (IPPR) shows that migration may be a far better way
of helping the world's poor than aid. The report, based on 10,000 household
surveys in seven countries, suggests that migrants working overseas deliver
tangible benefits in ways that aid and foreign investment just can't.
Globally, migrants sent home about
£220 billion to developing countries last year; four times the total
volume of aid. Without these "remittances", some Third World countries
would struggle to survive. In Tajikistan, remittances account for more than
two-fifths of the total economy; in Senegal, remittances are 12 times
foreign investment inflows. The African continent receives $36 per capita
in aid but $44 in remittances. Moreover, remittances have emerged as one of
the most resilient sources of income for poorer countries during the
downturn. This money which usually
goes straight to families with no strings attached can be critical
in boosting the quality of life of poorer households worldwide. ...
When migrants return and
significant proportions do, even to the poorest countries they
usually bring with them new resources, skills and networks. This can be
critical in promoting entrepreneurship and trade in local economies. The
migration experience can also change attitudes for the better. ...
Of course, migration can mean "brain
drain": countries such as Fiji and Jamaica are estimated to have lost about
three-quarters of their highly skilled professionals. But the picture's not
all bad: the money, skills and ideas that migrants send home, or bring back
with them, often outweigh the negative impacts. And the knowledge that a
good education and skills can open up the chance to migrate provides a
powerful incentive to young people to work hard at school and university.
Some, but not all, will end up leaving, so the pool of skilled people in a
country may grow. These findings have
important implications for the new government's strategy on international
development. Migration should become an integral part of the development
agenda because migration can do things that aid cannot. Aid has some well
known weaknesses it can get tied up in bureaucracies and its
effectiveness can be blunted by corruption. In contrast, remittances go
directly to households and are spent by families, not officials. Both
migration and aid have a place in development strategies, but a change in
approach more support for migration and less focus on aid is
overdue. Of course the second part of
this suggestion may be easier for electorates in Europe and America to
stomach than the first. But be realistic. The demand for migrant labour in
rich countries is set to rise as our populations age. It seems likely, too,
that two-tier labour markets that have become almost addicted to cheap
immigrant labour some 90% of all London's cleaners come from abroad
will become only more entrenched. Simply put, economies like ours
need migrants to keep them growing. This
does not mean that we should open the floodgates. Rather, we need practical
policies to facilitate and manage mobility. Increasing legal migration
programmes may be the best way to meet labour shortages in some sectors,
deliver real economic benefits to developing countries and ensure that
migrants are not pushed into the hands of traffickers.
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Benefits and costs health services
Immigrants help drive sharp rise in A&E patients Rebecca Smith Daily Telegraph, 15 May 2010 |
A record number of people are
attending A&E departments, with immigrants and confusion over out of hours
GPs driving the increase. Centres in
England dealt with 20.5 million patients in the past year the
equivalent of 40 per cent of the population making a visit. ...
A combination of the confusion over GPs'
hours and increases in immigrants who tended to visit A&E routinely and not
register with family doctors, was thought to be the cause. Shorter waiting
times in A&E, with 98 per cent seen within four hours, also meant people
were more likely to attend.
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Benefits and costs
Equalities boss 'victimised Sikh' Daily Telegraph, 3 May 2010 |
An equalities boss is being taken to
an employment tribunal amid claims he victimised a Sikh employee.
Dr Mashuq Ally, 59, is paid more than
£100,000 to eradicate prejudice at Birmingham city council as its
assistant director for equalities and human resources. He is accused of
race, ethnic, age and disability discrimination by a former worker, Rajpal
Virdee. Mr Virdee, 50, a practising Sikh,
claims he was victimised and sidelined in his job as the council's
equalities manager for social services, partly because of his religion.
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Benefits and costs London, business opinion
London firms say immigrants are 'good for business' 24dash.com, 16 March 2010 |
A 'significant' majority of business
in London think that the capital would not be as competitive without the
contribution of migrants, according to a new report.
The survey of 182 firms, published today
by the London Chamber of Commerce in partnership with polling firm ComRes,
quizzed companies on a wide range of immigration issues, two years on from
the introduction of the UK's points-based system.
Migrants are viewed in a positive light
by London employers across a number of indicators with 68 per cent saying
they often work harder than their UK counterparts.
Similarly, 72 per cent of companies say
that migrants are prepared to do the jobs that British citizens won't.
Employers not only view migrants
positively in a general sense, but value their contribution to their own
firms as well, with 57 per cent of companies saying that immigrants are
important to their own company. However,
most businesses (56 per cent) think that migrant workers are not as well
qualified as UK employees. On the
controversial subject of the pressure migrants place on public services,
the majority of London businesses (56 per cent) think the economic benefits
they bring to the capital outweigh the potential cost of providing such
services. When asked if an amnesty for
illegal immigrants resident in London would be beneficial for businesses,
just 38 per cent said yes. Opinion was
more evenly divided though on Boris Johnson's policy of an amnesty for
illegal immigrants living in London for four years or more with 43 per cent
saying they agreed with the policy and 52 per cent saying they opposed it.
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Benefits and costs health services
Tourists must take out health insurance Kate Devlin and Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 27 February 2010 |
Every tourist visiting Britain could
be forced to prove they have health insurance under proposals designed to
curb the misuse of the NHS. Ministers
said they were determined to prevent so-called health tourists from
entering the country. Mike O'Brien, the
Health Minister, said: "Whilst the NHS has a duty to any person whose life
or long-term health is at immediate risk, we cannot afford to be an
international health service, providing free treatment for all."
... The health service writes off around
£5 million owed by foreign nationals every year. Most outstanding
bills are, on average, more than £1,000. ...
Under the proposals, proof of health
insurance will be compulsory for all visitors who have to pass through
immigration control.
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Benefits and costs European Union
Somali mother of four has no right to live here... but we have to give her a council house Arthur Martin and Steve Doughty Daily Mail, 24 February 2010 |
Standing proudly with her arm draped
over her 36in television, this is the Somali woman who must be given a
council house even though she has no right to live in Britain.
Nimco Hassan Ibrahim - who lives with her
four children on benefit handouts - was granted the right to the home by EU
judges yesterday because she was once married to a Danish citizen who
briefly worked in this country. ... And
although she lives in a temporary accommodation in Harrow, Middlesex -
funded by the local council - she has managed to install a high-speed
internet connection. Speaking to the
Daily Mail last night, Mrs Ibrahim said: 'I deserve to be given a proper
house. This one is too small for all of us. ...' ...
Mrs Ibrahim does not work and spends her
day looking after her children Abdirahman, 12, Abdifatah, 10, Deka, eight,
and Mustapha, four. She refused to reveal how she could afford her
electrical goods and furniture. The
landmark EU judgment opens the door for hundreds of thousands of unemployed
foreigners to claim both state benefits and council or housing association
homes. ... The judges at the European
Court of Justice in Luxembourg said Mrs Ibrahim must be given a home
because 'a parent caring for the child of a migrant worker who is in
education in the host member state has a right of residence in that state'.
'That right is not conditional on the
parent having sufficient resources not to become a burden on the social
assistance system.' Mrs Ibrahim fled
war-torn Somalia to Ethiopia with her family when she was 15. She married
Mohamed Yusuf in Ethiopia before the pair moved to Denmark where he holds
citizenship. The pair came to Britain
seven years ago. After eight months working as a bus driver, Mr Yusuf began
living on benefits. When they were stopped in March 2004, he left the
country. Mr Yusuf's departure ended Mrs
Ibrahim's right to stay in the UK and her right to receive benefits, but
six years later, she lives on £1,000 a month through child tax
credits, child benefits and child disability allowance.
Her accommodation is paid for and she
also uses the NHS, even though she is not entitled to free medical care and
has no insurance cover. Her three-year
legal battle was funded by the charity Shelter.
The UK Border Agency said it was
'disappointed', while Harrow council - which lost the case and has to give
a home to Mrs Ibrahim - said European judges were determining British
immigration policy. Housing chief Barry
Macleod-Cullinane said: 'We are very concerned-with this outcome, as it
appears to establish a major new legal precedent over benefit claims.
'It could well prove to be a floodgates
judgment in that people who have not yet contributed to this country or who
do not have the means to sustain themselves can now seek immediate help
from state welfare services. 'This
judgment would seem to make the EU policy of free movement impossible
unless one greets new migrants at Heathrow with sizeable welfare handouts.'
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Benefits and costs
£2m payout for illegal migrants Daily Telegraph, 12 February 2010 |
Illegal immigrants who should have
been removed from the country are receiving compensation for wrongful
detention, it has emerged. The Home
Office paid out at least £2 million over the last three years in cases
where it was proved that migrants, foreign prisoners or asylum seekers were
wrongly held. The figure, relating to 121
individuals, was based on data from several law firms. The true cost could
be higher.
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Benefits and costs
Time to 'lance boil' of resentment over 'unfairness' of immigration, says Labour's Margaret Hodge James Chapman Daily Mail, 4 February 2010 |
Migrants would be forced to 'earn'
the right to benefits and council housing over several years under
explosive plans outlined today by a senior Labour minister.
Margaret Hodge warns British values of
openness and tolerance are under threat because of an increasing sense of
'unfairness' over immigration. The
Culture Minister is calling for a new points system - based on length of
residence or national insurance contributions - to determine that only
migrants who have made a fair contribution to society get the same rights
as local families. Mrs Hodge, who is
facing a General Election challenge from BNP leader Nick Griffin, told the
Daily Mail it was time to 'lance the boil' of growing discontent over the
wave of economic migrants entering Britain.
Labour strategists fear there are signs
that the far-Right BNP will mount a 'serious challenge' in her Barking,
East London seat. One recent poll found
that 65 per cent of voters believe foreign arrivals get favourable
treatment over housing and benefits. It
also showed a third of voters support a core policy of the far-Right BNP,
proposing that people from ethnic minorities should lose all state
benefits, including NHS treatment, to pay for a 'resettlement policy' for
those wishing to leave the country.
Migrants currently have the right to
claim in-work benefits, such as tax credits, if they have a job. Those who
have come from the EU must spend a year working in Britain, but can then
claim the same level of state support as any citizen.
They are treated the same as UK citizens
in respect of claims for income support, jobseeker's allowance, housing
benefit and council tax benefit. ... Mrs
Hodge was attacked as 'offensive' by senior Labour colleagues after calling
for a shake-up of housing rules two and half years ago.
But last year, the Government announced
it was adopting the policy proposal she made to give councils new powers to
give local people priority on waiting lists.
Now the minister is risking angering
colleagues again by going further, with an admission that the Government
has failed to address voters' concerns over immigration.
Her proposal to strip benefits from
immigrants who have not been contributing to society for a fixed period
will infuriate Left-wing Labour MPs, who argue people cannot be left
destitute. But Mrs Hodge insisted: 'At
the moment, people don't feel the system is fair and we can't ignore that.
If we are serious about reconnecting with people, then we have to listen to
what they are saying. 'We have to lance
this boil. This isn't just a message to my own party, it's a message to all
mainstream parties. ... 'This isn't about
race, it's about having a transparent system which people understand and
which is fair.'
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Benefits and costs translators, interpreters
£20m translation cost is revealed Daily Telegraph, 2 February 2010 |
Ministers had to issue an
embarrassing correction over how much the Government spends on translators
in the courts, after giving inaccurate figures to MPs on four separate
occasions. The Ministry of Justice
admitted it has spent more than £20 million on interpreters and
translators in the past two years, increasing concerns over the impact
immigration is having on the public purse.
The figure included £11.8 million
spent in 2007-08, which was higher than MPs had previously been told. The
figures refer to services for victims of crime and other court users but
not suspects.
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Benefits and costs translation
Translation charges cost councils £20m Nick Collins Daily Telegraph, 16 January 2010 |
Councils spent nearly £20
million of taxpayers' money last year translating documents, figures
suggest. Translations were carried out in
more than 75 languages, including Kpelle, a Liberian dialect, and Pahari,
which is spoken in northern India and Nepal. The biggest spender was City
of Edinburgh council, which last year paid £110,000 for translations
into languages including Mongolian. ...
The figures came to light after 84 per
cent of councils responded to a Freedom of Information request by Lingo24,
a translation agency. ... The Local
Government Association said translation spending fell from £25 million
in 2006. A spokesman said: "Translation has its place to ensure people can
access vital services, find jobs and get their children into school."
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Benefits and costs visitors' visas applications
Anger at migrant visa costs Macer Hall Daily Express, 2 January 2010 |
Taxpayers are footing a £50
million-a-year bill to fund appeals by relatives of immigrants barred from
Britain. More than 1,000 are lodged every
week, it was revealed last night. The caseload has soared eightfold since
the Government scrapped fees for family visitor visas in 2002.
Critics last night warned that the
explosion in the number of appeals was more evidence that Labour has lost
control of Britain's borders. The visa shambles was uncovered in a report
from the population think tank Migrationwatch.
Chairman Sir Andrew Green said: "In the
current recession it is no longer acceptable that taxpayers should pay the
appeal costs for foreign nationals wishing to visit Britain. The definition
of a family visitor is so wide that it could include as many as 120
relatives of a middle-aged person. The definition should be narrowed and
charges which the Government abolished in 2002 should be re-introduced."
More than 400,000 applications for
immigrants' relatives to visit Britain for up to six months are made every
year. The number of appeals has risen from 7,997 in 2002 to 64,669 in
2007-08. Family visitor visas are
available for relatives including parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts,
nephews, nieces and cousins of immigrants already living here who want to
come to the UK. Applicants are expected
to prove that they will stay for no longer than six months and are not
coming to Britain to work. But critics
fear the system is full of loopholes and is being exploited as yet another
way for illegal immigrants to sneak into the country.
Sir Andrew said: "Obviously, family
members should be able to visit relatives in Britain but such visits need
to be properly regulated. There is a clear risk that, once here, some of
these visitors will stay on illegally knowing that the chance of them being
removed is remote." In 2008, a total of
414,000 applications for family visitor visas were made, of which 312,000
were approved. Around 197,000 of those
applications came from India, Pakistan and Nigeria. Of those, 134,000 were
approved. Yet despite the huge number of approvals, failed applicants are
allowed to challenge the refusals without charge.
Previously, they had to pay £150 for
an appeal or £500 if they wished to attend an appeal hearing in
person. In January 2001, the Government reduced the fees to £50 and
£125, then scrapped them altogether in May 2002. As a result, the
number of appeals has soared. The
Migrationwatch report said: "Fees should be re-instated. There is no reason
why the British taxpayer should pay the appeal costs of foreign visitors."
It also criticised the wide definition of family member. "The definition
should be substantially tightened, at least until exit controls are in
place. "In particular, uncles, aunts,
nephews, nieces, and first cousins should no longer be included. This would
reduce the number of eligible relatives by up to 68," the report said.
"This definition of family visitor is so
widely drawn that somebody from a third world country where the number of
children per family is often four or five, could sponsor somewhere between
80 and 120 people under this scheme.
"Furthermore, the provision for unmarried
couples is particularly hard to verify and is therefore open to abuse."
It also called for sponsors of applicants
to be asked to provide a cash bond guaranteeing that their relatives leave
the country.
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Benefits and costs health services
Migrants join a GP practice every minute Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 22 December 2009 |
Migrants are registering with family
doctors at a rate of one a minute, leaving GP surgeries "straining at the
seams" as they try to cope with the impact of rising immigration, figures
show. More than 600,000 people signed up
with a GP practice in England and Wales last year having arrived from
overseas an increase of 50 per cent in seven years. ...
Of those, 69,000 were Britons back from a
spell overseas and it is a rise of half on the 400,000 new migrant
registrations in 2000-01. The report, by
Migrationwatch, also showed the number of GPs in England and Wales rose by
18 per cent over the period from 30,609 in 2001 to 36,041 last year.
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Benefits and costs crime
£292m bill to keep foreign prisoners behind bars Daily Telegraph, 7 December 2009 |
Foreign prisoners cost £292
million to keep under lock and key. Jails
in England and Wales hold 7,500 immigrants from 160 different nations,
almost a tenth of the prison population.
Ministry of Justice figures show
foreigners have been jailed for almost 900 sex offences and 1,500 violent
attacks including murders.
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Benefits and costs class
Middle classes benefit from immigration, says John Denham Richard Ford The Times, 2 December 2009 |
Middle-class people fail to
understand the impact of immigration on poorer workers because they are
"insulated" from competition for jobs, housing and public services, the
Communities Secretary said last night.
John Denham said that those at the top of
society benefited most from migration, enabling them to find plumbers and
cleaners to work in their homes. He said that for others, immigration
fuelled fears about job prospects and their chances of finding decent
housing. He said that these fears were heightened in areas of the country
that were already facing difficulties arising from economic decline,
deprivation and unemployment. In a speech
to Policy Network, a left-of-centre think-tank, Mr Denham said that while
the affluent felt "culturally enriched" by the benefits of migration,
working-class people found it harder to accept the advantages.
"Those of us who feel culturally enriched
by the benefits of migration and who are insulated from the competition for
jobs, housing and public services that is potentially posed by migrants,
often find these views [the perception that migrants jump the queue]
difficult to appreciate," Mr Denham said. His comments follow the
publication last week of official figures showing continuing high levels of
immigration into Britain. "The affluent often are able to see opportunities
within change and uncertainty; whereas those who are less insulated from
potential drawbacks may see the same change as a risk or a threat".
Mr Denham said that class still mattered
in Britain and this was particularly clear when people looked at who
benefited from immigration. "Crudely expressed, the higher you are in the
pecking order, the more likely you may be to benefit from immigration," he
said. People who worked in a high-tech, highly skilled multinational
organisation were likely to work with the most talented migrants. He added:
"If immigration makes it easier for you to find a plumber or cheaper for
you to hire a cleaner then you clearly and directly benefit. But for many
others you may see them as a direct threat to your own interests."
Mr Denham said that in some communities
migration intensified competition for scarce resources, including housing
and jobs. This was taking place against a backdrop of wider change
including the decline in unskilled jobs and the development of businesses
that people lacked the skills to access.
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Benefits and costs asylum, citizenship
Council pays refugee family's £83,000 rent Chris Irvine Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2009 |
A family of former asylum seekers
living in a £1.8 million home in central London is costing taxpayers
more than £83,000 a year. Nasra
Warsame, originally from Somalia, seven of her children and her mother
moved into the six-bedroom home last month, while her husband, Bashir Aden,
and an eighth child are living in an "overspill" property, also paid for by
housing benefits. The couple claimed
asylum in Britain after leaving Somalia in 1991.
They have been granted citizenship and
all their children, aged between two and 16, have been born here.
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Benefits and costs child benefits, European Union, public opinion
We pay benefits for 37,000 Polish children ... still living in Poland Rebecca Lefort Sunday Telegraph, 1 November 2009 |
British taxpayers are funding child
benefit payments for 37,900 children who live in Poland, Treasury figures
show. The money is going to support those
who have remained behind in their homeland while one or both of their
parents lives and works in this country. The cost is estimated at more than
£20 million a year. The number of
claims has risen by 20 per cent in the past year, despite a slowing in the
rate of immigration from eastern Europe. ...
The findings come as an ICM poll for
The Sunday Telegraph shows today that two thirds of voters believe
the number of immigrants in Britain is too high.
Poles make up the majority of the 50,600
children, from more than 30,000 families, living outside Britain who are
supported with child benefit payments from British taxpayers. ...
The Treasury has refused to put a figure
on the cost of supporting children abroad.
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Benefits and costs
Britain fails to make top 10 in 'well-being' survey Andrew Pierce Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2009 |
Britain has failed to make the
world's top 10 in an international survey of wealth and happiness because
of poor education and over-regulation.
The report by the Legatum Institute, a
think tank based in London, ranks Finland in first place, with the United
States ninth and Britain lagging behind in 12th. ...
Mediocre scores for education, health,
domestic security and levels of personal freedom because of excessive
regulation dragged down Britain's overall score, the institute said. ...
High levels of divorce, pressures caused
by immigration and a lack of community spirit have also marked down
Britain's score in the survey.
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Benefits and costs bankruptcy
Tunbridge Wells, the EU debt capital Harry Wallop Daily Telegraph, 23 September 2009 |
Royal Tunbridge Wells is becoming the
"debt capital of Europe" as insolvent Germans and Austrians move there to
take advantage of Britain's lenient bankruptcy laws, according to
accountants. ... As long as a person has
lived in Britain for six months, they can be declared bankrupt in a British
court, writing off their debts a year later. This compares to a wait of
seven or even nine years in Germany.
Because any EU national is allowed to
live in Britain, accountants said they were not surprised that Europeans
were taking advantage of legislation that allows them to wipe out debts
incurred in Italy, Austria or Germany in a British court. ...
Tunbridge Wells has proved particularly
attractive since a specialist company, run by a German, opened in Erith,
Kent. ...
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Benefits and costs extremism
Fighting terror, with ping pong Daily Telegraph, 8 September 2009 |
Taxpayers' money intended to tackle
extremism has been spent on table tennis tables, rap workshops and has even
been given to restaurants. A total of
£12 million has been distributed under the Government's Prevent
programme but there is insufficient monitoring of how it is being spent,
according to the TaxPayers' Alliance. A
breakdown of spending, obtained by the campaign group through Freedom of
Information requests, shows that more than £5,000 went to a rap
workshop and £25,000 to a theatre project.
Restaurants and food bars were also among
the recipients.
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Benefits and costs population, education
Immigrants baby boom costs £1bn Mark Reynolds Daily Express, 7 September 2009 |
Taxpayers face a £1 billion bill
to provide school places for children born in a looming immigrant baby
boom, a shocking new study reveals today.
The vast sum will be needed to create
more than 96,000 extra places at primary level around 67,000 to
educate children of parents born outside the UK.
It will also cost the British taxpayer at
least £200 million a year to run them, warns a cross-party group of
MPs. The knock-on costs to other public
services like housing are predicted to be "even greater".
Last night MPs Nicholas Soames and Frank
Field called on ministers to cut immigration now to stop the population
surging past the 70 million mark. In a
joint statement, the veteran parliamentarians who chair the Cross Party
Group on Balanced Migration, said: "This research illustrates how
uncontrolled immigration is directly affecting ordinary families."
The pair former Tory and Labour
ministers respectively said the Government "have clearly failed to
plan for the consequences of the mass immigration they have permitted".
The study found that 703,000
five-year-olds will be entering primary school in 2014, compared with
607,000 now. Of the 96,000 increase, more
than half will be born in families where neither parent was born in the UK.
Around a sixth 13,000 have one foreign-born parent. Less than
a third, 29,000, have both parents born here.
The findings come as it is revealed that
tens of thousands of British parents already struggle to get children into
their first choice of primary school. ...
Nicholas Soames and Frank Field added:
"The research is yet more evidence that the Government must take steps to
reduce immigration. "It must prevent our
population from reaching 70 million within the next 25 years, as official
forecasts now predict, if public services and the public purse are to be
protected. "Today's research highlights
primary school places but the same applies to health, housing and other
services."
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Benefits and costs translation, police
Police forces spending £70,000 every day on translation for migrants Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 7 September 2009 |
Police forces are spending up to
£70,000 a day on translation to deal with migrants caught up in crime.
At least £25 million was spent by
forces across England and Wales last year to deal with foreign criminals or
help victims and witnesses who could not speak English.
The total, enough to put 500 extra
officers on the street for a year, has risen by almost three quarters since
2004 and is further evidence of the impact immigration has had on public
services. ... Figures obtained under
Freedom of Information by the Tories showed that in 2008-09 £12.6
million was spent on translation by 35 of the 43 forces that responded.
However, that did not include the Metropolitan Police, which spent
£12.5 million over the same period, according to figures released this
summer. Martin Tiplady, the Met's
director of human resources, predicted that the bill could rise to £20
million by 2012. ... In total at least
£25 million was spent on translation a 70 per cent increase on
the £14.6 million spent by police in 2004 although the true
figure was likely to be much higher considering a fifth of forces did not
reply.
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Benefits and costs
Thousands spent on lavatories for foreign prisoners Daily Telegraph, 27 August 2009 |
A prison has admitted spending
£17,000 on special lavatories for foreigners and footbaths for Muslims
to wash their feet before prayer. Figures
from the Ministry of Justice show that the money was spent on two
footbaths, a "squat" lavatory and a shower area at Canterbury Prison in
Kent, which holds foreign nationals awaiting deportation.
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Benefits and costs health services
Transplant rules are tightened Daily Telegraph, 31 July 2009 |
Foreign private patients will be
banned from receiving organ transplants from dead NHS donors after fears
were raised about immigrants jumping the queue for treatment.
It was found that 50 foreign patients had
received organs donated by Britons over two years.
The hospitals were not breaking the law.
However, an inquiry concluded there was a risk that the public would
believe foreign nationals had been able to jump the queue.
The inquiry ruled that they could
establish a right to be treated by the NHS on an equal basis.
The rules would also apply to British
private patients.
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Benefits and costs housing
Labour backs down on promise to stop migrants jumping house queue Daily Mail, 31 July 2009 |
Councils will not, after all, be
given new powers to stop migrants 'queue jumping' local people for housing,
the government admitted yesterday. Last
month, Gordon Brown suggested that local families who had been on the
waiting list for a long time would be given priority over migrants.
But housing minister John Healey said the
Government was not planning to change the law to give British people
greater priority. Instead, town halls will be simply be issued with new
guidance about how they allocate homes.
The Prime Minister's suggestion had
prompted uproar from equal rights campaigners who warned that attempts to
give councils extra powers would breach human rights laws.
At present, local authorities have a duty
to award council housing on the basis of need.
Mr Healey insisted yesterday that,
although the guidance would not change this, it would give officials more
'leeway'. He said councils would be able
to consider other factors, such as how long people have been on waiting
lists and skill shortages in the area.
There will also be a crackdown on frauds
who get homes at the taxpayer's expense and then sub-let them to earn extra
cash. ... LibDem MP Sarah Teather said:
'The real problem is the queue, not the queue-jumping.'
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Benefits and costs crime, asylum
Foreign spongers scandal, by judge Chris Riches Daily Express, 29 July 2009 |
A judge yesterday launched a
blistering attack on Britain's "desperate" immigration policy and the
Government's failed welfare system. He
slammed policies that allow hundreds of thousands of foreigners to stream
into the country to sponge off benefits.
Judge Ian Trigger also savaged the delay
in kicking immigrants out of the UK once it had been ruled that they were
here illegally. And he condemned the
country's massive welfare system for lavishing billions on immigrants.
The outburst came as the judge sentenced
Jamaican Lucien McClearley, 31, for drugs offences at Liverpool Crown
Court. McClearley should have been booted out of Britain in 2004. "Your
case illustrates all too clearly the completely lax immigration policy that
exists and has existed over recent years in this country," said Judge
Trigger. "People like you, and there are
literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people like you, come to
these shores from foreign countries to avail themselves of the generous
welfare benefits that exist here. In the past 10 years the national debt of
this country has risen to extraordinary heights, largely because central
Government has wasted billions and billions of pounds.
"Much of that has been wasted on welfare
payments." This was creating an enormous
strain on resources which are already badly stretched, he said. ...
Last night, the judge was roundly
applauded for speaking out against the Government and its disastrous
immigration system. Tory immigration
spokesman Damian Green declared: "The judge is right."
Sir Andrew Green, founder of think-tank
Migrationwatch, commented: "He is expressing a sense of frustration which
is very widely felt among the public. And it is courageous of him to do so.
"The long-term failure of this
Government's immigration policy has effects in many areas of national life.
That is why we need a better controlled system, and a Border Police to make
our borders more secure." Sir Andrew
added: "I have lost count of the number of magistrates who have told me
privately of their concerns about the number of immigrants coming before
them and the difficulties in finding an appropriate penalty, if convicted,
when they have no money and our jails are full." ...
Judge Trigger made his scathing comments
yesterday after his court heard how McClearley, of Liverpool, had entered
the UK in 2001 on a visitor's visa. He was arrested in 2002 after
overstaying but appealed for asylum and was released while this was
pending, allowing him to "disappear from the radar of the authorities."
His application was finally rejected on
March 2004, but he was not arrested until last February in Liverpool when
police noticed his hired Vauxhall Vectra stunk of cannabis. They discovered
bags of cannabis and a further search of his house revealed more than
£7,200 worth of cannabis, a gram of cocaine and a fake passport.
Judge Trigger added: "The fact that it
took nearly two years to process your claim shows how desperate the
situation in this country has become."
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Benefits and costs asylum
Failed asylum seekers living in Britain receive 'resettlement grants' worth thousands Daily Mail, 28 July 2009 |
Failed asylum seekers living in
Britain can already benefit from generous 'resettlement' grants worth
thousands of pounds each. The value of
the support packages - described as 'bribes' by critics - can be as much as
£4,000. The deal includes money for
housing, childcare, school fees for any children and even help setting up a
business. Ministers insist it provides
good value as the total cost of forcibly removing a bogus refugee can be as
much as £11,000. But the programme
has cost the taxpayer well in excess of £30 million. In part, this is
down to the nature of the businesses opened by its beneficiaries.
A 35-year-old Iranian was given money to
open an ostrich farm, an Albanian was given cash to open a vineyard while a
Zimbabwean was paid hundreds of pounds to open a beauty salon.
The hope is that setting up migrants with
fledgling businesses will give the failed migrants a chance to settle and
prosper when they return to their homelands, rather than leaving them
rootless and ready to return to Britain.
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Benefits and costs housing
One in ten state-subsidised homes goes to an immigrant family Steve Doughty Daily Mail, 7 July 2009 |
Nearly 400,000 homes have gone to
tenants who were born abroad, the Government's equality watchdog has said.
One in ten state-subsidised homes is
occupied by an immigrant family, according to the first estimate of the
impact of immigration on social housing.
More than half of the immigrants who live
in council or housing association houses and flats are in London, the
report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission found.
It added that four out of ten people born
abroad who live in the capital are living in subsidised housing - a figure
that suggests a million people in immigrant families have found homes in
social housing in London. The report
blamed Home Office decisions to house asylum seekers in empty social
housing around the country for 'fuelling misconceptions that asylum seekers
are queue jumping and being allocated social housing ahead of white British
applicants.' It acknowledged that there
is tension over who gets social housing in London and other cities
including Birmingham. But despite
evidence of increasing anger over the allocation of housing in poorer and
traditionally Labour-voting areas, the report insisted that there is no
prejudice against the existing population in the decisions over who gets
increasingly scarce homes. It said the
tension that has led to a growing vote for the far right British National
Party in some parts of the country should be dealt with by fostering more
positive attitudes to immigration and enforcing equality laws.
The conclusions will undermine Gordon
Brown's latest plans to allow local authorities to give longstanding local
residents priority in the queue for homes.
The report was drawn up for the Equality
Commission by the Labour think tank Institute for Public Policy Research,
which has a long record of support for large-scale immigration.
The Commission's chief, Trevor Phillips,
is said to be likely to be forced out of his job this autumn.
Two years ago former minister Margaret
Hodge, MP for Barking in East London, began a Labour row when she
complained that migrant families were being given priority for homes over
those with a 'legitimate sense of entitlement'.
Shortly afterwards Whitehall published
the first estimate of numbers of foreigners in social housing, which
suggested that one in 12 people in subsidised homes are foreign citizens.
However the figures published by the
Equality Commission yesterday are based on the large-scale Labour Force
Survey run by the Government's Office for National Statistics.
They count people born abroad, the
measure accepted by statisticians as a better estimate of real numbers of
immigrants. The one in ten national
estimate for social homes occupied by immigrants obscures much higher
proportions of migrants in council and housing association property in some
areas. ... Some migrant groups, the
report said, were highly dependent on social housing because their families
had higher numbers of children and were more likely to be without work.
They included families from Afghanistan,
Somalia and Bangladesh. ... Only 11 per
cent of migrants over the last five years live in social housing, the
report said.
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Benefits and costs illegal immigrants
Migrant amnesty 'worth £3 billion' Daily Telegraph, 16 June 2009 |
An amnesty for illegal immigrants
would boost the British economy by £3 billion a year and raise tax
revenues by £842 million a report for Boris Johnson, the Mayor of
London, has concluded. The study
estimates there are 618,000 illegal immigrants in Britain of which 442,000
are based in London. But the report also
accepts there would be annual costs of up to £1 billion a year from
the extra demands on public services and benefits.
Mr Johnson ordered the study, carried out
by the London School of Economics, last year after backing calls for an
amnesty.
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism, translation
Town halls' unread translations Ben Leach Sunday Telegraph, 14 June 2009 |
It is a well-intentioned initiative
which is meant to offer immigrants a helping hand.
Town halls and Whitehall spend millions
of pounds a year on translation for the benefit of people who cannot speak
English. Yet now an investigation has found that many of the
expensively-produced foreign-language leaflets have never been read.
Documents which have failed to attract a
single reader include a pamphlet for gipsies translated into Polish, and a
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender directory which was translated into
French. No one read the Haringey Women's Directory when it was translated
into Albanian, Bengali, Kurdish, Somali or Urdu. ...
Freedom of Information requests were made
to all councils, hospital trusts, police forces and government departments
in the UK. Some 80 per cent responded and admitted spending £50.2
million on translations and interpreting in 2008-09, an increase of nine
per cent on the figure of £46 million in 2006-07.
Yet the growth in spending on translation
comes despite a call in 2007 by Hazel Blears, then the communities
secretary, for councils to think twice before translating documents. She
argued that the integration of established immigrant communities was better
achieved by encouraging them to learn English, rather than providing
paperwork in their native tongues. Of the
218 local authorities that provided figures, 126 said they had increased
spending on translation in the past two years.
Only a handful of councils were able to
say how many times translated documents had been read online. Haringey
admitted that of 77 translated documents it published online, 26 were never
viewed. Most were only viewed once or twice. ...
The public bodies which spent the most on
translations last year were the Metropolitan Police (£10.6 million)
and the Department for Work and Pensions (£4 million).
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Benefits and costs
Immigrants send home £4bn a year Daily Telegraph, 1 June 2009 |
Immigrants working in Britain send
the equivalent of £11 million a day back home, research by a think
tank shows. A total of £4 billion a
year now flows out of the country after figures almost doubled in a decade,
according to Migrationwatch. The figure is likely to be an underestimate
because it does not include money sent from Britain by unofficial channels.
In contrast, just £2.3 billion a year flows into the country from
British expats. Sir Andrew Green, of the think tank, said the pattern meant
claims that migrants are of economic benefit to the UK were "illusory".
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism
Taxpayer foots bill for non-English speakers to apply for UK passport Daily Telegraph, 1 June 2009 |
The passport office spent
£260,000 of taxpayers' money last year providing interpreters to help
non-English speaking immigrants gain a British passport.
The Identity and Passport Service's
growing translation bill makes a mockery of the Government's pledge that
migrants who wish to settle in Britain must be able to demonstrate a
command of the language. Applicants for a
passport will have already passed a citizenship test and should be able to
answer basic questions in English. But translators still are needed for
those attending the new face-to-face interviews, which are designed to
question applicants and stop identity fraud or bogus claims.
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Benefits and costs
Each illegal immigrant to cost us £1 million Alison Little Daily Express, 4 May 2009 |
An amnesty allowing illegal
immigrants to stay in the UK would cost a staggering £1 million for
each newcomer. For the first time, the
"huge, unnecessary burden" of letting up to 950,000 foreign nationals
remain is revealed today by campaign group Migrationwatch.
They say the move would be a "shocking
waste of public money" when the nation is in the depths of recession.
The pressure group also say a similar
cost, based on people having children and earning low wages, could apply to
many people who have already been granted asylum.
And they warn that such an amnesty would
only tempt more illegal immigrants into Britain as has happened in
Italy and Spain where migrants have been allowed to stay.
A coalition of churches, unions and
others are holding church services and a mass rally today in support of an
"earned amnesty" for an estimated 450,000 long-term illegal immigrants if
they meet certain conditions. The
Institute for Public Policy Research, Labour's favourite think-tank,
claimed the move could bring in more than £1 billion of tax a year.
And Conservative London Mayor Boris
Johnson has argued for an amnesty for long-term illegal immigrants of good
character who can support themselves so that they contribute to tax
revenues. A study for Mr Johnson by the London School of Economics has
estimated that there were between 524,000 and 947,000 "irregular residents"
and their children in Britain at the end of 2007, with a "central estimate"
of 725,000. But Migrationwatch today
publishes what it says is the first estimate of the "lifetime cost" to
taxpayers of letting people stay in the UK.
It is based on a 25-year-old, married
with two children, who earned the minimum wage and lived in private rented
housing, retired at 65 and lived until 80.
Setting the tax and National Insurance
paid against their demands on the public purse, including housing and
council tax benefit and pension credit, brings their lifetime cost to
taxpayers to some £900,000, with a bill of £1.1 million in
London. Migrationwatch chairman Sir
Andrew Green said last night: "The numbers are truly enormous, adding an
unacceptable, and entirely unnecessary, burden to the nation's balance
sheet at a time when Boris Johnson himself is writing about 'the horrific
state of the nation's finances'." Sir
Andrew acknowledged that some immigrants would earn over the minimum wage
and thus take lower welfare payments, but some may have more than two
children and so get higher benefit. "Or
they may be unemployed. Immigrants are, on average, more likely to be
economically inactive than the UK as a whole," he added.
The report says the cost of granting
settlement to an asylum seeker who did not achieve higher earnings,
although many would do so, would be similar.
The campaign group says this makes Home
Office failure to appear at up to a third of asylum appeals
"reprehensible". Sir Andrew added: "It is also a shocking waste of public
money at a time when we can least afford it."
In Italy an amnesty in 1988 let 119,000
foreigners settle, but when the exercise was repeated in 2002 the figure
soared to 700,000. In Spain the figure rose from 44,000 in 1985 to 700,000
in 2005.
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Benefits and costs USA
Schwarzenegger: Immigrants not cause of budget woe Michael R. Blood Associated Press, 15 April 2009 |
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said
Wednesday that health care and other services for illegal immigrants cost
California taxpayers as much as $6 billion a year, but that's not the
reason for the state's financial mess. ...
At an appearance at the Los Angeles
Times, the Republican governor estimated that education and other services
for illegal immigrants could carry a $4 billion to $6 billion price tag
each year. But to place blame there for
the ongoing budget mess or any other single factor "would be
the wrong thing," he said.
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Benefits and costs
Arrival tax of £50 for all non-EU migrants Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 19 March 2009 |
A new "tax" for all non-European
Union migrants arriving to work or study in Britain will be announced today
by Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary.
The fee, thought to be about £50 per
arrival, is to cover the extra burden on public services, and is expected
to raise £35 million a year. The
"migrant tax" will be levied on the hundreds of thousands of migrants who
apply for work or study visas each year, from Australian bar staff to
Rhodes scholars and Premier League footballers.
The funds are earmarked for councils
struggling to cope with the impact of mass immigration on services such as
GPs' surgeries and schools. But critics
have said that the money generated will be a "drop in the ocean", based on
figures that show taxpayers provide £500 million a year for
immigration-related costs. Sir Andrew
Green, chairman of the pressure group MigrationWatch UK, said: "A rough
estimate shows that, for every £1 the Government spends on schemes
specifically to help migrants, its new tax will only raise about 7p.
"And that spending does not allow for the
fact that one new home will have to be built every six minutes for new
immigrants, nor the additional costs to the NHS and education services, nor
the countless other costs to local services that large-scale immigration
brings."
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Benefits and costs politics
Non-EU immigrants to pay £50 tax Rosa Prince Daily Telegraph, 16 March 2009 |
Foreign workers and students from
outside the European Union will have to pay £50 when they arrive in
Britain to help ease their impact on public services.
The new "migrant tax", to be announced
this week, will be levied on the thousands of immigrants from non-EU states
applying for work or study visas, from Australian bar staff to Rhodes
scholars and Premiership footballers. It
is expected to raise £70 million over the next few years, with the
funds earmarked for councils struggling to cope with the impact of mass
immigration on services such as doctors' surgeries and schools. Ministers
hope that acknowledging the strain caused by immigration in some areas will
stop voters being tempted by the British National Party at the European
elections in May.
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Benefits and costs education
EU students fail to repay study loans Graeme Paton Daily Telegraph, 27 February 2009 |
Almost three quarters of EU students
graduating from British universities fail to pay back their loans, leaving
taxpayers with a multi-million-pound bill.
Figures showed that 1,580 of the 2,240
students from outside Britain who should have started repaying had failed
to do so. The Conservatives said the
system used to track them down was "shockingly ineffective". The Student
Loans Company relies on students to give correct information about their
earnings and make their own arrangements to pay.
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Benefits and costs healthcare
700 organs given to foreigners despite long waiting list Patrick Sawer Sunday Telegraph, 25 January 2009 |
The organs of nearly 700 British
donors have been given to foreign patients in a controversial practice
going back more than 10 years. It has led
to patients from as far afield as China flying in for operations at NHS
hospitals. The procedures have taken
place despite a severe shortage of organs for transplant in Britain. Nearly
8,000 people are currently on NHS waiting lists for a transplant.
Patient groups and politicians condemned
the practice of making organs available to foreigners while so many British
patients remained on waiting lists. ...
The figures, obtained ... through a
parliamentary question, show that about 70 British organs were transplanted
into foreign nationals every year between 1998 and 2008. At the same time,
only 140 foreign organs were brought into Britain to be transplanted into
British patients. Among the foreigners
given British organs in the past two years were 40 from Greece and Cyprus,
as well as a number from Libya, the United Arab Emirates, China and Israel.
Most of the operations took place at
Leeds Teaching Hospital, King's College Hospital and the Royal Free
Hospital, both in London. The Healthcare
Commission investigated the matter last year after being alerted to the
number of operations being carried out at King's College Hospital but found
that no rules were being broken. However,
the British Transplantation Society criticised the practice.
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Benefits and costs
Outrage over organs 'sold to foreigners' Sarah-Kate Templeton The Sunday Times, 4 January 2009 |
The organs of 50 British National
Health Service donors have been given to foreign patients who have paid
about £75,000 each for private transplant operations in the past two
years, freedom of information documents show.
The liver transplants took place at NHS
hospitals, despite severe shortages that mean many British patients die
while waiting for an organ that could save their lives.
The documents disclose that 40 patients
from Greece and Cyprus received liver transplants in the UK paid for by
their governments. Donated livers were also given to people from
non-European Union countries including Libya, the United Arab Emirates,
China and Israel. The surgeons who carry
out the transplants receive a share of the operation fee believed to
be about £20,000 as all the work is done privately in NHS
hospitals. It comes as a record 8,000
Britons are on NHS lists waiting for transplant organs. About 260 British
patients are waiting for a liver. Last
week leading transplant surgeons and patient groups called for an end to
the practice. Professor Peter Friend, president of the British
Transplantation Society, said it was unethical to give organs to people
from abroad while British patients were dying.
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Benefits and costs health service
Costly NHS interpreters Dr Charles Gauci Daily Telegraph, 29 December 2008 [Letter to the Editor] |
As a consultant in the NHS, my staff
and I are faced, virtually on a daily basis, with patients who cannot speak
English and for whom an interpreter has to be hired, at considerable
expense to the NHS. Interpreters are
provided for every conceivable language (except, apparently, for my own
native tongue, Maltese). No other country
in the world provides such a service. Surely, if someone has been living
here for five years and cannot speak English, they should be expected to
pay for an interpreter themselves?
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Benefits and costs
Cost in translation Daily Telegraph, 19 December 2008 |
The cost of providing translators for
benefits claimants has risen by more than 40 per cent in four years, the
Conservatives have disclosed. In 2004, the bill for translation at the
Department for Work and Pensions stood at £2.5 million. By this year,
it had risen to nearly £4 million.
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Benefits and costs health services
Thousands of Polish women come to Britain for abortions Daily Telegraph, 16 December 2008 |
Ten thousand Polish women had
abortions in Britain last year, it was reported. The procedures, illegal in
Poland, were thought to have cost the NHS between £5 million and
£10 million. People coming to
Britain as temporary workers are given a National Insurance number and can
then register with a doctor and have NHS treatment. Britain is thought to
be popular because abortions can be carried out up to 24 weeks into a
pregnancy. The figures were disclosed by
the Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning.
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Benefits and costs
Polish pay-outs Sunday Telegraph, 14 December 2008 |
British taxpayers are paying £35
million a year in child benefit to support 42,759 children living in
Eastern Europe, the majority in Poland, Government figures show.
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Benefits and costs
Benefits of migrant labour 'overstated' Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 15 November 2008 |
The benefits of mass immigration have
been "wildly overstated" and there should be a cap on the numbers coming
into the country, a group of peers has said.
The warning was given during a debate
over a scathing report on the Government's open door policy by the Lords
economic affairs committee. The committee, which includes two former
chancellors Lord Lawson and Lord Lamont and several former
cabinet ministers, said that the Government must set an "explicit target
range" for immigration and make rules to keep within that limit.
Lord Wakeham, who chaired the committee,
rejected as "fundamentally flawed" the claim that immigration is necessary
to prevent labour shortages.
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Benefits and costs housing
Moving up. Family on benefits lives in £800,000 home at taxpayers' expense Stephen Adams Daily Telegraph, 11 November 2008 |
A mother of five children who lives
on benefits is being housed in a home worth up to £800,000 at
taxpayers' expense. Nigerian-born
Omowunmi Odia moved into the mock-Tudor executive home in Edgware, north
London, after she was forced out of her previous property by court order.
The property reportedly costs £25,000 a year to rent.
Mrs Odia said that Barnet council had
tried to house her in Enfield but she had stuck out for the home in
Edgware, because it was closer to her children's school.
Mrs Odia said that she and her children
much preferred their new home, which has two sitting rooms and a double
garage, as their old two-bedroom flat was too small.
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Benefits and costs unemployment benefits
Returning Poles claim British dole Daily Telegraph, 5 November 2008 |
Returning Polish workers are
continuing to claim hundreds of pounds in benefits from British taxpayers.
Job centre staff in Poland say increasing
numbers of peopleare coming back to their home country after losing work in
Britain and Ireland. They are advising
them that rather than signing on for Polish benefit, which pays just
£120 a month, they should use a European Union loophole to continue
claiming Jobseeker's Allowance from Britain at a rate of about £260 a
month for up to three months.
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Benefits and costs police, NHS
Translators for foreign criminals cost £22m Andrew Porter Daily Telegraph, 30 October 2008 |
Police forces are having to spend
more than £22 million a year on hiring interpreters for foreign
criminals, new figures show. The overall
cost has risen by two thirds in the past five years, but for some
individual forces the amount paid to translators has increased by 400 per
cent. ... In total the costs have risen
from £13,580,599 in 2004 to £22,178,040 this year a rise
of 63 per cent. ... Of the 51 forces in
Britain, 43 responded to the Freedom of Information request ...
Meanwhile, it emerged that the NHS is
spending millions on interpreters for patients who cannot speak English.
At least 200 trusts spent £25
million on interpreters last year, figures released under Freedom of
Information laws show. If this is representative of the 557 trusts in
England and Wales, the total translation bill would be well in excess of
£50 million.
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Benefits and costs
Staff sacked over £170,000 benefits Daily Telegraph, 10 October 2008 |
Three council officials have been
sacked after an Afghan woman was given £170,000 a year in benefits to
live in a £1.2 million home. Ealing
council in west London was paying Toorpakai Saiedi, a mother of seven, a
monthly housing allowance of £12,458, nearly five times the rent for a
similar property nearby. She also received £400 a week in benefits.
The sacked housing officers claim they
have been made scapegoats by the council.
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Benefits and costs
The £1.2m council house tenants Urmee Khan Daily Telegraph, 9 October 2008 [See also "Staff sacked over £170,000 benefits" (10 October)] |
A mother is receiving £170,000 a
year in benefits so that she and her family can live in a seven-bedroom
house worth £1.2 million. Toorpakai
Saindi, who has four sons and three daughters aged eight to 22, has been
granted an estimated £400 a week in benefits. Her landlord is paid
£12,458 a month because there is no other property suitable for her
family. Mr Saindi, who came to Britain
from Afghanistan seven years ago, approached Ealing council in west London
in July after being made homeless. The authority has a legal obligation to
find her a seven-bedroom house. ... The
council says the benefit and rent payouts are set by central government.
... The Local Housing Allowance (LHA),
introduced in England on April 7, enables landlords to find out the maximum
rent available for a property before a price is agreed.
Foxtons, the estate agents, said similar
houses are let for about £6,000 a month.
The landlord, Ajit Panesar, who is acting
within his rights, fixed a value for his Acton property so that the Rent
Service an executive agency of the Department for Work and Pensions
could advise the council what it should pay. It came up with
£12,458 a month.
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Benefits and costs
Overseas lorry eight times more likely to be in a crash David Millward Daily Telegraph, 22 September 2008 |
Foreign lorry drivers are eight times
more likely to be involved in a serious or fatal accident than their
British counterparts, figures show. ...
With foreign lorries accounting for one
per cent of the total in the country, the proportion of accidents in which
they are involved is far greater.
Campaigners say foreign lorries are not
maintained to the same safety levels as British ones.
More than one in five trucks operated by
overseas hauliers have been found to be unroadworthy.
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Benefits and costs housing
Government funded website telling immigrants how to get free housing Martin Beckford Daily Telegraph, 9 September 2008 |
The Housing Rights site offers advice
to new arrivals in Britain on what welfare assistance they qualify for and
how to claim it. It also tells them how
to take legal action if they think they have been denied a home on the
grounds of their race. ... It is part of
a three-year project called Opening Doors run by the Chartered Institute of
Housing and the Housing Associations' Charitable Trust, which has been
given £120,000 by the Department for Communities and Local Government
to help migrants settle in Britain. ...
Mark Wallace, campaign director for the
TaxPayers' Alliance pressure group, said: "This sends out a deplorable
message to migrants about Britain as a whole, and also about what we would
hope they would contribute to the country.
"We should be welcoming people with
assistance on how to get a job swiftly and join the hard-working majority
of people, not on the quickest and easiest way to tap into benefits."
He added: "I'm not aware of a special
website for people who have paid taxes here their whole lives."
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Benefits and costs
Immigration is 'big boost for economy' Daily Telegraph, 26 August 2008 |
The economic benefits of immigration
have been underestimated by the Government, according to an influential
think-tank. Immigrant workers fill gaps
and do jobs British workers do not want, says a report by the Institute for
Public Policy Research (IPPR). But it found that employers and local
economies were not reaping the full benefits because many migrants were
staying for short periods instead of settling in Britain.
The IPPR said local economies benefited
because might have different skills that could lead to the establishment of
new types of businesses and they tended to be more entrepreneurial.
Immigrants could also expand the market
for local businesses by establishing links to their countries of origin.
IPPR analysis of statistics showed that
more than a million immigrants came to Britain from the eight countries
that joined the EU in May 2004 but about half of those had now returned
home. The report recommends that local councils and the Government ensure
they are doing enough to attract and retain immigrants.
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism, housing, education
Britons who feel they are losing out to immigrants Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 21 July 2008 |
Immigrants raise fears of limited
prospects among the British Many Britons
fear their prospects are being limited because of the pressure put on
housing and schools by immigrants arriving in the UK, a new report warns.
The claims come as it emerged that
£1 billion is being spent on putting up foreigners in council houses
despite two million people waiting for a home.
The report, titled Immigration and Social
Cohesion in the UK, uncovered a stark divide in how parts of the UK adapt
to new migrants. While many people value
their children growing up with cultural diversity, some feel their
opportunities are reduced because of immigration.
There was particular concern around the
competition for social housing, soaring house prices and school places.
Report author Mary Hickman, a Professor
at London Metropolitan University, said: "We found that although many
British people value the UK for being multi-ethnic and multicultural,
poverty and lack of opportunities undermine social cohesion especially in
certain parts of our towns and cities. "A
key factor influencing whether new migrants are accepted is the dominant
story in each locality about who belongs there."
The report also suggested that Gordon
Brown should spend focus on tackling poverty rather than a "fixed notion"
of Britishness to improve social cohesion.
Since taking over as Prime Minister last
July, Mr Brown has consistently emphasised the importance of Britishness to
bind the nation together. However the
Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggested that his time might be better spent
dealing with "deprivation and how people connect".
The competition for a limited supply of
council housing has been one of the areas of key concern in the debate
about immigration. Since Labour came to
power in 1997 the number of people on the waiting list for a council house
has soared by 650,000 to 1.67 million households.
Figures obtained by the Conservative MP
James Clappison show that nearly £1 billion is being spent on putting
up foreigners in council houses despite nearly two million households
waiting for a new home. Parliamentary
answers show that 7,000 council houses were rented to foreigners from both
inside and outside the European Union in 2006/7.
Given that it costs £134,000 to
provide a council house, this means that £938 million including
£430 million of grants is spent on providing social housing for
foreigners. Mr Clappison, a member of the
Commons home affairs select committee, said: "This is one more example of
the pressure placed upon housing and services by the present very high
level of immigration permitted by the Government.
"The Government is completely failing to
take into account the consequences of its policies".
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism, housing
Immigration: 'Britishness' will not help integration, say researchers Sara Gaines The Guardian, 21 July 2008 |
Tackling deprivation and boosting
social interaction would do more to reduce hostility to immigrants than
trying to create a sense of Britishness, a report said today.
Concerns over limited housing and school
places in some parts of the UK are undermining attempts to ensure new
migrants are well received, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
It found a stark divide between places
well equipped to adapt to new migrants and those that are not.
In areas people perceived as homogeneous
and settled, there were more fears about the effects of immigration.
Tensions were far lower in areas where there was a long history of
immigration. "There is no simple
relationship between high levels of diversity and poor cohesion,"
researchers concluded. "What many people
welcome is the opportunity to meet people in their area at social
occasions, or at cultural events and festivals, and to exercise the choice
of, selectively, getting to know people better."
The research, Immigration and Social
Cohesion in the UK, found many people welcomed cultural diversity, but
tensions arose where people felt their prospects were reduced because of
immigration. "Although many British
people value the UK for being multi-ethnic and multicultural, poverty and
lack of opportunities undermine social cohesion especially in certain parts
of our towns and cities," said the lead researcher, professor Mary Hickman.
Residents across England, Scotland and
Northern Ireland were interviewed for the study between 2005 and 2007.
It found diverse feelings on Britishness,
with minority ethnic long-term residents and new arrivals the most positive
about Britain.
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Benefits and costs unpaid fines
Foreign drivers speed off without paying £10m fines Ben Leach Sunday Telegraph, 29 June 2008 |
Foreign drivers get away with not
paying 180,000 speeding and parking fines every year because British
authorities cannot trace them. The
Sunday Telegraph used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain speeding
ticket figures from 15 police forces. They showed that foreign drivers in
those areas fail to pay 27,000 speeding fines annually pointing to a
nationwide total of about 80,000 unpaid speeding fines a year.
The motorists can escape justice over the
fines, which total more than £10 million, because police, councils and
speed camera authorities are not able to obtain their details. Statistics
released by 36 local authorities also show that foreign drivers got away
without paying 54,000 parking fines a year, pointing to a nationwide total
of 105,000 unpaid fines. ... There are
140,000 foreign-registered vehicles on Britain's roads at any one time and
three million enter the country each year.
The largest group are Polish-registered
vehicles, which account for 36 per cent of those in Britain, followed by
French vehicles at 10 per cent and German vehicles at 9 per cent.
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Benefits and costs births, health services
Shortage of nurses and cots a threat to babies, claim MPs Rebecca Smith Daily Telegraph, 17 June 2008 |
The lives of newborn babies are being
put at risk by understaffed and overstretched neo-natal units, a report by
a group of MPs has disclosed. ... Infant
mortality figures are nearly three times as high in the Midlands as in
parts of the South. The Department of Health admits that the target to
close the gap by 10 per cent by 2010 is unlikely to be met, the report from
the Public Accounts Committee says. A third of units are overcrowded and on
average each unit has three vacancies for qualified nurses.
Edward Leigh, MP, chairman of the public
accounts committee, said: "Constraints in capacity mean that the Department
of Health is still struggling to meet the demand for neo-natal services
which has risen year on year. ..." ...
The PAC report says obesity among
mothers, older women having babies, deprivation, increasing use of
fertility treatment and rising numbers of babies born to ethnic minority
mothers is putting pressure on services.
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Benefits and costs
£33m child benefit paid to foreign children who live abroad Glen Owen Daily Mail, 1 June 2008 |
British child benefit paid to foreign
children living abroad has rocketed by an astonishing 72 per cent in just
nine months, to £33million a year.
Most of the money is going on 36,000
children still in Poland whose parents are cashing in on European rules
that let them claim benefits in the UK after working and paying taxes here
for a year. Ministers were plunged into a
new immigration row last night by the figures, only shortly after proposed
tax rises for low-income British families sparked intense controversy.
The huge bill for British taxpayers began
with the EU's enlargement in 2004, leading to 800,000 workers from the new
member countries moving to the UK. But it
has escalated dramatically as word has spread among Polish communities in
Britain, coupled with Polish-language newspapers publishing guides on how
to claim the benefit. The new figures,
released to Conservative Treasury spokesman Philip Hammond, reveal that in
the nine months to March this year the number of workers from EU accession
states claiming child benefit rose from 14,000 to 24,000.
For Poland, the rise in six months was 43
per cent. Even larger amounts are paid
out to East European workers in child tax credits, but the Government has
refused to put a figure on that liability.
The UK benefit is so attractive because
it is £977 a year for the first child and £652 for young siblings
as opposed to £160 for each child in Poland.
But the reciprocal agreement under
European law means Britons working in that country get only the £160
from the Warsaw government. Mr Hammond
said: "At a time when child poverty is rising, child-benefit money is being
siphoned off to children who don't even live here.
"The Government has no way of checking if
these claims are genuine. ..." ... Sir
Andrew Green, chairman of pressure group MigrationWatch, said: "It is
ridiculous that we pay child benefit at British rates to be claimed in
countries where the cost of living is one quarter of ours.
"Having failed to foresee this, the
Government should now renegotiate the requirement so that this benefit is
tied to the cost of living."
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Benefits and costs
James Kirkup Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2008 |
More than 100,000 of the eastern
Europeans who have come to Britain in recent years are claiming benefits,
official figures showed yesterday. Some
102,029 are receiving child benefit and an estimated 58,000 are receiving
tax credits, Home Office data disclosed.
The figures also showed that the number
of eastern Europeans who have applied to work in Britain since their
countries joined the EU in 2004 has reached 845,000.
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Benefits and costs business
UK 'reaping benefit' of immigration The Press Association, 7 May 2008 |
Eastern European immigrants to the UK
have a higher employment rate than British citizens, a report reveals.
An average 84% of workers from eight
countries that joined the EU in 2004 have jobs - 9% higher than the UK-born
average, according to Business for New Europe (BNE).
Its report suggests the impact of the
EU's biggest-ever expansion four years ago has benefited the UK and Eastern
Europe equally. Since 2004 just over one
million migrant workers have come to Britain from Poland, Hungary, the
Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia.
But nearly half have already emigrated
again, leaving an estimated 665,000 people from the eight nations currently
living in the UK. The BNE report contains
articles from 22 business leaders in companies including ArcelorMittal,
Tesco, Sainsbury, BT Group and Microsoft.
They collectively hail EU expansion as a
good thing. Roland Rudd, BNE chairman, said: "This expansion has
transformed the accession countries, galvanised the European Union and also
presented fresh opportunities for existing member states.
"Britain, and businesses here, are
reaping the benefits of an enlarged EU which has created a single market of
500 million consumers." The report said
very few of the Eastern European migrants claimed state benefits - only
2.4% of those registering for NI numbers since 2004 did so to claim
benefits. And, on average, immigrant
workers put in 46 hours a week - four hours longer each week than UK-born
workers.
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Benefits and costs healthcare
Health tourist checks 'not done' Phil Kemp BBC, 3 May 2008 |
About a third of hospitals in England
and Wales are ignoring government advice to charge foreign visitors for NHS
treatment. ... But a third of overseas
visitor managers polled by their association admitted patients were not
routinely asked about their entitlement. ...
Tunde, not his real name, lives in Lagos
in Nigeria and has been suffering with heart trouble for the past three
years. But, instead of paying for
treatment at home, he travels to the UK for free care on the NHS.
"I have an NHS card. I registered it
through the GP. I book an appointment with a GP and I am referred to the
hospital," he said. Tunde has been making
the trip as a health tourist twice a year for the last three years and says
that he will continue doing it until he is better. ...
For most non-EU nationals, treatment on
the NHS which is not urgently necessary is chargeable.
The government was so concerned about
reports of foreign nationals receiving free treatment when they should be
paying that it introduced tough new guidelines in 2004, designed to ensure
that all hospitals checked the status of patients being admitted.
But, four years on, the Donal MacIntyre
programme on Radio 5 Live has learned the rules are widely ignored.
Some overseas visitor managers in
hospitals told the BBC that they found the guidelines confusing and
described how some staff are uncomfortable checking patients' immigration
status. One told the programme: "Staff
are anxious of possible abuse not only by overseas visitors but also from
people who feel it is unjust to be asked."
A confidential report for the Department
of Health released under the Freedom of Information Act last year estimated
that £30m was lost in un-recovered debts from foreign visitors in
2004. ... The Department of Health is
currently reviewing access to primary and secondary care for all foreign
nationals and several hospitals are running pilot schemes where patients
who are not eligible for free treatment have to pay at their bedside.
Andy Finlay is the income generation
manager at West Middlesex University Hospital, which is one of the
hospitals involved in the scheme. He
explained that one particularly blatant example of a health tourist
prompted their involvement. "He said 'you
have to treat me until I'm well and I'm not paying and there's nothing you
can do about it'. "He came with a
pre-existing heart condition and he knew it's free at the point of delivery
in the UK. He abused us - he was a 100% bona fide health tourist."
Since introducing their new policy, 20%
of all patients admitted to A&E self-discharge before they are asked to pay
for treatment, whereas before no patients left of their own accord.
The hospital says they now recover 75% of
debt from foreign visitors paying all fees, a much higher proportion that
most other hospitals. Andy Finlay is
hoping that the Department of Health will extend his idea across all
hospitals.
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Benefits and costs healthcare
Health tourists must pay, says hospital Daily Telegraph, 1 May 2008 |
A hospital is refusing to provide
anything other than basic treatment for "health tourists" unless they pay
first. West Middlesex University
Hospital, which is near Heathrow airport, has started taking action
such as discharging heart attack patients after as little as 48 hours and
taking credit card details and hopes to save up to £500,000 a
year. Patients were discharged only after being signed off by three
consultants. Visitors from non-EU
countries are not eligible for free treatment and are estimated to cost the
NHS more than £50 million a year.
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Benefits and costs
Migrant benefits Daily Telegraph, 24 April 2008 |
The British economy has been boosted
by high levels of immigration over the past 10 years, a report has claimed.
The Work Foundation think-tank said
inflation and interest rates have been kept lower as a result of mass
migration. It also suggested that skills and labour shortages had been
avoided and the economy had been kept on a "stable growth path".
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Benefits and costs
The Media's Delusional take on Multiculturalism [1] Tim Murray Canada Free Press, 11 April 2008 |
According to the Edmonton Journal's
editorial of April 4/08, "Prosperity in Diversity", Canadians are just
loving the transformation of their cities.
...
You know the old song. There is a labour
shortage. Repeat that undocumented myth often enough and it becomes
conventional wisdom and no inventory is taken of our national needs. So
instead of training our own people we must reach out to the far corners of
the world to solve it. The people we reach out to, naturally, must be
people of colour, who will enrich us both culturally and economically
because, you guessed it, they will solve the labour shortage that is
alleged to exist. Much of it is the famous "they do work our own people
won't do" kind. That is, our own people won't do it unless they are paid
decent wages for it. Now, according to
the Edmonton Journal, anyone who doesn't want their city bulging with
people of colour is a bigot who belongs in the past. The rest of us are
"celebrating" the new Canada. Celebrating higher density living, traffic
jams, more pollution, more sprawl, loss of farmland, loss of wetlands, and
species loss. About 70% of species at risk exist at the boundaries of the
very cities that the Edmonton Journal is excited to report are bursting
with ethnic minority growth. Canadians are exchanging treasured biological
diversity for this vaunted "cultural diversity".
One conspicuous feature of cultural
diversity is ethnic gang warfare which, to borrow a phrase from the
Edmonton Journal, has made "the cities of this country vastly more
interesting." Multiculturalism has not only enriched our palates with its
fine range of ethnic restaurants, it has enriched our crime scene, forcing
our phlegmatic and unimaginative home- grown thugs to either shape up or
find a new line of work. I know I was enriched, until I fled, along with
tens of thousands of other WASPS to the hinterlands in search of respite
from the lawlessness that diversity had wrought. But now diversity is
following us. Last summer Asian gangs were reported to be hounding the
formerly sleepy retirement city of Kelowna, B.C.
The Edmonton Journal speaks of "changing
realities and changing attitudes." Interesting. A poll conducted by CTV and
the Globe and Mail between August 3-7 of 2005 found that 69% of Canadians
opposed multiculturalism and favoured assimilation, and 55% thought
immigration levels were too high. They were not asked if they wanted the
country's ethnic composition changed, but of course, they were the ordinary
people of Canada and journalists and parliamentarians know better anyway. A
democrat would turn the question around: Name a federal government that had
a mandate to change the ethnic profile of the nation? I think it is clear
the Edmonton Journal does not have its finger on the pulse of public
opinion anymore than the social engineers at the CBC. There has been no sea
change in attitudes toward "diversity" since August 2005.
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Benefits and costs
The Media's Delusional take on Multiculturalism [2] Tim Murray Canada Free Press, 11 April 2008 |
Why is there such subterranean
discontent with multiculturalism in Canada, and elsewhere? Of course there
is resentment with the concept of our own government requiring us to
accommodate to the customs and sensibilities of newcomers rather than the
reverse. But the perception of there being rampant, disproportionate ethnic
crime is a common denominator of much antagonism to the multicultural
nature of immigrant populations in Europe, Australia and North America. In
the United States 27% of all inmates of federal prisons are illegal aliens
and their violent crime statistics are appalling. In the United Kingdom 60%
of London's muggings are committed by blacks and 31% of all street
robberies are committed by West Indians. Ethnic crimes don't happen in
Canada because the federal government won't collect ethnic crime
statistics. ... ... There is something
about diversity which is less tangible but more corrosive to society than
violence. That is its apparent role as an agency of fragmentation and the
loss of a sense of civic duty. Dr. Ernest Healy's study, in concert with
others by Harvard's Robert Putnam, Irenaus-Eibesfeldt and Pierre van den
Berghe would contest the notion of "unity in diversity". A senior research
fellow at the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash
University, Healy challenges the idea that ethnic diversity leads to a
stronger, more cohesive society. In fact, it can hasten a withdrawal from
collective life as manifested in Australia by lower rates of volunteerism
by even second-generation immigrant residents. "When you create societies
from mixed backgrounds it may lead to withdrawal from the civic sphere,"
Dr. Healy said, "a feeling of less connectedness." As one commentator
remarked, "Few cultures actually put the nation ahead of their own
families. The Civic Culture of Northern Europe and North/East Asia is the
exception, not the rule. If the people of the Civic Culture are replaced by
people without those values, the Civic Culture ceases to exist." ...
And what of the economic benefits of
multicultural immigration? How much prosperity is there in "diversity"? The
problem with boastful pro-immigration claims is that they never take
account of the enormous costs that migrants incur in social services, costs
borne by resident taxpayers. In early April 2008, for example the British
Peers economics affairs committee made a mockery of long-standing
government claims that foreign workers added 6 billion pounds each year to
the wealth of the nation. On the contrary, they concluded that the benefits
of immigration to the resident population were close to zero in the long
run. And the Lords report never even touched the horrendous environmental
impacts of Tony Blair's demographic onslaught upon water, food production,
greenspace, farmland, GHG emissions, pollution and quiet. Britons might
ask, what price diversity? In America the
price is $152 billion lost each year to American workers in job
displacement and wages to immigration, according to Harvard's Dr. George
Borjas. Each immigrant legal or illegal costs American taxpayers $9,000
annually, according to the Manhattan Institute while each unskilled
immigrant and his family costs the treasury $22,000 annually according to a
2007 study done by the Heritage Foundation. The Grubel study done for the
Fraser Institute reached similar conclusions for Canada. $18 billion more
was paid out in services to unskilled presumably third world immigrants
than was recovered in taxes from them - annually. So I hope you enjoyed
your goat curry, you paid through the nose for it.
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Benefits and costs housing, education, health care
Mass immigration raises house prices, say peers Robert Winnett Daily Telegraph, 1 April 2008 |
The unprecedented influx of
immigrants will make houses unaffordable for millions of British people, an
authoritative parliamentary report concludes today.
Immigration is already having a dramatic
impact on house prices but, according to the House of Lords economic
affairs committee, the cost of the average property will rise to more than
10 times the average wage as a result of the influx. ...
Research from the financial firm Goldman
Sachs calculates that a one per cent increase in the number of households
increases house prices by eight per cent in the short term. The increase
falls to six per cent as more houses are built. ...
The committee recommended: "Immigration
is one of many factors contributing to more demand for housing and higher
house prices. Housing matters alone should not dictate immigration policy
but they should be an important consideration when assessing the economic
impacts of immigration on the resident population in the UK."
800,000 pupils who are not
English There are almost 800,000
children in schools who do not speak English as a first language, a rise of
24 per cent in four years, says the report.
Schools are paying for translators and
specialist teaching materials, the committee was told. The rapid turnover
of pupils is regarded as disruptive, with some schools having to set up
specialist centres to deal with the new arrivals. There is also anecdotal
evidence that the NHS is under increased pressure, although the Government
has no information on the trend. One health official described the
situation in social care as a "data desert".
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Benefits and costs transport
Foreign lorries 'pose higher risk' Daily Telegraph, 31 March 2008 |
Foreign lorry drivers are breaking
British safety laws and risking lives, with accident figures rocketing in
the past five years, a television programme warns.
Killer Lorries: Tonight to
be shown on ITV1 this evening says that foreign trucks are three
times more likely to be involved in accidents. In 2006 44 people were
killed and 1,322 injured in collisions with foreign heavy goods vehicles.
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Benefits and costs
Migration has brought 'zero' economic benefit Philip Johnston and Robert Winnett Daily Telegraph, 29 March 2008 |
Ten years of record immigration to
Britain has produced virtually no economic benefits for the country, a
parliamentary inquiry has found. A House
of Lords committee, which is due to report next Tuesday, will call into
question Government claims that foreign workers add £6 billion each
year to the wealth of the nation. It is
expected to say this must be balanced against the increase in population
and their use of local services such as health and education, resulting in
little benefit per head of the population.
"Our overall conclusion is that the
economic benefits of net immigration to the resident population are small
and close to zero in the long run," the report will say.
Thy findings of the Lords economics
committee threaten to demolish the key argument made by ministers to
justify the highest levels of immigration in the country's history.
The inquiry by the committee, which
includes two former chancellors and several former Cabinet ministers, is
the first to try to balance the costs and benefits of large-scale
immigration.
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Benefits and costs employment
Skilled migrants 'will give £77bn boost to UK' Peter Taylor Daily Telegraph, 25 March 2008 |
The number of skilled migrant workers
in the UK will climb 14pc within four years to top 800,000, new research
has indicated. A report by recruitment
consultants Harvey Nash said skilled migrants will account for 2.8pc of the
British workforce by 2012, up from 2.5pc now, with the value of their
output climbing more than a third to almost £50bn.
Harvey Nash chief executive Albert Ellis
said that, in addition, the group supported 650,000 more jobs through
spending on goods and services. The total
contribution of skilled migrants to the UK economy will hit £77bn
annually within four years, the report said, with IT, telecommunications
and transport sectors benefiting most. The majority come from the European
Union, with London the principal destination.
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Benefits and costs
£28m in child benefit is paid to families living in Poland Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 8 March 2008 |
British taxpayers are paying £28
million in child benefit for youngsters living in eastern Europe, it was
disclosed last night. The figures, given
in a Commons written answer, show that by the end of last year about 34,000
children of migrant workers were getting British state handouts, even
though they do not live here. The vast
majority live in Poland and have parents who have come to Britain since
their country was allowed to join the European Union in April 2004.
More than half a million Poles have since
registered for jobs in the UK together with another 300,000 people from
seven other eastern European nations.
This does not include the self-employed
who have probably pushed the numbers of those who have come seeking
work above the one million mark. Once EU
nationals have been working and paying tax in Britain for 12 months, they
are entitled to the same level of state support as any British citizen.
This includes benefit for their children,
even if they are in another EU country.
They can claim benefit worth £941
per year for a first child or £629 per year for younger siblings.
In Poland, the benefits system pays a
maximum of around £160 per year in child benefit.
Philip Hammond, the Conservative treasury
spokesman, said: "There are 3.8 million British children living in poverty.
Yet we are sending £28 million of taxpayers' money abroad every year
because our benefits system is such a shambles."
He added: "When will Gordon Brown get a
grip on this situation? "We know that
billions of pounds are being lost to benefit fraud every year in Britain,
so how on earth is the Government going to check these payments to children
who aren't even here?" Jacqui Smith, the
Home Secretary, recently announced a Whitehall review to see if the EU
rules could be tightened up or reformed.
However, Whitehall officials believe it
would require a new deal among the 27 European Union countries to close the
loophole. HM Revenue and Customs says
claimants have to provide evidence to support claims for children abroad,
such as a birth certificate. It is
thought that even larger sums are being paid out to Eastern European
workers in child tax credits financial support that is provided
through the tax system for those with children or on lower incomes.
This could push the total payouts to more
than £50 million but ministers say these figures are "not available".
... Polish newspapers regularly run
features explaining exactly how to claim benefits in the UK.
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Benefits and costs employment, politics
An immigration policy bought and paid for? [part 1] Tim Murray, director of Immigration Watch Canada (We) Can Do Better [website], 24 February 2008 [Note: all dollar figures given are in US
dollars] |
The numbers are unequivocal. For a
decade polls have consistently recorded a wide discrepancy between the
attitude of ordinary Americans toward immigration and the attitude of those
who govern them. And the gap has been growing. In 2002 a poll conducted by
the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations found that 60% of the public
thought current immigration levels to be a "critical threat to the vital
interests of the United States," as compared to only 14% of the country's
leadership. This 46% gap compared to a 37% gap revealed by a 1998 poll. 70%
felt that reducing illegal immigration should be a "very important" foreign
policy goal compared to only 22% of the political elite.
Polling done by TM, inc. in October 2006
confirmed these results. While the U.S. Senate passed a bill (S2611)
supporting a large increase in legal immigration, 68% of voters thought the
number of immigrants, legal or illegal, was too high, 34 times the number
who said it was too "low". 71% said that low paying jobs could easily be
filled if employers paid American workers decent wages rather than import
low-skill labour. And 62% agreed with a statement that Canadian viewers of
CBC immigration sob stories have frequently observed, "The media coverage
of illegal immigrants is mostly devoted to human interest stories like how
illegals risk their lives (to get here), rather than the costs they create
and the Americans, particularly low-wage American workers, who may be
harmed by their being here." The polling
company Inc./Woman Trend in October of 2006 found 66% in agreement that the
population increase caused by the present level of immigration would
negatively impact the environment. A Zogbylcis poll of April 2006 revealed
that 67% of Americans wanted less immigration to promote the assimilation
of those who were already here. A poll conducted a month earlier by the
same company found that 60% wanted their congressional representative to
support more restrictive immigration policies. ...
The question that these poll results beg
is why? Why the cleavage between leaders and led? The anti-immigration
sentiment of America's middle and working class is easily accounted for.
According to Centre for Immigration Studies data, in the decade preceding
2003, immigration increased the supply of people without a high school
education by 21% and the supply of other workers by 4%. Rudimentary
economic theory suggests that the more poorly skilled workers there are,
the less money they'll make a fact confirmed by the National
Research Council in their findings that about half the drop in real wages
for high school drop-outs from 1980 to 1994 was due to immigration. A
report by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Centre found that Americans and
established immigrants suffer an 11% wage drop when they work alongside new
Hispanic immigrants. Harvard Professor Dr. George Borgias has accumulated
similar data and has made the shocking assertion that American workers lose
an incredible $152 billion per year in wages from immigration.
Immigration provides a ready-made source
of cheap labour, ... it weakens the bargaining power of American-born
workers and reduces the clout of their unions, if they still have them. ...
Writer Rich Lowry made the best assessment: "No wonder corporate America
loves our open borders: they serve as a kind of rolling reverse minimum
wage law." And no wonder the late African-American liberal Congressman
Barbara Jordan called for cutting back immigration in the 1990s. She was
defending her constituency of low-income black workers, the first casualty
of the corporate welfare program of high- level immigration, marketed by
the left as "multicultural enrichment". Cultural diversity is the fig leaf
of naked corporate exploitation.
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Benefits and costs employment, politics
An immigration policy bought and paid for? [part 2] Tim Murray (We) Can Do Better [website], 24 February 2008 |
So blue-collar attitudes to
immigration are easily explained, ordinary people are simply following
their class interests. And class interests can explain the open borders
position taken up by America's opinion leaders and decision makers too.
They are much more affluent and educated than the people they lead and
attempt to influence, and feel no threat from the illegal immigrants they
hire as nannies and gardeners or tip at fine restaurants. One thing is
central to the understanding of the immigration divide in the United
States, and that is to divest oneself of the almost universal and
persistent belief that somehow the Democrats are white knights who
represent the working class, the poor and the environment, while the
Republicans are the incarnation of power, privilege and plutocracy. To
assist you in this task you should be apprised of the following.
A TM Inc poll of 2006 disclosed that
those most apt to be satisfied with the current level of immigration which
is killing American working class living standards were 25-34 year old
liberal college graduates and professionals who identified with the
Democratic Party. The same poll found though that it was 35-44 year old
conservative Republicans who favoured large-scale round-ups of illegal
immigrants. That profiles the supporters of the pro and anti-immigration
positions, but the current party leadership positions could best be
ascertained by the fact that as of the end of January 2008, all Republican
contenders rejected the legalization of "undocumented" immigrants now in
the U. S., while the Democrats continue to support it.
The true alignment of the Democratic
Party with corporate interests can be vividly illustrated by a look at
campaign financing. McCain, Clinton and Obama are, to put it bluntly, Wall
Street candidates. The big banks, the financial firms, corporate law firms
and private equity firms pay the pipers. But, according the Centre for
Responsive Politics (CRP) (www.opensecrets.org), the Democrats are the
clear favourite. Hillary Clinton took in $106.1 million and Barack Obama
$102.1 million for all of 2007. McCain received substantially less at
$41,102,178. Hillary Clinton received $1.3 million from private equity
firms, while Obama received $1 million. McCain finished a distant fourth at
$395,000. Wall Street promotes the candidates who serve its interests and
the Democrats have delivered for them since their November 2006 victory.
Democratic leaders buried a proposal to
tax the massive incomes of hedge fund operators at normal tax rates,
allowing billionaires to claim most of their income as capital gains taxed
at a far lower rate. Clinton and Obama have also refused action on the
subprime meltdown that would have threatened big financial interests.
Corporate law firms gave Clinton over $11 million and Obama over $9
million. McCain only got just over two and a half million dollars, the most
for Republican candidates. As of February 22, 2008, bagmen have raised over
$138 million for Obama, over $134 million for Clinton, and over $53 million
for McCain. Most interesting is the
disposition of "Silicon" money. Between 1998 and 2006 almost $83 million in
political contributions in the form of individuals donations, PAC
contributions, and soft money were made by 40 technology companies.
Amounting on average to just $295,708 per company per year of lobbying, it
was money well spent. The concession Bill Gates wanted, the H-1B Visa
program that allows cheap technology workers into the country, reaped
profits a hundred times that investment. But Microsoft wanted to be more
certain the fix was in. Over that that seven year period they gave
$5,7888,286, with half of Congress on its payroll it would seem. AT+T
donated $3,504,773, Apple $3,620,823, and Vericon $4,237,884. ...
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Benefits and costs employment, politics
An immigration policy bought and paid for? [part 3] Tim Murray (We) Can Do Better [website], 24 February 2008 |
The most revealing fact to be gleaned
from presidential campaign donation statistics is one found when donation
records are subjected to sector analysis. If one studies 12 business or
professional sectors of American society from Agribusiness to Construction
to Health to Labour etc., there is one sector that is clearly salient
the "financial-real estate" sector. It has contributed over $73
million to various campaigns, $25 million more than any other sector.
Real estate interests (including mortgage
brokers, homebuilders and property developers) gave $4.8 million to
Clinton, $2.7 million to Obama and $1.9 million to McCain. The conventional
interpretation of their motive is that they want access to the winner when
an expected crackdown over predatory lending and a troubled housing finance
system reaches the top of the legislative agenda. But there is an
alternative, or at least supplementary explanation. One that has been
advanced by Australian population sociologist Sheila Newman. The land
tenure system that characterizes Anglo-American societies encourages
speculation, and much money is to be made simply by population growth.
Newman has written extensively to demonstrate that real estate developers
are key players in lobbying for mass immigration. US campaign donation
records seem to vindicate her hypothesis, as does the fact that a nation
like France is close to achieving population stability because the real
estate development industry cannot exist as an agent for growth, given that
land cannot consistently be reduced to a speculative commodity largely
because of the way tenure is arranged.
What then became of the candidates who
challenged the corporate open borders agenda? Their campaigns died from
lack of funds. Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado is a case in point.
Wall Street likes pro-immigration candidates for obvious reasons and so
they will reward those who sing their tune. Tancredo insisted on singing an
objectionable note, like a three year moratorium on immigration. So he paid
the price and collected just $6 million dollars or less than 6% of what
Clinton received by year's end and was forced to end his campaign. Clinton
at that time was Wall Street's anointed one, someone who, in the words of
Numbers USA, "consistently pressed for U. S. population growth, immigration
and foreign labour importation." But of course such an agenda of unabashed
greed needs always to be camouflaged with a politician's candy floss, the
spin is what they are purchased for. So Clinton obliged her corporate
donors by saying that "we should always be open to legal immigration-it
reforms, it makes us better." Well, it certainly makes a few of us richer
Hillary, doesn't it, like your donors and supporters, the most well-heeled
of either party! An examination of
Clinton's voting record should confirm that big business is getting what it
paid for. Clinton was co-sponsor of Bill S-2109 to help employees import
cheap high tech workers while the big law firms who give to her campaign
are counseling them how to use the legal system to avoid hiring qualified
U.S. workers. Her support of Senate bill 2109 helped expedite the
processing of the infamous H-1B visas that depress wages and displace
workers. She supported an amnesty of illegal agricultural workers (S bill
1340) and another one of a similar nature (S. bill 2137) that would have
brought an amnesty to another 860,000 workers not counting family.
Clinton's support of Kennedy's bill S 2381 would have meant amnesty to
almost all illegal aliens. Her numerous attempts to sponsor "shamnesty"
bills is reflective of a comment she made to a man who said that his wife
was an illegal immigrant. "No woman is illegal", Clinton replied.
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Benefits and costs employment, politics
An immigration policy bought and paid for? [part 4] Tim Murray (We) Can Do Better [website], 24 February 2008 |
If Hillary's record is atrocious, it
is doubtful if Obama's is any better. His positions seem almost
indistinguishable from Clinton's, the difference being more one of emphasis
than policy. He supports employer verification of employee identity to
deter the hiring of illegals, she doesn't. She favours lower legal
immigration intakes, he doesn't. Obama's main focus is the human rights and
economic needs of those knocking at America's door wanting to come
in and those already in, legally or illegally. On the Senate floor he
stated on May 23, 2007 that "Where we can re-unite families, we should.
Where we can bring in more foreign-born workers with skills our economy
needs, we should." This was an ominous declaration. Since the law was
changed in 1965 to create the so-called family re-unification system,
"chain migration" where an immigrant sponsors several others who in
turn sponsors several more has caused the numbers under this
category to spiral out of control. In 36 years the number of immediate
relatives admitted was over 13 times higher than it was when the law was
first enacted to almost one-half million per year.
An Obama policy statement maintains
support for "improvements in our visa programs, including the H-1B
programs, to attract some of the world's most talented people to America."
But H-1B visa holders are not paid as much as Americans, and even Microsoft
admits that salaries have not kept pace with inflation. That would do much
to explain a so-called labour shortage in the field. As for Obama's goal of
attracting the best and the brightest, the vast majority of H-1B holders
make in the $60,000 range (Intel's median salary is $65,000), but top
talents in the industry capture more than $100,000. And ironically the
great majority of awards for innovation have fallen to Americans,
indicating that the industry is not shackled by a domestic cognitive
deficit that needs relief by a massive injection of foreign Einsteins. The
quest for the best and brightest of overseas talent is a smokescreen for
the tech corporations' prime motive, the hunt not for the brightest minds
but those that come at the cheapest price. And the H-1B program doesn't
even require employers to give hiring priority to qualified American
citizens, and they have an arsenal of legal measures to reject those who
apply. If one is given to wonder why a U.S. Congress would expand the H-1B
program in 2000 when their employers, the American taxpayers, most of whom
are workers, were not its obvious beneficiaries, Utah Senator Bob Bennett's
comment would be informational: "There were, in fact, a whole lot (of
Congressmen) against it, but because they are tapping the high-tech
community for campaign contributions, they don't want to admit that in
public." John McCain, the only Republican
contender left standing, were it not for his title as waterboy for Iraq,
could run for the Democrats. He got the ball rolling in 1986 when he signed
the 1986 amnesty for illegals and thereby gave the green light for aspiring
border-crossers who knew that American law could be violated with impunity
and trespass retroactively forgiven. He ran his nomination race on a
full-throttle amnesty platform until he found religion earlier this year
and back-pedaled. He has voted for S-1639 to double legal immigration, to
continue chain migration and the ridiculous annual jackpot lottery of
50,000 applicants from third world nations called "Diversity Immigration".
McCain's problem is that he is a dark horse and Wall Street, while hedging
its bets, likes to back winners. So his take of their money is but
one-third of Obama's and Clinton's. ...
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Benefits and costs employment, politics
An immigration policy bought and paid for? [part 5] Tim Murray, director of Immigration Watch Canada (We) Can Do Better [website], 24 February 2008 |
The most disappointing feature of the
American immigration dialogue is its one-dimensional nature. Two critical
elements are virtually absent from the arguments presented by both open and
closed borders advocates. One is that both sides talk about what attracts
Mexican labour to America, and therefore the measures for turning them
away. But no one talks about the conditions in Mexico that drove people to
take desperate risks to get to the United States and who is responsible for
those conditions. When is America going to look in the mirror and admit
that the larcenous NAFTA agreement and rapacious rampage of multinational
corporations undercut a viable Mexican economy and the basis for a decent
life for so many Mexicans? When are American politicians and opinion-makers
going to acknowledge that much of American prosperity is built on the backs
of those people and others like them in the hemisphere and the world? All
the measures proposed by the anti-immigrationist forces are necessary, but
by no means sufficient to defend the borders. America cannot play King
Canute and hold back a tide of billions. It must reduce the tide by
ensuring that the billions do not want to leave home. Scrap the trade
agreements, the IMF, SAPs (Structural Adjustment Policies) and offer
restitution to rebuild economies that have been pillaged.
Aside from NAFTA, there is another
crucial phrase missing from US immigration discussions. Carrying capacity.
Each year the United States adds the equivalent of another Chicago. During
the Bush administration it has grown by 21 million people. Immigrants,
their children and grandchildren will account for 82% of all population
growth in the years leading up to 2050, when the country will reach a
staggering 438 million if this growth rate is not slowed. Some worry about
assimilation, since the share of non-Hispanic whites will fall from 67 to
47%. Obviously the labour market is the focus of most, who would share
Samuel Gompers's conviction that "immigration is fundamentally a labour
issue." But full employment and economic prosperity in a culturally or
linguistically cohesive America would be a pyrrhic accomplishment if such a
nation were to rest on a collapsing ecosystem. Can America sustain half its
current population when critical resource shortages appear or biodiversity
services are compromised ? The works of analysts like David Pimental, Dale
Pfeiffer and Richard Heinberg do not inform any Congressional debate about
how many people the country should admit. Clearly a Population Plan is
overdue. The American people have spoken
on immigration but the political elite will not listen because they are
paid by their corporate benefactors not to listen. It is sad to see the
world's greatest democratic experiment come to such grief. The Founding
Fathers devised a system that they embedded in a constitution with
mechanisms to counter-act the natural instinct of the political class to
usurp power and exercise it as a permanent elite dominating pauperized
subjects on the old European model. They counted on a "vigilant and manly
spirit" that animates the American people to breath life and vigour into
the constitution. But alas, the Founding Fathers couldn't possibly foresee
the power and the scale of Wall Street money.
In America today, anything's for sale,
even democracy. I hear a Senator earmarked for the White House can be had,
for, oh around 134-138 million. Sound right?
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Benefits and costs
Benefit cuts for migrants under citizenship plan Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 21 February 2008 |
Britain could link citizenship to
benefits for the first time as part of a plan to cut the millions of pounds
paid to immigrants from eastern Europe.
Immigrants would not receive a passport
until they had lived in the country for several years under the new plan,
and during this "probationary period" they would not be allowed to claim
the full range of welfare handouts such as child benefit and income
support. Polish families are currently
claiming more than £20 million a year for thousands of children who
remain in their homeland. They get a
better deal in Britain than in their own country, where payments are means
tested. Under European regulations, migrant workers living in Britain are
entitled to full family benefits even if their dependants stay
behind. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary,
announced a Whitehall review only to see if these rules could be tightened
up. However, it would require a new deal among the 27 European Union
countries. The review forms part of a
wider range of reforms to immigration rules and citizenship rights. A Green
Paper published by the Home Office yesterday said that new arrivals from
outside the EU would be required to pay more for their visas to meet some
of the costs to public services.
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Benefits and costs
Money transfer charter helps your cash arrive safely Liz King Daily Telegraph, 16 February 2008 |
A staggering £2.3bn is
transferred from the UK each year as people increasingly send money abroad
to relatives and friends, but the biggest worry is getting it there safely.
Much of this money goes to developing
countries more than 50 around the world with £300m going
to India and £200m to Pakistan, with Nigeria, Jamaica and Ghana next
on the list. ... A new Remittance
Customer Charter has been introduced to help those sending money abroad,
... The charter, created by the
Department for International Development (DFID) through the UK Remittance
Task Force, will ensure that firms that sign up will give clear,
transparent information in a standard format to the consumer.
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Benefits and costs
Pakistanis ignoring dangers of cousins marrying, says MP Sarah Womack Daily Telegraph, 12 February 2008 |
British Pakistanis are "in denial"
about the increased risk of birth defects among the children of married
cousins, a Labour MP claimed yesterday.
Ann Cryer said that many marriages of
Muslims in Bradford were between cousins and could have "tragic" impacts.
She called for community leaders to encourage debate which, she believed,
would move more families away from marriages between cousins.
Mrs Cryer raised the issue two years ago
after research showed that British Pakistanis were 13 times more likely to
have children with disorders than the general population. ...
Steve Jones, professor of genetics at
University College London, agreed that there was a higher risk of defects
but drinking or smoking in pregnancy was "as bad if not worse". ...
Prof Jones said: "Let's bear in mind that
families like the Rothschilds married their cousins frequently."
Cousin marriages were quite common in
Spain and in Muslim communities worldwide, he said.
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Benefits and costs marriage
Minister warns over in-breeding in Asians James Kirkup Daily Telegraph, 11 February 2008 |
Arranged marriages between British
Asians raise the risk of in-breeding and birth defects, a Government
minister has said. Phil Woolas, a junior
environment minister, came under fire from Muslim groups already concerned
about the public reaction to the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks about
sharia law. Mr Woolas, the Labour MP for
Oldham East and Saddleworth, said that marriages between first cousins are
a factor in birth defects and inherited conditions. ...
The Muslim Public Affairs Committee, a
campaign group, suggested the minister was demonising British Muslims. ...
Arranged marriages are common among
several British Asian groups, but intermarriage of relatives is a
particular characteristic of people of Pakistani origin.
It is estimated that more than 55 per
cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins, resulting in an
increasing rate of genetic defects and high rates of infant mortality.
Figures show that British Pakistani children account for as many as one
third of birth defects despite making up only three per cent of all UK
births.
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Benefits and costs hospitals
£350m maternity bill for foreign mothers Daily Telegraph, 30 January 2008 |
Britain pays £350 million a year
to provide maternity services to mothers born outside the country,
according to a BBC analysis. While the
birth rate among British-born women has dropped, the number of immigrants
giving birth has risen by three quarters.
The sudden rise has put such pressure on
maternity services that many cannot cope and are having to turn women away.
Immigrant women are more likely to suffer complications, requiring
emergency caesarean sections and often are not known to health services
until they are in labour. When Tony Blair
came to power in 1997, the NHS spent around a billion pounds a year on
maternity services, with one baby in eight delivered to a foreign-born
mother. Ten years on, spending has risen to £1.6 billion with almost
one baby in four delivered to a mother born overseas, according to an
analysis by the BBC's Ten o'Clock News.
While the number of babies born to
British mothers has fallen by 44,000 a year since the mid-1990s, the figure
for babies born to foreign mothers has risen by 64,000. The overall birth
rate is at its highest level for 26 years.
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Benefits and costs
Poles claim £20m benefits in UK for children back home Daily Telegraph, 29 January 2008 |
Polish families are claiming more
than £20 million a year in benefits for thousands of children living
outside Britain, it emerged yesterday.
Under European regulations, migrant
workers living in Britain are entitled to full family benefits, even if
their children remain behind in their home country.
Following the influx of workers from
eastern Europe in the wake of the expansion of the EU nearly four years
ago, more than 16,000 Poles alone have submitted child benefit claims. They
cover 26,000 children living in Poland, at a cost to the taxpayer of
£21.4 million a year. The figures were disclosed by Jane Kennedy, the
financial secretary to the Treasury, in answer to a written question ...
She refused to say how much of another
benefit, child tax credit, was being claimed by Polish workers for families
living overseas, ... In Poland, parents
are not universally entitled to child benefit, and any payments are
means-tested.
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Benefits and costs
Cost of migrants Cllr David Ashton, Deputy leader, Harrow Council Daily Telegraph, 25 January 2008 [Letter to the Editor] |
As evidence presented to the Treasury
select committee this week shows, the Government is indeed detached from
reality when it comes to the costs of immigration and a changing diversity.
My own local authority is a clear
illustration of the point. We are the fifth most ethnically diverse borough
in England and Wales, and currently incur substantial extra costs looking
after that diverse population, plus the growing number of migrants who come
to the area. Migrant skills are always
welcome, and we consider diversity to be a strength. But we need to
underline that there is a cash cost for the local authorities which are on
the front line of caring for those populations. Until the government grant
settlement recognises these seismic changes, we will all strain to cope.
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Benefits and costs
Call for tougher action on foreign car drivers Daily Telegraph, 9 January 2008 |
A police officer yesterday called for
tough action on foreign drivers who break the law in Britain after a
25-year-old was killed by a Polish woman driving the wrong way around a
roundabout. Superintendent Mick Doyle,
the head of roads policing for Thames Valley Police, said the number of
migrants coming in to the country but not forced by law to take a British
driving test had caused a huge problem on the roads.
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Benefits and costs
The price of cutting migration Daily Telegraph, 9 January 2008 |
Cutting immigration levels could put
9p on income tax, a think tank told peers yesterday. The Institute of
Public Policy Research also questioned whether newcomers were taking
hundreds of thousands of jobs from British-born workers.
The institute claimed that if the
Government adopted a zero net migration policy then working-age people
would have to pay more tax to support far more dependants in decades to
come.
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Benefits and costs NHS
Immigrants 'stretching the NHS' Daily Telegraph, 31 December 2007 |
The Health Service is being pushed to
breaking point by Eastern European immigrants, an NHS source claimed in a
Sunday newspaper yesterday. The
Department of Health is said to have expected to treat an extra 150,000
patients since eight countries joined the EU in 2004. But hospitals and GPs
have reportedly dealt with that number every year since Britain opened its
doors. ... The Government insisted
services were not being stretched. A Health Department spokesman added: We
are talking about people who are legally entitled to live in this country
and access the NHS."
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Benefits and costs
Politicians aren't making economic sense Irwin Stelzer Daily Telegraph, 14 November 2007 |
Immigration is another area of
muddle. There are 600,000 known job vacancies, while millions of sensible
potential British workers, the very ones for whom the Prime Minister wants
to create British jobs, have become layabouts. Or, to use the technical
jargon, economically inactive. Some are physically unable to work. But for
millions who have joined the lists of the disabled during this era of
increasing health and longevity, and many of those of the dole, it would be
irrational to work when the pay for staying home is better. ...
So the first step in forging a sensible
immigration policy is to reduce the demand for immigrant labour by
increasing the supply of British workers.
...
The second step would be to meet the
legitimate complaints of the native population that is bearing the high
social costs of immigration - crowded schools, overloaded health facilities
and the like. Employers are getting a free ride: they have the benefit of
often-cheaper foreign labour and pass on the social costs. Solution:
employers to pay a fee equal to those costs for every immigrant hired, the
proceeds to go to the affected community. Supplement that by raising the
cost of employing illegal immigrants further - by jailing employers who
knowingly hire them - and economic reason will have replaced some of the
populist posturing that dominates debate about immigration policy.
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Benefits and costs
Immigration officials got £7m bonus despite errors James Kirkup Daily Telegraph, 13 November 2007 |
Immigration officials involved in a
string of fiascos have been paid £7 million in bonuses, it emerged
yesterday. Staff at the Immigration and
Nationality Directorate of the Home Office got nearly £2 million in
bonuses last year alone. In that year,
the division was described as "not fit for purpose" by John Reid, then Home
Secretary, after a series of blunders including the failure to deport
hundreds of foreign prisoners held in UK jails.
Flawed data from the IND, now the Border
and Immigration Agency, were blamed for the Government omitting 300,000
foreign-born workers from immigration figures given to Parliament last
month. ... In 2005-06, IND staff were
paid £1,951,276 on top of their salaries. The previous year, the total
was £1,967,989. In 2003-04, it was £1,650,451. And in 2002-03,
officials got £1,334,164. ... The
figures were released in response to Parliamentary questions from Danny
Alexander, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on work and pensions, who said
the situation "defies common sense".
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Benefits and costs public opinion
Restrictions call Daily Telegraph, 12 November 2007 |
Eighty-one per cent of the public
believe immigration in Britain should be cut substantially, according to a
poll today, while 54 per cent dispute the Government's assertion that those
coming into the country have helped the economy.
The research, carried out by YouGov for
pressure group Migrationwatch, found 85 per cent of people thought that
immigration was putting too much pressure on public services.
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Benefits and costs housing
Inquiry launched into migrant council housing Robert Winnett Daily Telegraph, 2 November 2007 |
A major independent inquiry to
determine whether immigrants are given unfair access to council housing was
announced yesterday by Britain's race watchdog and local authority leaders.
Trevor Phillips, the head of the Equality
and Human Rights Commission, said there was a "widespread public
perception" that new migrants had "unfair advantages to which they are not
entitled". He announced that his
commission and the Local Government Association (LGA) would launch a study
to determine whether the perception was correct, and would stop any abuse
it uncovered. ... A spokesman for the
Department for Communities and Local Government said: "Trevor Phillips said
... he has never seen 'any reliable evidence' to back up claims that
councils are unfairly allocating housing. While local government has always
maintained they have operated allocations fairly, we agree it is important
to deal with perception."
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Benefits and costs
Migrants may push up council tax Toby Helm Daily Telegraph, 1 November 2007 |
Millions of homeowners face higher
council tax bills next year because of the Government's failure to keep
track of the number of immigrants in Britain, local authorities warned
yesterday. Schools, hospitals and other
services are struggling to cope with rapid and uncontrolled influxes of
migrants, the Local Government Association (LGA) claimed. It says that
because money allocated to local authorities is calculated by population
figures, the government's inability to accurately assess migrant numbers
means councils are receiving inadequate funding.
A spokesman for the LGA said that in
areas where numbers had risen but statistics had not reflected the
increase, councils would have two options: to put up council tax next year,
or cut services.
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Benefits and costs
No jobs for 4,000 UK junior doctors Rebecca Smith Daily Telegraph, 1 November 2007 |
Almost 4,000 UK medics have not got
training posts in the disastrous junior doctors recruitment system, The
Daily Telegraph can disclose. A
second round of recruitment ended yesterday and of the 13,624 UK graduates,
who cost the taxpayer £250,000 each to put through medical school,
3,687 have not been awarded posts to allow them to train towards becoming a
consultant or GP. Some may yet be
allocated a post in one of the less popular specialties such as trauma,
orthopaedics or psychiatry, and an extra 1,050 short-term posts that have
not yet been allocated. But most face a choice between taking a
non-training job, leaving medicine or practising abroad. ...
Officials have said that without the
thousands of applicants from outside Europe, most of which were from
Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, there would not have been such
oversubscription for training places.
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Benefits and costs
We need an honest immigration debate Bob Rowthorn, professor of economics at Cambridge University Daily Telegraph website, 21 October 2007 |
Immigration is a contentious topic.
But there is widespread agreement in official circles to one proposition:
immigrants contribute enormously to increasing the prosperity of the
British people. The consensus that immigration has economically beneficial
effects was on display last week, when the Government released a report by
its own experts. "Migrants contribute £6 billion to the GDP" was the
headline in many newspapers. And the report indeed confirmed the orthodoxy
that "the Exchequer is better off with immigration than without it" - as
Liam Byrne, the Home Office Minister, has insisted.
Such claims are profoundly misleading.
What matters to the existing population is not how migration affects the
"economy" as a whole, but how it affects them individually. Migration may
increase the size of the national cake, but it also increases the number of
people who are entitled to a slice of this cake.
There is a whole section of the report
devoted to the contribution of migrants to GDP per capita. It claims that,
since 1998, immigrants have added 3.1 per cent to Britain's GDP. That is
true. But there is another, critical fact: during the same period,
immigrants have added 3.8 per cent to the total British population. Put
those two together and you get the result that the additional amount
produced by immigrants has been smaller than the number of people they have
added to the population. The conclusion
is inescapable: the result of immigration since 1998 has been to lower per
capita GDP, or output per individual worker, not to increase it. The effect
is very small, and within the margin of statistical error. But if you are
willing to rely on the figures, the one thing you cannot conclude is that
immigration has increased per capita GDP.
Yet this is precisely what is often meant
by those who insist that "immigration has been enormously beneficial to the
economy". Putting the GDP and population figures together is not
complicated economics. But somehow the report never manages to do it, and
so never manages to reach the obvious conclusion. I don't know whether that
failure is deliberate or not - but it is certainly misleading. ...
Immigration, if it continues at the
present rate of a net inflow of around 200,000 people a year, is going to
add around 20 million to Britain's population over the next 50 years.
Official press releases from the Office of National Statistics do not
accurately report that fact, because they do not take account of the
children that immigrants will have. It is not easy to see how the South
East - which is where most immigrants settle, because that is where the
jobs are - will be able to cope with so large an additional population. ...
But let's have an honest debate about the
effects and consequences of immigration, not one based on misleading
statistics or evasion of the truth. At the moment, the Government seems to
want to conduct the discussion on the basis that it is better that people
should not know what the truth is. I cannot believe that ignorance is a
rational or ethical basis for making a decision on so important a topic. If
we do not debate the effects of immigration honestly and truthfully, we
will all come to regret it.
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Benefits and costs
Migrant workers earn more than British Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 17 October 2007 |
Immigrant workers are both higher
paid and more reliable than their British counterparts and contributed
£6 billion to economic growth last year, a Government study said
yesterday. Migrants earn £424 a week
on average, compared with £395 for UK workers, and paid more in tax
than they consumed in services. However,
a separate paper issued together with the study by the Home Office admitted
there were complaints about the impact of immigration on housing and other
public services. Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, said the research
showed that "in the long run, our country and Exchequer are better off with
immigration rather than without it". The
report found that in 2006, record immigration pushed the number of foreign
workers up to 12.5 per cent - or one eighth - of the labour force, compared
to 7.4 per cent a decade ago. Since
average output growth over this period was 2.7 per cent a year and
migration contributed an estimated 15 to 20 per cent of this, the study
estimated a contribution of £6 billion from foreign workers - or
£700,000 a day. However, the figure
does not take account of the costs of a growing population, for instance
the impact on public services such as health, education and transport. But
the overwhelmingly positive findings were last night challenged by
academics. Robert Rowthorn, an emeritus
professor at Cambridge University, warned that as well as putting pressure
on services, large-scale migration would "undermine the labour market
position of the most vulnerable sections of the local workforce". The
study, the first official attempt to establish the economic and fiscal
impact of the record levels of immigration seen in recent years, states
that "in the long run, it is likely that the net fiscal contribution of an
immigrant will be greater than that of a non-immigrant".
It also claims there is no evidence of
foreign workers pushing British people out of jobs, although it presents no
firm evidence for this.
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Benefits and costs housing
Public 'link immigrants to soaring house prices' Andrew Porter Daily Telegraph, 8 October 2007 |
Immigrants are being blamed for
driving up house prices, according to a new survey.
The Conservatives immediately seized on
the evidence to push their policy of putting annual limits on immigration.
One in five people said controls on the number of foreigners coming to
Britain was the best way to slowing demand and halting soaring property
prices, the survey for propertyfinder.com found.
... New arrivals from abroad came second
only to property investors as being responsible for fuelling the market.
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Benefits and costs
Migrants 'reliant' on benefits Duncan Gardham Daily Telegraph, 1 October 2007 |
The degree to which new immigrants
rely on benefits and council housing has been revealed by a survey that
looks at how much foreigners contribute to the economy.
The league tables have been compiled by
the Left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research on behalf of
Dispatches, to be shown on Channel 4 tonight. The figures come from
the census and the quarterly Labour Force Survey.
Somalians rely heavily on benefits,
according to the statistics - 80 per cent live in social housing and 39 per
cent claim income support. Nearly half of
newly-arrived Turks - 49 per cent - rely on social housing and 39 per cent
claim income support. However, 35 per cent are self-employed.
Other nationalities rely on sickness
benefit - 10 per cent of those newly arrived from Pakistan claim it, along
with nine per cent from Cyprus, and eight per cent from Kenya, Ireland and
Jamaica. Poles work longer hours for less
pay and are paid less sickness benefit than almost any other group.
Nigerians are among the best educated,
most likely to be working in the public sector and least likely to claim
sickness benefit. British-born workers
score below average in most of the tables - they claim more sickness
benefit and council housing and work shorter hours.
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Benefits and costs
Migrants are a drain on Britain, says Left think-tank Ben Leapman Sunday Telegraph, 30 September 2007 |
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants
are a drain on Britain and its economy, says a Left-leaning think-tank.
Migrants from many developing nations
fail to pay their way, while those from wealthy countries, such as the
United States and Australia, provide a boost for the economy.
The report, published today by the
Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), sets out to reveal which
nationalities are "a debit on Britain's balance sheet".
It found that fewer than half of
Britain's 650,000 Somalis, Bangladeshis, Turks and Pakistanis, have jobs
and the four communities have the highest levels of benefit dependency.
Britain's fastest-growing migrant group,
the Poles, score above-average for employment, but have the lowest hourly
pay and make a below-average tax contribution.
Channel 4 commissioned the report for a
Dispatches documentary, Immigrants: the Inconvenient Truth,
to be shown tomorrow night.
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Benefits and costs
Immigrants 'fuel rise in crashes' Daily Telegraph, 25 September 2007 |
Immigrants motorists' attitudes to
drink-driving and speeding is fuelling a surge in road crashes, a police
chief warned yesterday. Eastern European
drivers struggling to understand signs is also thought to be a factor in
the number of accidents. Chief Insp Rick
Dowell, the head of Dorset Police's traffic unit, said there had been an
increase in the number of foreign nationals arrested for drink-driving and
speeding. "The number of fatal or serious
injury collisions involving foreign nationals is also increasing," he said.
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Benefits and costs public services
Migrants 'should pay for our services' Bonnie Malkin Daily Telegraph, 24 September 2007 |
Economic migrants could be forced to
make a bigger contribution to the cost of public services, under plans
outlined by the head of Britain's new equality watchdog.
Trevor Phillips, who launches the
Commission for Equality and Human Rights this week, said that some migrants
who stay in the UK only for a short time should pay more for the use of
schools and hospitals. He said the
current immigration system was not built to deal with "shuttle migrants",
described as people who "virtually commute from Warsaw or Slovenia", and
recommended a "two-track immigration system" instead.
He said: "It's not that we don't want
them to come here. But they put a stress on infrastructure.
"You might say they are people who are
basically here for work ... they and their employers might have to make a
contribution, for social insurance for example." ...
Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister,
said yesterday that the suggestions would be taken seriously.
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism
Police face growing bill for interpreters Aislinn Simpson and Alison Stacey Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2007 |
Police forces are spending millions
of pounds on interpreters to meet the demands posed by immigrant workers.
... ... Thames Valley Police - which
covers Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire - said it was spending
£1 million a year on interpreters. Ten years ago the bill was about
£80,000. ... In London, the
Metropolitan Police spent £9.9 million on interpreters last year - up
almost £3 million in the past three years.
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Benefits and costs employment
One in four Britons is out of work Graeme Wilson Daily Telegraph, 16 August 2007 |
Nearly 10 million adults in Britain
are currently out of work, one in four of the working population, the
Government admitted yesterday. Official
figures showed there are 1.65 million people who are unemployed, with a
further 7.9 million defined as "economically inactive".
The latter group includes more than two
million people who are on long-term sickness benefits as well as students,
people who have taken time off work to look after their family and those
who have taken early retirement. ... The
scale of the figures overshadowed the fact that the official unemployment
figure had dropped by 45,000 over the past three months to 1.65 million,
the lowest figure for more than a year.
At the same time, the number of people in
work rose by 93,000 to 29.07 million, the second highest figure on record.
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Benefits and costs housing
Immigrants given 4 in 10 new homes Tom Savage Daily Star, 16 August 2007 |
Immigrants have taken 40% of all
homes built in the UK in the past 10 years.
The number of properties available for
Brits has been squeezed because of the record number of foreigners coming
to live here, according to official figures released yesterday.
Nearly 600,000 properties have been
needed to house immigrants since 1997 - three times the amount required
under the last Tory Government. On average, 19,000 new homes were needed
for migrants each year from 1992 to 1997.
But after Labour came to power, that
figure rocketed to an average of 66,000 each year from 1997 to 2005 - the
latest year figures are available for - making a total of 592,000 homes.
And experts say the figure is likely to
have continued rising due to East European immigration since 2005.
Tory MP James Clappison, who requested
the figures, said the extra homes also damage the countryside. ...
The Brown Government plans to build 3
million new houses in the UK by 2020, many tailored for firsttime buyers.
But projected levels of immigration
suggest that 1.2m - or 40% - will be needed for migrants, though the
Government claims the figure is 33%.
[Site link] |
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Benefits and costs
Counting the cost of immigration Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 30 July 2007 |
Immigration is, then, a numbers issue
after all. Even the BBC now agrees. Last week, after studiously ignoring
the subject for years, or finding it somewhat distasteful, the Beeb
screened a Panorama programme entitled "How We Lost Count", which it
advertised as though this were some sort of scoop.
These are facts that many of us have
known for years, but it has been an uphill battle to get them seriously
debated. The fact that they are now being discussed is largely due to the
efforts of a small, independent research outfit called Migrationwatch,
which came on to the scene exactly five years ago this week. It issued a
report that was denounced as alarmist, scaremongering, even racist.
It was a prediction that Britain could
expect to receive more than two million immigrants every 10 years for the
foreseeable future unless curbs were introduced. It was absolutely spot on,
but few thanked Sir Andrew Green, the retired diplomat who founded
Migrationwatch, for pointing it out. More than that, efforts were made -
including official ones - to traduce his motives and to trash his group's
research. You may or may not agree with
Sir Andrew's view, which he articulated five years ago, that "the scale of
inward migration is now so great as to be contrary to the best interests of
every section of our community". But you can no longer ignore that scale
nor its consequences. The big question now is what do we do about it?
In a recent parliamentary debate,
important speeches on this subject were made by Nicholas Soames, the Tory
MP for mid-Sussex, and Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead. Mr Soames
proposed moving to zero net immigration from outside the EU; Mr Field, if
anything, was more radical in his prescription. He also said: "The debate
is of course about numbers, but it is also about what it means to create
and maintain a community. If the Government do not change track very
smartly on this issue, the sense of national identity might be lost, and
then we are in totally new territory."
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Benefits and costs employment
Rural migrant workers 'drive out young' Graham Tibbetts Daily Telegraph, 17 July 2007 |
Migrant workers from Eastern Europe
are flooding the rural labour market and forcing young people to leave the
countryside in search of work, a Government advisory body warns today.
The number of migrants working in the
countryside has increased by 200 per cent in three years, with many seeking
employment in agriculture, manufacturing, hotels and retail, according to a
major report by the Commission for Rural Communities. This comes amid a
long-term decline in the number of young people living in rural areas. ...
The report, entitled State of the
Countryside 2007, found much to commend country life over urban life
including full employment, less pollution, better diet and fewer cases of
stress and mental illness. But the
researchers raised concerns that the influx of foreign workers, following
the accession of eight former Soviet-bloc countries to the European Union,
was placing a great strain on local schools and transport and posing
problems for young country people. About
120,000 migrant workers registered to work in rural areas between May 2004
and Sept 2006. ... The commission said
the money the Government gave town halls for supporting immigrants was
based on statistics that were several years out of date.
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Benefits and costs education
Britain's universities 'could lose world position within 10 years' Caroline Davies Daily Telegraph, 5 July 2007 |
Britain's reputation as a world
leader for university education could be lost within 10 years, the
vice-chancellor of Cambridge warned yesterday.
Standards will plummet unless
universities resist the temptation to take on poor-quality students in an
attempt to plug funding gaps, Professor Alison Richard told MPs. ...
Prof Richard told the education select
committee that standards could be seriously compromised by the Government's
drive to increase student numbers. In
particular, the trend to recruit foreign students for their higher fees
could lead to "a downward spiral", she said.
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Benefits and costs housing
200,000 'social homes' were given to immigrants last year Gary Cleland Daily Telegraph, 2 July 2007 |
Five times more immigrants are given
social housing than previously claimed, the Government has admitted.
Just weeks ago ministers insisted that
only one per cent of social housing is given to immigrants, in an attempt
to quell widespread fears that they are treated better by local authorities
than people born in Britain. But after an
investigation by ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald programme, the
Government has admitted that 200,000 of Britain's social homes - five per
cent of the total - were given to immigrants last year.
There is a waiting list of 1.5 million
for the four million social houses in Britain.
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Benefits and costs
Shortage of £50 notes blamed on immigrants Daily Telegraph, 29 June 2007 |
The Bank of England has revealed that
a shortage of £50 notes is the result of so many eastern European
immigrants sending them back home. Poles
in Britain sent home almost £1 billion in the first three months of
this year. Polish officials say two thirds of the Poles who have left the
country are working in Britain and more than three quarters of the money
flooding back to boost the Polish economy has been sent from this country.
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Benefits and costs housing
Open borders demand open debate Sunday Telegraph, 27 May 2007 [Leading article] |
Margaret Hodge, the Minister of
Industry and the Regions, and MP for Barking in London, was therefore doing
little more than stating the obvious when she noted that the basis on which
the state allocates the scarce resource of council housing "needs to be
transparent and it needs to be perceived as fair". She also said that it
was not perceived as fair, particularly since there was a widespread
perception that a recently-arrived family with children would get priority
over people who had lived and paid taxes for most of the lives in Britain.
Such a perception exists, as the polls show: around 70 per cent believe
that long-term tax-paying Britons should have priority over just-arrived
immigrants in the queue for social housing.
Yet the reaction of Margaret Hodge's
Labour colleagues to her statement was hysterical. She was accused of
"allowing the BNP to dictate Labour Party policies", of advocating changes
which would have "catastrophic consequences for community relations", and
advocating "discriminatory" housing policies. The tactic is only too
familiar, because it is what Labour has done whenever any issue relating to
immigration has come up for discussion: it has tried to close down debate
by suggesting that even to talk about the topic is to be "racist" and to
have views indistinguishable from the BNP. ...
Myths and outright falsehoods are quickly
accepted as true when public discussion is suppressed. For instance: it is
not generally true that immigrant families are given automatic preference
over native-born Britons when it comes to allocating housing. But the
refusal of the Government to allow an open and honest discussion of the
subject means that many Britons waiting for council houses believe it. ...
We badly need and honest and open public
debate about the costs and benefits of immigration to Britain, and on the
extent and limits of our obligations to poor or destitute people who arrive
in Britain in search of a better life. ...
There was not a word on the topic in any
of Labour's election manifestos. Conservative attempts to put the issue on
the agenda have been smeared and denigrated in exactly the same way as
Margaret Hodge was last week.
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Benefits and costs housing
Lady Hodge's days must be numbered Simon Heffer Daily Telegraph, 26 May 2007 |
It is hard to believe that one person
who will not be sacked - and for whom it would be hard to find as appalling
a replacement - will be the industry minister, Margaret Hodge. Mrs Hodge -
or Lady Hodge, as she should more correctly be known, her husband being a
knight - came out this week with the amazing statement that our indigenous
population should be given preferential treatment in housing allocations to
recent immigrants. I happen to agree with her, but it is only because the
BNP threatens to unseat her in her constituency because of this issue that
she has come out so cynically in favour of the policy. I won't ask what
took her so long, just why even now she is still allowed to hold office.
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Benefits and costs housing
Johnson accuses Hodge of using 'language of BNP' Brendan Carlin Daily Telegraph, 25 May 2007 |
Labour's immigration row deepened
last night after the Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, accused a fellow
minister of language worthy of the British National Party.
Mr Johnson, one of the frontrunners to be
Labour's deputy leader, condemned the industry minister, Margaret Hodge,
for claiming that existing British families should have more right than
immigrants to social housing. Speaking on
BBC's Question Time, Mr Johnson said: "The problem with that is
that's the kind of language of the BNP.
"And it's grist to the mill of the BNP,
particularly as there is no evidence that there's any problem in social
housing - none whatsoever." ... Earlier
this week, Mrs Hodge was rebuked by two other contenders for the deputy
leadership - Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and backbencher
Jon Cruddas. ... However, Mrs Hodge, who
was born in Egypt, won some support from Hazel Blears, Labour's party
chairman and also a deputy leadership candidate. She said that "you have
got to look at allocations policies to show that they are fair".
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Benefits and costs housing
Shame on you, Margaret Hodge Andrew O'Hagan Daily Telegraph, 22 May 2007 |
Are modern politicians generally more
disgusting than they used to be? I feel it is worth pondering the question
as you go about trying to understand the latest statement by Margaret Hodge
on the question of immigrants and public housing. ...
It was nauseatingly worded, in an article
for the Observer, so as to seem fair to all parties, but nobody is
fooled: Mrs Hodge wants to stop foreigners from taking our houses.
She hasn't the courage to present the
matter so frankly, but this is what she means, and her idea is completely
divisive. ... Why do you think she did
it? I'll give you three clues. One: she represents Barking. Two: her
constituency used to be very white and now it's very mixed. And three: the
BNP gained 11 seats on the local council last year. So there you have it,
the simple moral arithmetic of modern British politics. Mrs Hodge is wooing
those of her constituents who have lately found their concerns being
represented most nakedly by the British National Party, and their sitting
MP is keen enough to see that she'd better say something to appease their
growing anger. Shame on her. And shame on
them. The notion that immigrants are hoisted on to the housing lists at the
expense of true blue working-class English folk is a complete fallacy. It's
more than a fallacy: it's a stupid, jingoistic fallacy, propagated by
people who have their own reasons for feeling aggrieved at their lot in
life.
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Benefits and costs housing
A message to my fellow immigrants Margaret Hodge, Industry Minister The Observer, 20 May 2007 |
In our open, tolerant country, there
are, thankfully, few issues that remain taboo. But, motivated by the fear
of both legitimising racism and encouraging the extreme right, migration is
one. Yet for many voters, it continues to be a top issue.
My constituency of Barking in east London
has experienced rapid change, moving from predominantly white
neighbourhoods to many multiracial neighbourhoods. ... ...
Unless we listen, we shall be unable to
convince people that we are on their side as they learn to live with new
neighbours in the tolerant and strong multiracial society we on the liberal
left desire. This stifled debate means we have missed the opportunity to
articulate more clearly the huge benefits to our economy, our culture and
the evolving nature of our Britishness that migration brings. ...
We need just immigration policies that
are fairly and efficiently administered. But we also need to acknowledge
that population change is a feature of the modern world, of our
globalisation. Yet the period of transition can be disturbing and painful.
We all find change difficult and new neighbours, new shops and new habits
in our street or on our estate do demand adjustment. As ever, the people
who face the greatest changes tend to be those who live in the poorest
communities where migrants can afford to settle.
So while we need strong leadership to
promote the rewards migration offers, it is only fair to hear the
resentments and fears it can arouse. Only by listening to those fears can
we demonstrate understanding for the difficulties settled communities
experience in adjusting and move beyond the fears to secure tolerance and
harmony. ... We prioritise the needs of
an individual migrant family over the entitlement others feel they have. So
a recently arrived family with four or five children living in a damp and
overcrowded, privately rented flat with the children suffering from asthma
will usually get priority over a family with less housing need who have
lived in the area for three generations and are stuck at home with the
grandparents. We should look at policies
where the legitimate sense of entitlement felt by the indigenous family
overrides the legitimate need demonstrated by the new migrants.
We should also look at drawing up
different rules based on, for instance, length of residence, citizenship or
national insurance contributions which carry more weight in a transparent
points system used to decide who is entitled to access social housing.
There are a small number of confirmed refugees who, of course, would
receive the same entitlements as British citizens. However, most new
migrant families are economic migrants who choose to come to live and work
here. If you choose to come to Britain, should you presume the right to
access social housing? ... As an
immigrant myself, although I am white and middle class, I know how
difficult it is to adapt in a new country. ... I know that striking the
best balance in our approach to migration is fraught with huge
difficulties. But if we don't dare to talk about it, we'll never get it
right.
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Benefits and costs statistics
Whitehall immigration figures are too low, say councils Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 15 May 2007 |
The Government was accused yesterday
of exaggerating the economic benefits of immigration as council leaders
complained that official data about migrant numbers were flawed.
Liam Byrne, the Home Office minister,
said immigrants were contributing half a billion pounds every working day
to the economy, a figure later repeated by Downing Street.
This would amount to £125 billion a
year - equivalent to 10 per cent of total GDP.
But critics said it did not take into
account the fact that immigrants also added to the population, which meant
that on a per head basis the addition was negligible.
Mr Byrne was responding to criticism from
town hall bosses that official statistics underestimated the number of
migrants in their areas. This affects the
grants they receive from Whitehall, which are based on population numbers.
... Councils receive around £600 for
every person in the borough from central government. ...
Sir Simon Milton, the leader of
Westminster City Council, said 2,000 migrants were coming through Victorian
coach station every week.
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Benefits and costs assessment
Forum to assess impact of record immigration Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 29 March 2007 |
Ministers are to set up a forum to
assess the impact of immigration on communities, the Home Office announced
yesterday. The new body, which follows 10
years of record immigration under Labour, will consider evidence that
schools, hospitals, housing and transport infrastructure are all feeling
the strain of a growing population. ...
The creation of the Migration Impacts
Forum (MIF), alongside another body advising on skills shortages that
immigrants might be able to fill, marks a significant change of approach by
Labour, which has justified the four-fold increase in immigration since
1997 almost entirely on economic grounds. ...
Yesterday's announcement was part of a
package of measures that included the prospect of a £1,000 fine on
families whose relatives failed to go home when their visas expired. It is
already an offence punishable by a £5,000 fine to retain a nanny who
has overstayed. It also envisaged further
curbs on forced marriage by raising the minimum age for bringing a spouse
into the country from 18 to 21. It will be a requirement for spouses to
learn English before they can join they wife or husband. ...
Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of
Migrationwatch, said: "It is high time that the wider picture was
considered, including the widespread public concern that we are losing our
own culture. "But this forum will be
useless if it includes only the usual suspects from the immigration
industry and employers who stand to gain from immigration."
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Benefits and costs asylum
Taxpayers get bill for asylum seekers Daily Telegraph, 16 March 2007 |
Taxpayers will have to pick up the
bill for looking after failed asylum seekers after a council lost a legal
test case yesterday. Hillingdon borough
in west London is adding £10 to its average tax bill to cover the cost
because the Government refuses to provide the funds.
The Tory-run council, which covers
Heathrow, spends £1 million a year looking after people who arrive as
unaccompanied children and remains legally responsible for them until they
are 21.
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Benefits and costs jobs
'Learn English or lose benefits' George Jones Daily Telegraph, 13 February 2007 |
Unemployed immigrants will have to
show they are learning English or risk losing benefits from April, Jim
Murphy, the welfare minister, announced yesterday.
About 40,000 jobless people from ethnic
minorities say their poor English is a barrier to finding employment - and
£4.5m is spent on translators in job centres.
The Government believes that this money
would be better spent on teaching them English so they could get jobs
rather than claim benefit. Mr Murphy told a Work Foundation seminar that it
was "unacceptable" that ethnic minorities in Britain earned on average a
third less than their white counterparts.
While 15 per cent of members of ethnic
minorities cited language difficulties as a barrier to work, not enough of
the language-learning opportunities at job centres were being taken up.
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Benefits and costs
Migrants 'add 4p a week' to your pocket Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 3 January 2007 |
The alleged economic benefit to
Britain of record levels of immigration are a myth, new figures suggest.
They show a "very slight" gain of around
4p a week for each member of the native population - not enough to buy a
Mars bar a month. An analysis carried out
by Migrationwatch UK used the Government's own claim that immigrants
contribute a net £4 billion a year to Britain's gross domestic
product. The study said this amounted to
£2.10 a year for each of Britain's 60 million inhabitants.
It concluded: "The much vaunted
contribution of immigrants to the economy is very slight indeed." ...
Migrationwatch examined a range of
British and international studies on the economic value of mass
immigration, all of which indicate that, on a per capita basis, the
financial benefits are minimal. In
addition, high levels of immigration place huge pressure on housing, health
and schools and have an increasing impact on employment.
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Benefits and costs
Little to show from tide of migrants Sir Andrew Green Daily Telegraph, 3 January 2007 |
It is amazing what the Government's
spin doctors have been getting away with. For years they have trumpeted the
economic benefits of immigration but now we find that they are, in fact,
very small. The Government recently put a
figure on it for the first time. Ministers told Parliament that immigrants
add "at least £4 billion to production". What they did not say is that
they also add almost exactly the equivalent percentage to our population,
so the extra wealth per head is barely positive. We calculate it is 4p per
week per head. Another claim - that immigrants contribute 10-15 per cent of
trend growth - gives a slightly better result of 12p a week. Both are
trivial. We shouldn't be surprised. Major
studies in America, Canada and Australia found similarly small benefit -
typically a tenth of one per cent of GDP. ...
But the key issue is scale. We need to
balance any economic benefit against the social cost of immigration ...
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Benefits and costs
£100m translation bill for migrants who can't or won't speak English Amy Iggulden Daily Telegraph, 14 December 2006 |
Public spending on interpreters and
translation for immigrants is to be reviewed after figures revealed the
yearly bill is more than £100 million.
Police forces, councils and hospitals are
each spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money on
translating services that include recycling and anti-smoking advice, it
emerged yesterday. ... The Government
yesterday ordered a review after figures showed that NHS trusts spend at
least £55 million a year on translating and interpretation, the courts
and police spend £31.3 million and local authorities spend £25
million a year. The costs, obtained by
the BBC, are likely to be an underestimate because not all public bodies
are taken into account. The details show
how the Metropolitan Police spends £8.4 million a year, Barts and the
London NHS Trust spends £1 million a year, and the Department of Work
and Pensions spends £3 million on a telephone interpreting service.
Overall, the interpretation market for
business and the public sector is thought to be worth about £400
million and growing to reflect the increasingly diverse population,
according to the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.
The increase in the courts service bill
alone - now £10 million a year - has trebled over five years. ...
Phil Woolas, the local government
minister, admitted that the situation needed to be examined. He said that
more than £1 billion is already being spent on teaching English.
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism
Winning Muslim hearts and minds Michael Burleigh, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2006 |
We are entitled to have accurate
information about immigration, with open discussion of its cultural, as
well as economic, merits and demerits. Clear lines need to be established
about what the majority of people here are prepared to tolerate, for
toleration is not some open-ended, one-way arrangement. It's all very well
to say you are against the formation of inner-city ghettos potentially
subtracted from common law, but how, precisely, do Conservatives imagine
dispersing them or preventing their formation?
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Benefits and costs
'Feckless' Poles aim for Britain Daily Telegraph, 8 November 2006 |
"Feckless" Poles have turned Britain
into their number one destination, the Polish president declared yesterday
during a press conference with Tony Blair in Number 10.
Lech Kaczynski said Britain had become
the "destination of choice" for homeless and jobless Poles and complained
that many of his countrymen were still claiming benefits in Poland despite
holding down jobs in Britain.
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Benefits and costs drug addicts
Doctor's diary Dr James Lefanu Daily Telegraph, 20 October 2006 |
Back in the mid-1990s, ...
At the same time, when sentencing an
Italian drug addict convicted of theft, a judge remarked how those coming
before the bench were frequently from other countries in the European Union
who appeared to have moved to Britain to take advantage of the generous
attitude of the welfare system to those in their situation. A decade on,
it's hard to imagine anything more in need of reform.
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Benefits and costs
Why is the white working class so roundly despised? Andrew Gimson Daily Telegraph, 13 October 2006 |
The Government has encouraged mass
migration, a change of which I happen to be in favour, for I believe these
newcomers are an asset to our country and will rapidly become British. But
no heed has been paid to those members of the indigenous working class who
have found their wages undercut by cheap foreign competition, and have
difficulty getting council housing.
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Benefits and costs education
Months after they turned children away, 'full' schools open to migrants Julie Henry Sunday Telegraph, 8 October 2006 |
Schools that are officially full have
been forced to find places for eastern European children who turn up at
their gates after term has started.
Secondary schools across the east of
England have suspended admission rules that dictate how many children they
can accommodate each year, in order to take dozens more pupils, mostly from
the EU accession states of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.
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Benefits and costs
Life in Britain 'declining' Laura Clout Daily Telegraph, 4 September 2006 |
Britain is a worse place to live now
than it was 20 years ago, according to almost half of respondents to a
nationwide poll. Lack of respect and
crime were given as the main reasons for the decline by the 47 per cent who
felt that British life had deteriorated since 1986. Less than a quarter
believed that it had improved. Almost
half of those who felt the country had gone downhill cited a lack of
respect and crime, while 31 per cent mentioned the cost of living.
Terrorism and immigration were each blamed by 28 per cent of respondents to
the poll, conducted for BBC1's Six O'Clock News.
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Benefits and costs
Immigrants 'should be set £27,000 wage target' Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 29 August 2006 |
Immigrants unable to earn more than
£27,000 a year should not be allowed to settle in Britain because they
do not make "a positive contribution", a report says today.
The Migrationwatch think-tank suggests
that the figure could be used to set an optimum level of immigration along
the lines recently suggested by John Reid, the Home Secretary. ...
The report says that immigration is of
long-term benefit to the economy only if it raises productivity. Otherwise,
it simply adds to the pressure on infrastructure and public services.
The paper adds that less skilled migrants
can make a contribution by filling gaps while British workers are trained
but should not be allowed to settle permanently. ...
Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of
Migrationwatch, said: "The social costs of the present massive levels of
immigration far outweigh any possible benefit."
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Benefits and costs
The cry has gone up 'Enoch was right'. Tosh. Immigration is good for Britain Magnus Linklater The Times, 23 August 2006 |
"If Enoch Powell were alive today,
what would he have to say about the current security situation?" It was a
typical Any Questions debating point - the equivalent of rolling a grenade
into a crowded pub, then standing back to see what would happen. Within
minutes, the discussion on Radio 4 had become a full-scale argument about
Islamic terrorism, multiculturalism, free trade and Polish plumbers. From
this week, it is also about Romanians and Bulgarians, rampant Aids and the
white slave traffic. The debate about immigration is as inflammatory today
as it was when Powell articulated it in 1968. It is also as dangerously
confused. The answer Powell himself would
undoubtedly have given is: "I told you so." He would have claimed
prescience about the numbers flooding into Britain from abroad, he would
say that multiculturalism (which he referred to it in those days as
"communalism") had demonstrably failed, and he would have argued that the
growth of immigrant communities had undermined the security of the State.
He said as much in his infamous "rivers of blood" speech, when he spoke of
"dangerous and divisive elements" within the immigrant community, who would
use Britain's well-intentioned race relations laws "to organise and
consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their
fellow-citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest".
It was a blatantly racist speech, playing
to the most basic fears of the white population at the time about the
growth of immigration from the Commonwealth. It was also wrong. Powell
presumed that the majority of immigrants would become increasingly
alienated from society and that, as their numbers increased, they would
seek to assert their domination over the native British. He thought that
the sheer weight of numbers would simply overwhelm white communities, who
would become, to quote him, "strangers in their own country". He predicted
intolerable tensions as a result, with a system of "one-way privilege"
operating in favour of immigrants. That has not happened. There have been
flashpoints along the way - race riots in Brixton, Bristol and the North of
England, racist attacks and murders, and the worrying alienation of Muslim
minorities. But the breakdown that he predicted has not happened; Powell's
nightmare vision has not materialised. It
has not, however, gone away. In different forms, it is summoned up to warn
us of the threat from Islamic extremists, from asylum-seekers, and now the
influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe. ... ...
As so often, there is a grain of truth in
some of these arguments - but collectively, they amount to a lie.
Immigration has, by and large, been of enormous benefit to Britain. It has
helped to transform our economy, enrich our cultural life, support our
public services and improve our image abroad. It would be inconceivable to
imagine our health or transport systems functioning without it. It fills a
skills gap among doctors and teachers. It allows the nation's corner shops
to survive. Toynbee's argument about cheap labour could have been deployed
at any time over the past 50 years, and would have prevented buses and
trains from functioning, hospitals being cleaned, schools being staffed and
maintained. I have no doubt that mass
immigration needs to be controlled, but rather than new restrictions the
current rules should be managed more effectively and with greater humanity.
This is too important an issue to be hijacked by prejudice disguising
itself as rational debate. Unless we distinguish carefully between its
differing strands, we might just as well give in to racism and say that
Enoch was right all along.
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Benefits and costs
Keith Vaz MP (Lab), Chair, Labour Party Ethnic Minority Taskforce Daily Telegraph, 10 August 2006 [Letter to the Editor] |
It is ... regrettable that some
commentators have already jumped to the conclusion that immigration acts as
a drain on the national exchequer. As a
recent report by the Ernst & Young Item Club concluded, immigration from
other EU countries has helped to keep inflation under control, boost
economic output and in fact raised tax revenue by £300 million in
2006.
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Benefits and costs
Legal aid for asylum seekers tops £1bn Jonathan Wynne-Jones Sunday Telegraph, 6 August 2006 |
More than a billion pounds of
taxpayers' money has been spent on legal aid in immigration and asylum
cases in the past decade, according to Government figures.
In that period, the amount provided by
the Department for Constitutional Affairs for the cases has nearly
quadrupled - from £29 million in 1996-7 to £107.3 million in
2005-6.
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Benefits and costs population
Blair admits he has no policy on population George Jones Daily Telegraph, 5 July 2006 |
The Government has no policy for
controlling the size of Britain's population, Tony Blair admitted
yesterday. ... Tony Wright, the Labour MP
for Cannock Chase, told Mr Blair that Britain's population had topped 60
million for the first time last year and was expected to rise 12 per cent
over the next generation. The rises were equivalent to having a new Oxford,
a new Middlesbrough and a new Ipswich every year, and migration was the
main driver of the rise. ... Mr Wright
urged Mr Blair to set up a commission to give a cost and benefit analysis
about different levels of population. ...
Asked if the Government had a population
policy, Mr Blair replied: "No, but we do have a migration policy
obviously." He agreed with an MP's
suggestion that the issue was "political dynamite". He said it was
difficult to give objective facts on the benefits and "disbenefits" of
migration. Migration on the whole was
positive and with benefit to countries but it needed to be controlled.
Asked if thousands of people could be deported, even if they had been in
Britain for several years, he said there was "no easy way" of dealing with
the issue. But allowing all illegal
migrants to stay would encourage many more to come, he said. ...
Gwyneth Dunwoody, the Labour MP for Crewe
and Nantwich, told Mr Blair that a large influx of migrants from the new EU
states was putting schools and housing under strain in some areas.
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Benefits and costs
Never have we seen immigration on this scale: we just can't cope Robert Rowthorn, professor of economics at King's College, Cambridge Sunday Telegraph, 2 July 2006 |
As an academic economist, I have
examined many serious studies that have analysed the economic effects of
immigration. There is no evidence from any of them that large-scale
immigration generates large-scale economic benefits for the existing
population as a whole. On the contrary, all the research suggests that the
benefits are either close to zero, or negative.
Immigration can't solve the pensions
crisis, nor solve the problem of an ageing population, as its advocates so
often claim. It can, at most, delay the day of reckoning, because, of
course, immigrants themselves grow old, and they need pensions. The
injection of large numbers of unskilled workers into the economy does not
benefit the bulk of the population to any great extent. It benefits the
nanny- and house-cleaner-using classes; it benefits employers who want to
pay low wages; but it does not benefit indigenous, unskilled Britons, who
have to compete with immigrants willing to work hard for very low wages in
unpleasant working conditions. For
low-skilled Britons, the result is that there are only two options: very
low pay or unemployment. ... It is
bizarre that the Labour Party, which still continues to insist that it is
the party of the poor and vulnerable, should endorse a policy the purpose
of which is the creation of what Marx called "a reserve army of labour": a
pool of workers whose presence ensures that rates of pay for cleaners and
ancillary staff in the NHS can be kept as low as possible. ...
Unskilled migrants and their families
often are net consumers of taxes: their children are educated in state
schools, they are looked after when they have medical problems by the NHS,
and they are eligible for state benefits if they are unable to find work.
The new arrivals place a significant strain on the housing stock and
delivery of public services in the neighbourhoods where new immigrants
live: schools, hospitals and GP surgeries become more crowded, and
state-subsidised housing gets more difficult to obtain. ...
At the present rate of 223,000 additional
immigrants every year, though, and adding the children that they will
produce, the population of Britain will grow by more than 12 million to
reach 73.2 million by 2046. There is no parallel for such a huge influx
over a mere 40 years in our recorded history.
Most of the immigrants will settle in
London and the South-East, because that is where the jobs are. There is
already a chronic housing shortage in that part of England, a large portion
of which is due to immigration. ... Exacerbating the housing shortage and
increasing the amount and density of built-on land, however, is only one of
a series of transformations that will be triggered by the constant arrival
of immigrants. They will inevitably completely change the culture and
complexion of many cities. I am not
suggesting that all those changes will be bad, because I am sure that not
all of them will be. While the immigration lobby tries to smear anyone who
questions the benefits of large-scale immigration as "racist", the real
issue is not whether you like or dislike the social changes that the
colossal influx of immigrants will bring. It is rather that the Government
has embarked on a policy that will totally change the nature of many of the
communities in which we live without consulting any of us.
... There was nothing about increasing
immigration in Labour's manifesto of 1997, or of 2001, or of 2005.
... We desperately need an honest debate
on the issue. But if the Government's record is anything to go by, it will
do everything it can to prevent one.
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Benefits and costs
Ten million immigrants 'could help crisis' Edmund Conway Daily Telegraph, 24 June 2006 |
The pensions crisis could be solved
by allowing an extra 10 million migrants into the UK in the next 20 years,
leading economists have suggested.
Experts from the Royal Economic Society
said that the population in the UK was ageing so fast that the workforce -
as it currently stands - would not be able to afford to pay the pensions
bill for their elders. Professors David
Blake and Les Mayhew have produced a study which also concludes that the
government should raise the pension age to 70, and must lift it beyond 65
sooner than it already plans. ... Prof
Blake said: "From a wider perspective, all these things may need to occur -
working longer, increases in migration and increases in contribution
levels. ..."
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Benefits and costs multiculturalism
£700,000 bill for rural police interpreters David Sapsted Daily Telegraph, 16 June 2006 |
A rural police force had to spend
more than £700,000 last year employing interpreters to interview
suspects, victims and witnesses. The
money - the equivalent of a year's pay for 35 beat bobbies - was spent by
the Cambridgeshire police in the year ending March 31.
Not only are the Fens a magnet for
migrant workers and Cambridge a centre for tourists, but Peterborough is a
"cluster" area for immigrants coming into East Anglia.
However, the police authority said
yesterday that some of the people the police had to deal with were second
or even third generation Britons who did not speak English.
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Benefits and costs
Government 'has hidden £200m cost of migrants' Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 25 April 2006 |
Immigrants are a net cost on the
economy and not a benefit as the Government has claimed, a report says
today. The study by Migrationwatch UK
challenges official figures suggesting that immigrants annually contribute
£2.5 billion more to the economy in taxes than they receive in
benefits and state services. It accuses
Whitehall of using "entirely false" methodology to back up its claims by
failing to take full account of the children of immigrants. ...
The report says the original research,
widely and regularly quoted by ministers, chose the only assumption that
could deliver the "positive" result they were seeking. ...
Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of
Migrationwatch, said: "Our research completely demolishes the Government's
last remaining excuse for the highest levels of immigration in our history
by exposing a serious error in their methodology. The Government has used
this statistic on every possible occasion but now it has been shown up as
entirely worthless." The Home Office
research paper, published in 2002, said that although immigrants cost
£28.8 billion in welfare benefits and state services that year, they
contributed £31.2 billion in taxes.
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Benefits and costs
Of course the wealthy want an immigration free-for-all Polly Toynbee *The Guardian, 11 October 2005 |
Here is a sign of how fast some
Tories are on the move. Tory modernising MP John Bercow has written a
pamphlet slashing and burning his party's election policy on asylum and
immigration. Bercow is one of those who got his U-turn in early, his career
a template for how far the modernisers in the party are travelling. Once a
Thatcherite Tory boy of the far right, then on the move with Portillo, now
he is where his party needs to be - not racist or Daily Mailist but
pragmatic. ... Praise of immigration is
the main thrust of Bercow's pamphlet. His argument for an open immigration
policy is liberal in the free-market sense. A call for free movement of
(cheaper) labour across the globe is, after all, the CBI's one and only
"liberal" policy. Bercow, like Labour,
says that in a global economy the UK needs migrants to fill jobs the
British are "unable or unwilling to do". Migrant workers put in more than
they take out, making a net contribution of £2.5bn. The Home Office
says a 1% increase in immigration yields up to a 1.5% increase in GDP. Of
the entire working population, 10% are now born abroad. The government
agrees with Bercow and is setting up a new skills advisory body to let in
migrants according to business demand.
Bercow and Labour hotly assert that
migrants don't take jobs from British workers nor depress wages. But there
is no evidence for this assertion. It is impossible to know what level
wages might be at or how many unemployed might have been tugged into jobs
at higher pay rates had Britain kept its doors shut to new EU citizens
until their countries had caught up economically.
Blair and Brown embrace the inevitability
of globalisation, but make a deliberately class-blind analysis. Migrants do
bring GDP growth, but remember the Gate Gourmet workers fired to make way
for cheaper newly arrived workers. Migrants add to the profits of the
company and thus to GDP. They keep down the cost of flying for people
wealthy enough to fly. They also hold down the pay rate for all other
low-paid workers, keeping wage inflation remarkably low and the Bank of
England very happy. ... Try this thought
experiment: 43.5% of nurses recruited by the NHS since 1999 come from
outside the UK. What if that were banned? The NHS in London would find
clever ways to recruit from the city's mass of underqualified boys and
girls, single mothers and other non-workers. Recruiters might set up
special classes for 14-year-olds interested in nursing, promising work as
nursing assistants while they trained, places to live in attractive nurses'
homes, starter homes for key-worker families, status and good pay. The
offer would be irresistible, and yes, taxes would be higher. ...
[Incoming Assets: Why Tories should
change policy on immigration and asylum, by John Bercow MP, is published by
the Social Market Foundation.]
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Benefits and costs
Taboo topic [1] Thomas Sowell The Social Contract, Fall 2005 |
Immigration has joined the long list
of subjects on which it is taboo to talk sense in plain English. At the
heart of much confusion about immigration is the notion that we "need"
immigrants - legal or illegal - to do work that Americans won't do.
What we "need" depends on what it costs
and what we are willing to pay. If I were a billionaire, I might "need" my
own private jet. But I can remember a time when my family didn't even
"need" electricity. Leaving prices out of
the picture is probably the source of more fallacies in economics than any
other single misconception. At current wages for low-level jobs and current
levels of welfare, there are indeed many jobs that Americans will not take.
The fact that immigrants - and especially
illegal immigrants - will take those jobs is the very reason the wage
levels will not rise enough to attract Americans.
This is not rocket science. It is
elementary supply and demand. Yet we continue to hear about the "need" for
immigrants to do jobs that Americans will not do - even though these are
all jobs that Americans have done for generations before mass illegal
immigration became a way of life.
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Benefits and costs
Taboo topic [2] Thomas Sowell The Social Contract, Fall 2005 |
Europeans and Americans have for
decades been playing Russian roulette with their loose immigration
policies. The intelligentsia have told us that it would be wrong, and even
racist, to set limits based on where the immigrants come from. ...
In that rhetoric, all differences between
peoples are magically transformed into mere "stereotypes" and
"perceptions." This blithely ignores hard
data showing, for example, that people who come here from some countries
are ten times more likely to go on welfare as people from some other
countries. The media and the
intelligentsia love to say that most immigrants, from whatever group, are
good people. But what "most" people from a given country are like is
irrelevant. If 85 per cent of group A are
fine people and 95 per cent of group B are fine people, that means you are
going to be importing three times as many undesirables when you let in
people from group A. ... In the current
climate of political correctness it is taboo even to mention facts that go
against the rosy picture of immigrants - for example, the fact that Russia
and Nigeria are always listed among the most corrupt countries on earth,
and that Russian and Nigerian immigrants in the United States have already
established patterns of crime well known to law enforcement but kept from
the public by the mainstream media.
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Benefits and costs myths
Large-scale immigration has prompted a flood of shoddy economic thinking Ruth Lea Daily Telegraph, 19 April 2004 |
In November 2003, David Blunkett,
defending the Government's immigration policy, asserted that "legal
migrants brought economic benefits" and there was "no obvious limit" to the
number of immigrants who could settle in the UK. In other words, the quite
unprecedented large-scale immigration of a net 200,000 to 250,000 a year
into Britain was not just perfectly acceptable, but there was no obvious
reason why it should not be higher. ...
... ... Finally, I would like to dispel a
couple of myths about immigration. The first is that large-scale
immigration is necessary for buoyant economic growth. But this was most
emphatically not the case in post-war Japan. The second is that the
native-born British "will not do certain jobs". But they do these jobs in
parts of the country where there are very few immigrants.
Clearly, immigration does bring economic
benefits but there are, equally clearly, costs as well. The Government
should really be prepared to give us the whole picture.
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BIAS |
Bias BBC
Now it's the BBC that blunder over immigration statistics Migrationwatch UK, 1 May 2010 |
On the 10 o'clock TV news on 30
April, the BBC "Reality Check" claimed that, in 2008, there was a net
outflow of non EU workers of 8,000 so the real pressure on British jobs was
from a net inflow of 46,000 EU workers which none of the parties had any
plans to control. To do so Britain would have to leave the EU a
policy advocated only by UKIP and the BNP.
The real situation is that about 100,000
non EU workers arrived in that year (including an estimate for dependants).
The available statistics do not reliably indicate how many left. The
proportion of those arriving was almost double the BBC's figure. ...
Commenting, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman
Migrationwatch UK, said: "The BBC of all
people should get their facts right on a subject as sensitive as
immigration, especially when they describe their report as a "reality
check". It would have helped if they had paid more attention to immigration
policy in the past."
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Bias BBC, housing
Migrant housing figures Emeritus Professor Mervyn Stone Daily Telegraph, 25 July 2009 [Letter to the Editor] |
Here is how the BBC covered its
embarrassment at having trumpeted the recent Equalities and Human Rights
Commission report denying bias in social housing allocation.
Thursday's radio programme, The
Report, was trailed on News at One with the heady information
that the BBC had found some people in Birmingham with a perception (not a
belief, be it noted) that there is bias in favour of migrants and,
balancing that news, that Civitas had cast doubt on the EHRC claim.
The programme dealt, largely anecdotally,
with those perceptions and only briefly with the deceptively smallest of
the statistical percentages out of which the EHRC had constructed its
claim. Among other irrelevancies, Civitas
was given a Right-of-centre sticker, but the Government's favoured think
tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, was left untarnished.
MigrationWatch's Sir Andrew Green was
allowed to make some prerecorded observations that could have been
interpreted as value judgments. Given that Green usually argues from
numbers, I for one would like to know what was left behind in the editing
room.
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Bias religion
Church leaders believe anti-Christian bias rife Jonathan Wynne-Jones Sunday Telegraph, 15 February 2009 |
Almost two thirds of the Church of
England General Synod believe Christians are the victims of discrimination
in the workplace. A survey of members of
the Church's parliament found that 63 per cent of them felt that Christians
faced discrimination at work. ... While
59 per cent agreed that they had seen a decline in religious liberty over
the past decade, 38 per cent of members disagreed. ...
Church leaders have made impassioned
pleas to Christians to stand up for their beliefs.
... However, Synod members were divided
on whether Christianity should be exempt from equality legislation.
While there are limited exemptions for
religious employers under equality regulations, a significant number of
respondents said that the Church should not be given the opportunity to opt
out. ... The Sunday Telegraph
survey was of 80 of the Synod's 484 members, including bishops, clergy and
laity.
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Bias religion
Losing our religion Olga Craig and Patrick Sawer Sunday Telegraph, 15 February 2009 |
And nowhere, according to councillor
Alan Craig, of the Christian People's Alliance, is that wake-up call more
vital than in the classrooms. "There is clearly growing discrimination
against Christianity in our schools," he says. Teachers are being prevented
from implementing policies that may be opposed by some Muslim parents by
the fear of an Islamic backlash, believes Craig. ...
In England and Wales, the law states that
children at state schools "shall, on each school day, take part in an act
of collective worship" which should be "wholly or mainly of a broadly
Christian character". In the light of the many instances of Nativity plays
being banned and Christ's birth being celebrated at "Wintermass" rather
than Christmas, Craig points out that it is difficult to remember that the
Christian element of religious education is statutory. ...
Government proposals aimed at giving
increased legal rights to Muslims have left many wondering if the result
will be a further clampdown on Christianity. The measures will force
councils, schools, hospitals and other public bodies to treat members of
all faiths equally. The result, says Simon Calvert, of the Christian
Institute, could be a fresh onslaught of politically correct rulings. "We
are worried that this will further squeeze out Christians," he says.
"Christian groups already find it difficult to get funding from local
councils." He fears that town hall bureaucrats could "over interpret and
gold-plate" measures. "It will simply mean more of the politically correct
rulings, such as banning Christmas celebrations and crucifixes from the
work place."
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Bias free speech
Whatever happened to free speech? Philip Johnston Daily Telegraph, 13 February 2009 |
The refusal to admit the oddball
Dutch MP Geert Wilders to Britain yesterday marks a further retreat from
this country's traditions of free speech. ... ...
Yet what possible threat to public
security is posed by a Dutch MP showing a film, in private, to a smattering
of peers on a Thursday afternoon in February? Of itself, the film does not
call for violence against Muslims; indeed, it suggests that Islam is a
cause of violence, a view with which you are entitled to agree or feel
strongly about, but not to prohibit. The
reason for the ban appears to have been the possibility of protests by some
Muslim organisations against Wilders's visit. In other words, his freedom
to express a view and the liberty of peers to hear it in an institution
supposedly devoted to free speech, were set aside in the face of
intimidation the opposite of what happened in the Rushdie case, even
if that author was forced into hiding.
What is particularly insidious is the
application of double standards. One of those most opposed to Wilders's
visit is the Muslim peer Lord Ahmed, though he denies allegations that he
warned parliamentary authorities that 10,000 demonstrators would take to
the streets. Yet two years ago, Lord Ahmed invited Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a
Palestinian previously detained on suspicion of fundraising for groups
linked to al-Qaeda, to Westminster to meet him. When he was criticised for
doing so, he said it was his parliamentary duty to hear Rideh's complaints.
He does not appear to see any contradiction with the position he now adopts
against his fellow peers. ... ... Free
speech is about understanding that some people hold a different view from
you, whether you like it or not. When we start to alert the "authorities"
to thought crimes we really are one step away from the dystopian world that
Orwell invented as a warning, not a prophecy.
The Government that has treated our
liberties in such a cavalier way is having none of this, of course. David
Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said the film made by Wilders was "full of
hate" and therefore fell foul of British laws, though he admitted that he
had not seen it and therefore could not judge. But, in any case, is he
right? Is it against the law? People have
always been free under the criminal law to speak their minds, provided they
did not, in doing so, incite others to commit violence or infringe public
order. ... However, it is necessary to demonstrate that the words
complained of are likely to stir up hatred and public disorder, not merely
to complain that they are unpleasant or objectionable to some. Imams have
been allowed to continue preaching in mosques when it could be argued that
they have overstepped this mark, as when they have called for the death of
homosexuals or Jews. Wilders is no
advertisement for free speech. After all, he wants the Koran to be banned.
But that is not the point. It is what this affair says about us, not him,
that matters. Is Britain now adopting a position where people who support
suicide bombers and jihad are able to make known their opinions without
legal challenge, whereas those who oppose them cannot?
The very people who in 1989 were
demanding the murder of Salman Rushdie for writing a book are today leading
the charge against a Dutch MP for making a film. The fundamental difference
is that 20 years ago, the government supported free speech; today, it has
cravenly surrendered. It is simply not good enough to say that Wilders
should not be heard because he might provoke a backlash from those who do
not like him or his views. That is not upholding the law. That is
appeasement.
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Bias BBC, racism
Golly: now we know what's truly offensive Charles Moore Daily Telegraph, 5 February 2009 |
Commenting on the BBC's decision to
sack Carol Thatcher from The One Show because she described a tennis player
as looking like a "golliwog", a spokesman for the corporation said: "The
BBC considers any language of a racist nature wholly unacceptable." ...
If Carol used the supposedly shocking
word "golliwog", you can be quite sure that she used it without malice
indeed, with good will. The worst that you could possibly say about
her was that her choice of words was thoughtless.
But, before you say that, you come to the
second question. Since when has the BBC decided that what is said off
screen, in the studio, is a matter of career life or death? I have spent
more hours than I care to remember sitting in BBC studios, and the remarks
I have heard in them, often delivered by household names, have frequently
strayed I am putting this politely from the standards
supposedly demanded by the BBC on air. I have heard racism (usually against
Americans), sexism (usually against Carol's mother), blasphemy, obscenity,
rage, bias. If I had decided to profess myself "shocked" (as Adrian Chiles,
the presenter of The One Show, did), and if I had then sneaked to the
authorities, would the speaker have been thrown out of his job? Should he
have been? A BBC executive might argue
though I would disagree that the word "golliwog" is so
offensive that it should never be broadcast. As an experienced broadcaster
herself, Carol Thatcher might be expected to be aware of that sensitivity
and be careful about it. But she was not broadcasting. She committed no
offence, professional or moral not even, since the person she
described was not in the room, an offence of manners. ...
A third question arises for the
corporation. We have it from its spokesman's own lips that any racist
language is "wholly unacceptable". How does that square with its fervent
commitment, constantly repeated in the affair of Jonathan Ross, to "cutting
edge" comedy? ... You and I might think
that the joys of "edgy" comedy are overrated, but if we are to have it,
wouldn't it be edgier to have words like "golliwog" scattered about as
well? Why not antagonise Disgusted of Brixton, as well as Disgusted of
Tunbridge Wells? ... So this affair
enables us to understand better what the BBC is really up to when it pays
Jonathan Ross so much money to swear and talk on screen about bodily
functions and sex with octogenarians for hours on end. It is not engaged in
a brave, if misguided, attempt to challenge the conventional opinions of
viewers in general in order to shake them out of their complacency and
strike a blow for artistic innovation. If that were the case, it would also
insult homosexuals, the prophet Mohammed, President Obama, racial
minorities, and anyone else who qualifies for the strangely assorted club
of those who earn special deference from our modern elites.
No, what the BBC is doing is the cultural
target-bombing of people who are very numerous, but whose attitudes do not
accord with those of its senior executives old people, white people,
Christian people, monarchist people, people who value politeness,
conservative people, provincial people, suburban people, rural people
many people, I suspect, who are reading this article.
[Site link] |
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Bias BBC, multiculturalism, diversity
How to save the BBC from itself (and get its hand out of our pockets) Jeff Randall Daily Telegraph, 4 July 2008 [Jeff Randall was the BBC's business editor, 2001-05] |
In 2003, I was fighting an internal
battle to bring more balance to the BBC's coverage of immigration. I felt
that some of its reporters had been programmed to promote the benefits of
cultural diversity as an incontrovertible fact.
Fed up with what he perceived to be my
subversion, one of the BBC's most senior figures sent me an email: "The BBC
internally is not neutral about multiculturalism. It believes in it and
promotes diversity. Let's face up to that."
I was amazed that he felt unembarrassed
to put this in a formal memo. It revealed an arrogant mindset at odds with
millions of his customers. Impartiality was fine, but only if it confirmed
the prejudices of the BBC's editorial elite, the self-appointed custodians
of liberal values.
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Bias BBC
BBC is fuelling attacks on Poles, says MP Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 5 June 2008 |
The BBC was accused yesterday of
fuelling racist attacks on Polish immigrants.
The Conservative MP Danny Kawczynski said
that the BBC's coverage of immigration issues tended to concentrate on
Poles even though most immigrants to Britain came from outside Europe.
The result, he said, was a rising number
of assaults on Poles living here. Mr
Kawczynski highlighted his concerns in the Commons when he introduced a
Bill calling for a bank holiday to mark the positive contribution that
Poles have made to the United Kingdom since 1940.
"The liberal elite of the BBC constantly
refer to immigration from Poland because they are using the Polish
community as a cat's paw to try to tackle the thorny issue of mass
unchecked immigration into our country," he said.
Mr Kawczynski, who represents Shrewsbury
and Atcham, also said discrimination would not be allowed if targeted at
other ethnic groups. ...
Romania is planning a campaign to
encourage some of its estimated 50,000 citizens living in Britain to return
home and help meet a chronic labour shortage.
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Bias border security
Taxpayers fund TV series on migrants Lucy Cockcroft Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2008 |
The Home Office is spending
£400,000 of taxpayers' money to fund a television documentary that
will aim to convince the public that it is beating the problem of illegal
immigration. The eight-part series, which
follows immigration officers on their duties, marks the biggest investment
the department has made to promote its work enforcing border controls.
It is part of a drive by Jacqui Smith,
the Home Secretary, to show she is tough on illegal immigration.
The series, which will be shown on Sky
One, will acknowledge the co-operation the Government has given to the
production company, Steadfast Television.
However, there will be no mention that it
has been partly financed by the Home Office, raising questions about how
impartial it will be.
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Bias
Mirror pays out over lobby group slur Stephen Brook The Guardian, 26 November 2007 |
The Daily Mirror has agreed to pay
costs and damages to Migrationwatch UK, after star columnist Brian Reade
compared the lobby group to the Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan.
In today's paper the Mirror apologised to
the organisation's head, Sir Andrew Green, and said it had agreed to pay
damages after Reade's column on September 13. ...
"We accept that the allegations were
untrue," the paper said in an apology on page 18 today.
[Site link] |
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Bias BBC
BBC viewers angered by its 'innate liberal bias' Nicole Martin Daily Telegraph, 19 June 2007 |
The BBC is operating in a
"leftleaning comfort zone" and has an "innate liberal bias" according to a
report commissioned by the corporation.
The report, From Seesaw to Wagon
Wheel, said that the BBC's drift towards a liberal-minded approach to
programmes risked stifling originality and angering viewers.
Mark Byford, the BBC's deputy
director-general, said: "Impartiality is a core value for the BBC, which is
non-negotiable and central to its relationship with licence-fee payers.
"As audience behaviours change and the
media landscape develops rapidly, the BBC has to keep asking itself how
best to safeguard impartiality in this digital age."
Andrew Marr, the BBC's former political
editor, said at a seminar last year that the BBC is "a publicly funded
urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people,
of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people compared
with the population at large." ... A
survey of viewers found that the corporation was generally seen as
impartial. However, some respondents felt
it had gone "too far" in its representation of racial minorities and was
too politically correct. ... Most
respondents outside south-east England believed that they were
under-represented.
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Bias BBC
The BBC can't kick its addiction to bias Damian Thompson Daily Telegraph, 19 June 2007 |
Yesterday the BBC Trust published
From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel, an 81-page report with the subtitle
"Safeguarding Impartiality in the 21st Century". That's a bit like the late
Boris Yeltsin talking about safeguarding his sobriety. It is, however, the
first time the corporation has attempted to address the question, so we
should read the report carefully. The
first reaction is to sigh with relief. The report acknowledges that
"mainstream opinion" was wrong to attack monetarism, to belittle
Euro-sceptics as small-minded and blinkered, and to assume that
multi-culturalism would solve the problems of immigration. ...
This report is a step in the right
direction. But, as anyone who has ever dealt with an alcoholic will
confirm, it is best not to get your hopes up. Nothing will happen without a
desire to change; and I don't think Auntie is ready to come off the sauce.
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Bias adoptions
The improved lot of Romanian orphans Lady Nicholson of Winterbourne, MEP Daily Telegraph, 14 November 2006 |
There have been protests about
Romania's decision to ban international adoptions, coming from individual
politicians in France and America, but these are the result of the
multi-million-dollar lobby for international adoptions - a lobby that
represents a shadowy, unaccountable and deeply unethical industry.
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Bias BBC
The BBC's commitment to bias is no laughing matter Tom Leonard Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2006 |
But no matter how much BBC bosses
swear blind there is no problem, the issue refuses to go away. Why? Because
for many licence-payers, the BBC's skewed assumptions about what the world
is about and how its inhabitants should think is the most annoying thing
about it - more annoying than dumbing down, than the universal licence fee,
than Jonathan Ross's £18 million pay packet. More annoying even than
Natasha Kaplinsky. And particularly infuriating when the BBC denies it
outright, as did Michael Grade, the BBC chairman, in an article published a
few days before a governors' impartiality summit a month ago.
... Anyway, embarrassingly it emerged ...
that even some of his most senior journalists disagreed. Andrew Marr,
hardly one of the BBC's token Right- wingers, declared that the BBC "is not
impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an
abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people".
It has, he added, "a liberal bias, not so much a party-political bias. It
is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."
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Bias BBC, multiculturalism
We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News Simon Walters Mail on Sunday, 21 October 2006 |
It was the day that a host of BBC
executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them
for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are
biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.
A leaked account of an 'impartiality
summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new
row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning
Muslims and the war on terror. It
reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a
TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an
interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it
discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders
to be allowed to wear veils when on air.
At the secret meeting in London last
month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives
admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic
minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American,
anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than
Christians. One veteran BBC executive
said: 'There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far
in the direction of political correctness.
'Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply
embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it.' ...
The full account of the meeting shows how
senior BBC figures queued up to lambast their employer.
Political pundit Andrew Marr said: 'The
BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation
with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay
people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is
better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.'
Washington correspondent Justin Webb said
that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark
Byford had secretly agreed to help him to 'correct', it in his reports.
Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it
'no moral weight'. Former BBC business
editor Jeff Randall said he complained to a 'very senior news executive',
about the BBC's pro-multicultural stance but was given the reply: 'The BBC
is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.'
... There was another heated debate when
the summit discussed whether the BBC was too sensitive about criticising
black families for failing to take responsibility for their children.
Head of news Helen Boaden disclosed that
a Radio 4 programme which blamed black youths at a young offenders'
institution for bullying white inmates faced the axe until she stepped in.
But Ms Fitzpatrick, who has said that the
BBC should not use white reporters in non-white countries, argued it had a
duty to 'contextualise' why black youngsters behaved in such a way.
Andrew Marr told The Mail on Sunday last
night: 'The BBC must always try to reflect Britain, which is mostly a
provincial, middle-of-the-road country. Britain is not a mirror image of
the BBC or the people who work for it.'
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BORDER CONTROLS |
Border controls European Union
5,900 Afghan children get into EU Daily Express, 14 June 2010 |
The UN has revealed that more than
5,900 Afghan children were smuggled into Europe last year.
Antonio Guterres, the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees, said in a report that more and more children are
escaping from Afghanistan due to worsening living conditions in their
homeland. The agency said children are
being pushed by their parents to leave with smugglers in order to earn
money in Europe before sending it back to their families in Afghanistan.
The report said: "Afghan parents,
families and communities have allowed and encouraged the departure of their
children on hazardous journeys." The
agency also found that almost half of under-age asylum claims in Europe
last year were made by Afghan youths.
[Site link] |
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Border controls politics
Facing up to immigration David Blunkett, MP (Lab) Daily Telegraph, 9 June 2010 [Letter to the Editor] |
... I'm so disappointed that Philip
Johnston's obsession with "freeing" us all from an identity register was
again paraded in yesterday's Daily Telegraph. He failed to
appreciate the contradictions of the arguments he put. We need biometrics
and a clean database precisely to determine who is in the country, who is
entitled to work legally, who is leaving the country (you can't have
embarkation exit requirements without it), and for a clampdown on massive
identity fraud, which costs us dear in so many ways.
I am very proud of the measures that I
was able to push through Parliament as home secretary in the teeth of a
combination of the libertarian Right and the blinkered Left. I am only
saddened that in those battles I was not joined by those so keen to rewrite
history in relation to getting a grip on unwarranted and unauthorised entry
into our country, illegal (and thus clandestine) working, and asylum claims
now back to 1992 levels.
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Border controls climate change
Plea for a bigger navy to keep out climate immigration John Ingham Daily Express, 31 May 2010 |
Britain needs a bigger Navy to stave
off mass immigration caused by climate change, green guru James Lovelock
claimed yesterday. Starvation could
follow if Britain's shores are not protected, he said.
Dr Lovelock, 90, said that as the world
population rises, climate change would trigger mass immigration north.
And Britain would be seen as a "liferaft"
on to which the dispossessed would scramble.
The moderating effect of the surrounding
seas may help us escape the worst effects of climate change, he said.
Dr Lovelock, who in the 1960s invented
the Gaia theory that the Earth is a self-regulating entity, said mass
migration was already under way. At the
Hay Festival of Literature in Herefordshire he said: "Do you know that
Italy now has a larger navy than we do and it is to keep immigrants from
Africa out? "We are a bit of a liferaft
but there is only a limited number of people that this island can support."
Dr Lovelock, a patron of the Optimum Population Trust which campaigns for a
gradual global population decrease, said that with 60 million people
Britain may already be at its optimum size.
"So what are we going to do?" he said.
"The people who are going to come here are going to starve and so are we
a larger Navy may be the answer."
The Royal Navy is facing cuts in the
Strategic Defence Review. One senior officer told the Daily Express that
meeting its current commitments was already an "awesome challenge".
[Site link] |
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Border controls
Axing immigration staff 'could see Dover overrun' James Slack MailOnline, 30 April 2010 |
Fears were raised last night that the
key port of Dover could be overrun by illegal immigrants after it emerged
Labour is to axe a whole tier of senior border staff.
All 24 staff with the title immigration
officer - responsible for deciding whether migrants should be let into the
country - will lose their jobs. They have
been credited with 40 per cent of all the removals of illegal immigrants
from Kent last year. But the UK Border
Agency plans to use cheaper junior staff who will not have the same powers
to challenge those suspected of being illegal immigrants or potential visa
over-stayers. In another blow, proposals
are also being made to shut down the 60-bed Dover detention centre. The
facility is used to detain offenders before deportation and to hold
immigrants awaiting interview. Sue
Kendal, branch secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said:
'Dover is losing its entire immigration officer team and we are in danger
of reverting to the bad old days of mass influxes.
'We risk leaving the door open for a
free-for-all, including people who want to harm the UK. The Government
talks tough but in reality it is cutting front-line officers.'
Two chief immigration officers will also
be axed, leaving just five, and assistant officers will decrease from 23 to
21. Further cuts in nearby Folkestone take the job losses to 30, according
to unions.
[Site link] |
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Border controls illegal, amnesty
Lessons learnt in Spain and Italy Robert Winnett Daily Telegraph, 26 April 2010 |
Several other countries have
introduced amnesties to try to curtail problems associated with illegal
immigration. However, amnesties have led
to the number of illegal immigrants increasing. ...
For example, Spain has had four
amnesties. The first, in 1985-86, led to 44,000 immigrants coming forward.
This grew to 135,000 in 1991 and 314,000 in 2001. The last amnesty, in
2005, saw 700,000 illegal immigrants granted the right to live in the
country. Spain has the highest
immigration rate of any major European country and recently introduced
payments for migrants returning home.
Italy has had a series of amnesties. One,
in 1987-88, uncovered 119,000 illegal immigrants. Another, in 1990, led to
235,000 illegal immigrants coming forward, while a 1998 amnesty uncovered a
further 308,000.
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Border controls education
Foreign student visas up 40,000 Robert Mendick Sunday Telegraph, 18 April 2010 |
More than 40,000 extra foreign
students were allowed into Britain from just seven countries last year,
casting new doubt on the effectiveness of the Government's "tough" new visa
system. Official Home Office figures show
100,000 student visas were granted in the academic year to September 2009
an increase of almost 40,000 on the previous 12 months.
Critics say the 63 per cent jump
equivalent to filling two universities the size of Oxford exposes
the ease with which students have been able to manipulate the points-based
visa system introduced by the Government last year.
The students come from seven countries:
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Malaysia and Nigeria. ...
The new figures, revealed in a
parliamentary answer, show that 99,932 students successfully applied for
visas up until September 2009 with huge rises in the six months
after the points system was introduced in March. ...
Sir Andrew Green, the former diplomat who
runs the immigration think tank MigrationWatch UK, said: "This blows out of
the water government claims about their points-based system being 'tough'."
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Border controls
And another thing Nigel Farndale Sunday Telegraph, 11 April 2010 |
I have two pet pigs which I was given
by a friend last summer, one who lives a mere five country miles away. The
paperwork from Defra has been unbelievable long forms that have to
be filled out in triplicate, passports, holding numbers and so on. You then
have to contact the local council, the vet, and some other agency in
Reading whose name escapes me. And even after all this, I have had three
visits from Defra officials, double-checking the information on my forms.
The problem was that the friend dropped
the pigs off in a trailer one day without first filling in a transportation
form. I dare say this is petty stuff compared to the bureaucratic hoops my
farming cousins have to go through. ...
Anyway, it strikes me that it must be
easier to move about the country as an illegal immigrant these days than it
is as a pet pig.
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Border controls
Immigration staff claim borders are too open Daily Telegraph, 10 April 2010 |
One in four immigration staff
believes they are doing a good job in controlling Britain's borders, an
internal survey has found. Most staff say
the UK Border Agency is not improving while only half think they have the
tools and information to do their job.
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Border controls Cambodia, South Korea, marriage
Cambodia suspends marriages to South Koreans Asia One, 19 March 2010 |
Cambodia has suspended marriages
between South Koreans and its citizens to curb human trafficking, the
foreign ministry said Friday. 'We sent a
note to the South Korean embassy on March 5 informing them about the
temporary suspension in marriage applications between Cambodians and South
Koreans,' ministry spokesman Koy Kuong told AFP. ...
South Korean news agency Yonhap reported
Friday that the number of Cambodian women marrying Korean men had more than
doubled, from 551 in 2008 to 1,372 last year.
In March 2008 Cambodia imposed a ban on
foreign marriages to prevent human trafficking, amid concerns over an
explosion in the number of brokered unions involving South Korean men and
poor Cambodian women. The ban followed an
International Organisation for Migration report that said many Cambodian
brides suffered abuse after moving to South Korea in marriages hastily
arranged by brokers who made large profits.
The restriction was lifted about eight
months later after new laws were introduced to prevent women becoming
mail-order brides.
[Site link] |
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Border controls crime
£7,000 price of being smuggled over Channel Peter Allen Daily Telegraph, 4 March 2010 |
Hundreds of illegal migrants were
regularly smuggled to Britain from France as part of a discounted "bulk
service" provided by the "Baghdad ring" of people smugglers, a Paris court
heard yesterday. The £7,000-a-head
operation saw 1,000 foreigners transported to Channel ports such as Calais
and Cherbourg, where they were encouraged to jump aboard lorries heading
for England and other parts of northern Europe between early 2007 and
mid-2008. Once in Britain, migrants,
primarily Iraqis, but also Iranians, Afghanis, Pakistanis and Chinese,
would claim asylum, or else disappear into jobs in the black economy. ...
Details of the ease with which the
smugglers, mainly Pakistanis and Afghan nationals, regularly evaded British
customs and security checks emerged as the 28 suspected smugglers went on
trial in the Criminal Correctional Court in Paris.
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Border controls education
Tenth of student visas via suspect colleges Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 27 February 2010 |
More than one in 10 foreign students
is arriving in Britain through bogus or suspect colleges, figures have
shown. Up to 30,000 students are
registered with colleges that the Home Office has either banned or is
investigating on suspicion they are a front for illegal immigration,
raising fresh concerns over security.
That figure is equivalent to at least a
tenth of the 236,470 student visas granted in 2008-09. The data have led to
concerns that the student visa system is being exploited by criminals,
illegal migrants and potential terrorists.
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Border controls visas, education, employment
Immigration officer takes minister to task Daily Telegraph, 11 February 2010 |
An immigration officer rounded on
Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, yesterday over lax new entry controls
that leave staff powerless to reject suspect students.
Lisa Lea grilled the Cabinet minister,
who is ultimately her boss, in front of an audience and the head of the UK
Border Agency. She claimed the new student visa is a "waste of time".
Ms Lea, who works at Heathrow airport,
complained that officials had been stripped of their powers to interview
and reject immigrants who they think are coming here to work.
This was because entirely paper-based
applications had led to a huge increase in arrivals in recent months. ...
Mr Johnson defended the new rules,
adding: "If interviewing all potential students was so successful, why have
we got so many student overstayers who come here legally without the
intention of studying? It wasn't a foolproof system."
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Border controls
Immigration service is failing, says watchdog Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 9 February 2010 |
The UK Border Agency cannot perform
even "basic" functions and is a "very long way" from effectively removing
failed asylum seekers, a watchdog warns today.
It has let a backlog of 110,000
applications for leave to remain and for residence in Britain build up, a
report by Ann Abraham, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, found.
Ms Abraham said the agency risked losing
public faith. Her report, Fast and Fair? was drawn up after she
became concerned over the number and nature of complaints against the
agency. ... The agency is already
handling up to 450,000 historic asylum cases, but dealing with those and
foreign national prisoners who should have been deported, which became a
priority, has caused delays in other areas, the report said. Making up the
110,000 backlog are 33,000 applications for leave to remain and 77,000 for
residence under European laws, such as relatives of citizens of the
European Economic Area. ... It also
emerged that illegal immigrants who stay undetected in Britain for 14 years
can apply for indefinite leave to stay under a 40-year-old rule.
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Border controls
New foreign student visa curbs Patrick Hennessy Sunday Telegraph, 7 February 2010 |
The number of foreign students given
visas is to be slashed in an attempt to curb widespread abuse of the
system. ... Ministers believe the new
rules to be introduced before the general election will slash
the numbers coming to Britain by tens of thousands.
In 2008, 233,000 student visas were
granted, with another 140,000 people granted entry as "student visitors".
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Border controls marriage, visas
Marriage scam drives Indian demand for UK visas Dean Nelson Daily Telegraph, 2 February 2010 |
A surge in advertisements for sham
marriages is behind the huge increase in Indian student visa applications
to Britain, officials and immigration experts said yesterday.
They were speaking after Britain was
forced to suspend temporarily applications from India, Bangladesh and
Nepal. It followed a rise in requests for visas from 1,800 to 13,500 from
the same period last year. The suspension
is an embarrassment since it comes a year after Britain introduced a new
points-based system for assessing applicants.
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Border controls visas, education, employment
Immigration controls being undermined by judges David Barrett Sunday Telegraph, 31 January 2010 |
Judges are undermining Britain's
immigration controls by allowing students who have fragrantly breached the
rules to remain in the country, ... Home
Office efforts to prevent foreign students from extending their visas have
been overturned by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal even when the
immigrants have broken the rules by setting up businesses or working for
more hours than they are permitted. ...
Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister,
said he was disappointed by the tribunal's rulings. ...
In a new case, a 29-year-old Ghanaian
student at the University of Sunderland was caught working as a security
guard for more than the permitted 20 hours a week, and the Home Office
refused his application to stay in Britain. He appealed to the tribunal,
and it ruled in September that deporting him would breach his human rights.
... Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of
MigrationWatch UK, a pressure group, said: "With 250,000 students admitted
every year from outside the European Union, we simply cannot afford to have
conditions which have been voluntarily accepted by the students undermined
in this extraordinary way."
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Border controls France
'Sangatte II' opens by Calais ferry port ... and it's on street called England Square Peter Allen Daily Mail, 29 January 2010 |
A vast new welcome centre for
Britain-bound illegal migrants has opened in Calais.
Local charities were today accepting the
first new residents of the 2,000 sq ft hangar close to the French town's
ferry port. It is already being dubbed
'Sangatte II' after the former Red Cross centre which attracted thousands
of illegal foreigners before it was razed to the ground in 2002.
And the fact that the new hangar is on
Place d'Angleterre, or England Square, has not been lost on the charity
workers. 'It's very appropriate,' said
one. 'England is where almost everyone who stays here will want to end up.
We'll be able to look after hundreds at a time.'
News of the latest building comes just
eight months after France's Immigration Minister Eric Besson said he would
make the town 'watertight' to those trying to get to Britain.
But since then the humanitarian situation
has deteriorated to such an extent that both the government and Calais
council fear urgent action is needed.
While they have not yet given official
approval to the new centre, the charities who are renting it believe they
will turn a blind eye. 'We don't envisage
any legal problems,' said a spokesman for the SOS refugee and homeless
charity. 'This is a humanitarian gesture
we're putting the shelter at the disposal of the migrants.
'There are showers, bathrooms and
toilets. It will be heated and there will be blankets and beds.'
Rodolphe Nettier, president of SOS, said
: 'We have initially rented the hangar for a few months, but hope to keep
it open for much longer. The first migrants are due today.'
Mr Nettier said the building was very
secure something which will make it difficult for the police to raid
and arrest the migrants. There will be no
restrictions on who can use the welcome centre, said Mr Nettier. ...
Since the closure of the Jungle in
Calais, further migrant camps have also sprung up in nearby Steenvoorde,
Bailleul and St Omer, with all providing beds, food, clothing shops,
medical care and advice on how to claim asylum.
But the Calais centre will cause
particular outrage, as Mr Besson has insisted time and time again that
there would no official welcome centre in the town.
[Site link] |
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Border controls education
4,000 'bogus' foreign students are still in country Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 13 January 2010 |
Thousands of students who entered
Britain through bogus colleges could still be in the country, the
Government has admitted. More than 4,000
migrants were enrolled in schools, colleges and universities that were
refused an official licence to sponsor foreign students last year, or have
since had their licences stripped, figures obtained by the Tories have
disclosed. Students who were in the
country before the rule change in March have been permitted to stay for the
remainder of their leave, even though the Home Office suspected the
colleges they attended were bogus. ... In
a written answer to a parliamentary question, the Government said there
were 3,940 international students enrolled at those establishments. ...
Another answer showed that 280 students
were enrolled at colleges that have had their licence revoked since March.
Figures in December showed that bogus
colleges were being discovered at a rate of almost two a month.
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Border controls education
Bogus students playing 'weak' UK visa system Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 11 January 2010 |
A large number of bogus students are
slipping into Britain because the new points-based immigration regime is
"significantly weaker" than its predecessor, a leaked Home Office memo has
warned. An immigration intelligence unit
said the student visa system was allowing numerous illegal immigrants to
arrive and officers at ports of entry were powerless to stop them, ...
Bogus students who were refused or would have been rejected under the old
regime were being waved through even though border control staff were
convinced that they were not genuine.
Almost 1.5 million student visas have
been issued in the past eight years, including 236,470 in 2008-09, but the
memo to the Home Office from the Heathrow Intelligence Unit claimed that it
was education institutions that were effectively deciding who was allowed
to enter. ... The memo warned that unless
the officers could prove that documents were false they could not refuse
entry and described the new system as a "tick box" process that "removed
the ability of the entry clearance officer to assess credibility of either
the college or the applicant". It said
the concerns were "not unique" to Heathrow.
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Border controls education
Foreign students 'treble under Labour' Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph, 24 December 2009 |
The number of foreigners entering
Britain every year under a controversial student visa scheme has trebled
since Labour came to power a decade ago, research by the Conservatives has
found. Figures uncovered by the Tories
showed that the Government issued 236,470 student visas in 2008-9, a
threefold increase on the number issued in 1998.
The Government's chief immigration
adviser recently said that tens of thousands of foreign students were being
allowed to stay in Britain and find jobs after graduating from colleges
that are not "proper" universities. Students from outside the EU need a
visa to study in the UK and can then apply to stay for a further two years
to look for work. If they find a skilled job, they can remain for three
more years and may eventually be eligible for permanent settlement.
A parliamentary answer showed that while
1,925 organisations had been approved by the UK Border Agency to sponsor
migrant students, there were only 165 universities and higher education
colleges in the UK.
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Border controls people smuggling
Migrant smugglers escaping punishment Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 16 December 2009 |
Hundreds of lorry drivers caught
smuggling illegal immigrants into Britain are escaping punishment because
of backlogs in the immigration system, a report has said.
Thousands of pounds in fines are
outstanding and hundreds of vehicles that should have been seized have not,
some dating back seven years. John Vine,
the chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, said the civil penalties
system had been poorly managed for years and was not serving as a deterrent
to people trafficking. Haulage companies
can be fined up to £4,000 per illegal immigrant if their lorries are
stopped trying to enter the UK with migrants on board. If they fail to pay
up, officials can impound the vehicle.
But, in his first annual report, Mr Vine
said £1.5 million in fines remained unpaid and officials were taking
"little if any action" to seize lorries.
The report criticised senior managers for
"ineffective oversight" and said there was "little effective leadership".
It added: "There was no effective debt
recovery strategy in place to chase unpaid debt."
Junior staff were praised for working
hard to "overcome" problems.
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Border controls politics
MPs criticise £300,000 bonus pot for immigration officials Daily Telegraph, 8 December 2009 |
Senior immigration officials have
shared a bonus pot of almost £300,000, despite the organisation still
not being "fit for purpose", a group of MPs said yesterday.
The Commons home affairs committee
repeated warnings that as many as 300,000 people could be wrongly granted
visas to enter Britain each year because of errors in dealing with
applications. The decision to hand 29
civil servants an average of £10,000 each in financial rewards last
year was attacked as "astonishing" after yet more blunders surrounding the
UK Border Agency. ... Keith Vaz, the
committee chairman, said: "No one can forget the previous home secretary
describing the agency to my predecessor as 'not fit for purpose'.
"The agency has had a lot to contend
with, but it is apparent that UKBA has a long way to go before it is
operating as it should."
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Border controls
French to open another Sangatte as Calais prepares new centre for illegal migrants Peter Allen and James Slack Daily Mail, 8 December 2009 |
A welcome centre for British-bound
illegal migrants is to open in Calais before the end of this year, it
emerged last night. Closely-guarded plans
have been approved by French administrative judges for a structure to be
built close to the town's ferry port. It
is already being dubbed Sangatte II after the former Red Cross centre which
attracted thousands of illegal foreigners before it demolished in 2002.
Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green
said: 'This is another gesture of contempt from France to Britain. The only
result of this will be to encourage more potential illegal immigrants to
try to break our laws. 'The most humane
reaction would be for the French authorities to deal with the asylum
applications themselves.' News of the
latest building comes just seven months after France's immigration minister
Eric Besson said he would make the town 'watertight' to those trying to get
to Britain. But officials say the
situation has deteriorated to such an extent that both the French
government and Calais council feel they have no option to build the centre
on waste ground next to an industrial estate. ...
Officials defended the plan as a
humanitarian response. One said: 'There
are more than 1,000 migrants sleeping rough in the town, and with
temperatures dropping their living conditions are getting worse.'
He said September's destruction of The
Jungle, an illegal shanty town full of mainly Afghan young men, had not had
the desired effect. 'It did not persuade
them to leave, so we have to offer them a basic level of support,' the
official added. Calais mayor Natacha
Bouchart, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP Party, said
the council had been forced to accept the new building as part of a
compromise deal with refugee charity Secours Catholique (Catholic Help).
... Since the closure of The Jungle
further migrant camps have sprung up in nearby Steenvoorde, Bailleul and St
Omer, with all providing beds, food, clothing shops, medical care and
advice on how to claim asylum.
[Site link] |
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Border controls education
How migrant crackdown opened the floodgates David Barrett Sunday Telegraph, 6 December 2009 |
It was meant to end the days when a
place at British college was seen as a ticket to bypass immigration
controls. But the Government's points-based system for supplying student
visas may be making the problem worse ...
An investigation ... has uncovered a
chaotic system which is allowing thousands of foreign nationals to slip
into the country under the pretence that they want to study.
Under the new rules, which came into
effect in March, students must gain 40 "points" to come to Britain: 30 for
holding a course offer and 10 for proving that they can pay the fees and
support themselves. But there is growing
evidence that the system is open to exploitation by those seeking to work
in the black economy, to take advantage of our benefits system and even to
plot a terrorist atrocity. One senior
source said: "At the moment there is massive abuse. The points-based system
is utter nonsense and an utter farce. Without a shadow of a doubt you are
talking about thousands of visas being issued to people who are not
legitimate students and simply want to come to Britain to work."
Undercover reporters posing as would-be
students in three countries uncovered a series of scams used by young
foreigners, many of whom have no intention of either studying or ever going
home. ... According to senior sources,
the points-based system has created loopholes which have led to a dramatic
rise in the number of applications for student visas and cases of fraud.
This, in turn, has led to a giant backlog of applications at the Home
Office. ... Our investigation exposed
widespread abuse by agencies advising customers how to get around Britain's
new requirements in India, China and the Philippines.
One agency, in Fazilka, Punjab, told our
reporter: "We guarantee an applicant a student visa within a month." ...
Agencies in China advised applicants to
register with a bona fide language school or university, and then switch to
a bogus college once on British soil, to make it easier to extend their
visa.
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Border controls visas, education, employment
Migrants exploiting loophole that allows them stay in Britain with a joke degree James Slack Daily Mail, 4 December 2009 |
Tens of thousands of immigrants are
gaining the right to work in the UK by obtaining degrees from 600 colleges
which are not 'proper' universities.
Professor David Metcalf, chairman of the
Migration Advisory Committee, said he was 'stunned' to discover how many
colleges were accredited to hand out bachelor degrees.
Some of the colleges offer qualifications
in circus skills, acupuncture and ancient medicine.
Obtaining a degree from one of the
'lower-tier colleges' allows a non-EU student a two-year working visa for
the UK. But as they are designated as
'highly skilled migrants' they can stay here even if they do not have a
job. Professor Metcalf, the Government's
most senior immigration adviser, said it was possible some of those unable
to get skilled jobs were taking lower-paid jobs away from Britons.
A total of 42,000 students were granted
two-year visas in the past year under what is called the Post-Study Work
Route (PSWR). Foreign students at 154
major universities are automatically granted visas after completing degree
courses. But a report by Professor
Metcalf's committee showed a further 599 other bodies - mostly colleges -
can hand out degrees, and the visas that come with them.
He said: 'They are basically further
education colleges which get their degrees validated by one of the
universities. 'What we think is, without
being overly elitist, that we should have a good look at these institutions
to see if it is legitimate for all the students studying there on all the
courses to get post-study work visas.'
The committee suggested foreign students
could be forced to find a job within months of graduating before earning a
two-year visa. ... A Government survey of
students in work after being granted the PSWR visas showed barely half
worked in professional jobs. ... Shadow
immigration minister Damian Green said: 'This is a late recognition of the
chaos surrounding student visas which have become one of the most
significant loopholes in our immigration system.' ...
The colleges highlighted by Professor
Metcalf are legitimate educational establishments.
Immigration minister Phil Woolas said:
'The Migration Advisory Committee has delivered a robust and thorough
report and the Government will consider it carefully.'
[Site link] |
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Border controls
French border police discover 12 lorries packed with British-bound migrants Ian Sparks Daily Mail, 26 November 2009 |
In September, the French bulldozed a
squatter camp in Calais called the Jungle. Of the 278 migrants arrested,
early all were released on humanitarian grounds.
Of the estimated 1,000 migrants in
Calais, up to 50 a week are thought to be crossing the Channel illegally,
with more arriving to replace them every day.
More are also arriving on a daily basis
in other ports on the northern French coast that have ferry links to
Britain, including Dunkirk, Ouistreham and Cherbourg.
[Site link] |
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Border controls employment, health services
NHS Trust hired illegal immigrant Channel 4 News, 19 November 2009 |
Channel 4 News can reveal that an NHS
trust has hired dozens and possibly hundreds of illegal immigrants through
one of its biggest private cleaning contractors. ...
The UK Border Agency has uncovered
hundreds of fake documents submitted to Kingston Hospital, including
security passes, national insurance numbers and passports.
[Site link] |
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Border controls repatriation
40,000 missing illegal immigrants Daily Telegraph, 21 October 2009 |
Ministers have lost track of around
40,000 migrants who have no right to be in Britain.
The Home Office admitted yesterday that
the illegal immigrants should have left the country more than six years ago
but could still be here. The disclosure,
details of which emerged in a letter to the home affairs select committee
from the chief executive of the UK Border Agency, is the latest scandal to
hit Britain's immigration system.
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Border controls France
France pulls out of deal to return migrants Daily Telegraph, 7 October 2009 |
France yesterday pulled out of a plan
to deport hundreds of illegal migrants to Afghanistan in order to prevent
them from travelling to Britain. Plans
for the first joint Anglo-French flight taking migrants back to Afghanistan
collapsed after Paris withdrew its co-operation at the last minute in the
face of protests from refugee groups. A charter flight leaving Britain last
night carrying a group of deported Afghans was due to stop in Lille en
route to Kabul. On arrival in Lille, Afghans detained by France would have
joined the flight. ... France's
withdrawal followed protests by refugee groups. Frank Supplisson, France's
deputy immigration minister, issued a short statement saying there would be
"no return flight". Paris agreed to the
principle of joint return flights during talks at Evian in February between
Phil Woolas, a Home Office minister, and Eric Besson, his French
counterpart. The change of heart by the
French raised doubts about future joint arrangements, particularly after a
similar Anglo-French scheme was scrapped last November. At the time,
opponents argued that, under United Nations conventions, it was illegal to
deport a person to a war-torn country such as Afghanistan.
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Border controls costs, France
Calais migrants flown home to Kabul with £1,900 payoff Peter Allen Daily Telegraph, 6 October 2009 |
Hundreds of Afghan migrants will be
flown home from Calais today with £1,900, paid for by British and
French taxpayers. As well as a guaranteed
place on the plane worth around £500, many of those on board will
receive the payment and a guarantee of training back in their homeland.
However, there will be nothing to prevent
any of them travelling all the way back to the French town the moment they
get to Kabul. It is intended to be the first of many flights which will
cost millions of pounds, split between France and Britain.
The aim is the reduce the number of
migrants who are massing in Calais before trying to get to Britain, where
they will claim asylum or disappear into the "black economy". ...
The first plane will take off from London
in the early hours, before stopping to pick up some 250 migrants in Paris.
It will then fly on to Kabul.
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Border controls
France tells Britain: let in all migrants Nick Fagge Daily Express, 30 September 2009 |
France last night admitted it was
fighting a losing battle against illegal migrants and demanded
Britain should open its doors to them. A
week after being forced from their shanty town, the asylum seekers were
back, still seeking a passage to the UK.
Last night Calais mayor Natacha Bouchard
said the Channel port would remain an immigrant dumping ground until
Britain opened its borders and stopped asking France to do its dirty work.
She insisted that the British should sign
up to the Schengen Agreement, a European Union accord that allows free
movement of all people between European member states without the need for
passports or visas. "Calais has become a
no-go area, and that's because we have become hostages of the British
Government," said Ms Bouchard. "Britain
is unable to control its borders, so we're doing the job for them because
they're not part of the agreement. There are still some 20 squatter camps
in Calais alone. "Britain has no right to
put pressure on us. Every politician should keep repeating this.
"The more they say it, the more they'll
be throwing light on the problem which has been imposed on us."
The French government is fast running out
of patience with the crisis and claims it is powerless to stop the
thousands of migrants who make their way to Calais seeking a new life in
Britain. It complains that until Britain
agrees to open its borders, there is no reason for migrants to abandon
their nightly cat-and-mouse games with police as they try to board lorries
and trains bound for Dover. Calais MP
Jack Lang said: "The migrants make it to Britain whatever the obstacles.
Police operations will do nothing to stop them." ...
Conservative MP Philip Davies added: "We
have lost control of our borders and Britain is seen as a soft touch. These
people know that once they are here they will never have to leave.
"If we had a robust policy to deal with
illegal immigrants they would not be trying to get into the UK in the first
place." ... But while police keep trying
to find new camps, they find keeping migrants out of Calais
Britain's main transport link to Europe a never-ending battle.
Over two-thirds of the migrants arrested
in The Jungle raid have been released and are back in Calais preparing to
cross the Channel. Hundreds escaped when
French immigration minister Eric Besson announced plans for the raid on
prime time television. Abbot Jean-Pierre
Boutoille of the refugee charity C'Sur said: "There are hundreds still
living rough in Calais and I hear that a group escaped from a detention
centre is already marching back. "The
operation to destroy the Jungle camp was a ridiculous media exercise and
will achieve nothing."
[Site link] |
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Border controls employment
New 'face of Tesco' is an illegal immigrant Justin Penrose Sunday Mirror, 27 September 2009 |
The new face of Tesco, chosen to star
in a glossy advertising blitz, has been arrested for being an illegal
immigrant. Mother-of-three Fatou Cham, a
32-year-old checkout operator, won an in-house Tesco contest to be the face
of its new autumn clothing range. But she
now faces deportation after a tip-off to immigration officials and
has been hurriedly dropped from the ad campaign. ...
Fatou came to the UK from Gambia, West
Africa, in 1998 aged 21 to study banking, economics and finance at London
Metropolitan University. Two years later,
her mother and eldest child were granted a visa to join her here. The
family, including two further children born in this country, settled in
East Ham, East London, and Fatou began working for Tesco in nearby Beckton
in 2002 to fund her studies. Her student
visa had run out a year earlier. She applied to stay on, but did not have
the necessary paperwork and has been here illegally since. ...
"The last few days have been really
stressful," she said. "I came here for a better life and never set out to
deceive anyone. I just want to stay here with my family and be happy. ...
In January Fatou applied for indefinite
leave to remain, but the Home Office refused. She has appealed to the High
Court. ... When Fatou joined Tesco in
2002, all that was required for overseas citizens to work in the UK was a
valid national insurance number. The law
changed in 2004 requiring people from abroad to have a valid work visa.
A spokesman for Tesco said: "As soon as
we were made aware of this issue, we cooperated fully with the
investigation. We're satisfied we followed the correct procedures."
[Site link] |
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Border controls crime
Official flouted immigration law Daily Telegraph, 26 September 2009 |
A Home Office case worker let 49
migrants into Britain who should not have been here because she "just
wanted them to earn some money", a court heard yesterday.
Only a handful of the immigrants have
been traced and it is unlikely the rest will be found, Croydon Crown Court
heard. Aliya Ali, a senior member of staff in the Croydon office, was
jailed for five years after pleading guilty to 12 charges of misconduct as
a public officer.
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Border controls European Union
Steve Haynes Daily Telegraph, 25 September 2009 [Letter to the Editor] |
Whatever pressure a new EU human
rights supremo may put Britain under ("Europe to push for more asylum
seekers in Britain", report, September 14), our membership of the EU
ensures that we will be subjected to continuing massive immigration for the
foreseeable future. Two examples
illustrate this. The Spanish government recently gave amnesty to half a
million asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants, knowing full well that when
they become EU citizens, they could settle anywhere within the Union. As
most are West Africans, many already have affinities with Britain.
Presently living with little more than the Spanish authorities' lip service
to human rights, the final destination of most of these amnestees is
obvious. Poland should have a famine of
plumbers and hotel workers: she doesn't. Polish tradesmen have been
replaced quite legitimately by a local pre-EU arrangement whereby
Ukrainians can freely work in Poland if the jobs are there.
If the newcomer has lived in Poland for
four years, he or she can apply for Polish (therefore EU) citizenship.
Having made the first, most difficult
break with their families, and suffered low wages and discrimination in
Polish cities, where will the final choice of residence be for most of
these new EU citizens? Only by
withdrawing from the EU and reclaiming sovereign responsibility for our
borders will the coming catastrophe to our quality and way of life be
avoided.
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Border controls asylum
New migrants camp appears, a day after the Jungle is cleared Caroline Gammell Daily Telegraph, 24 September 2009 |
A new "Jungle" has sprung up in
Calais just 24 hours after police closed the original makeshift camp for
illegal immigrants less than a mile away.
...
More than 30 men gathered there yesterday
to receive food from a local charity after being released from detention by
the French authorities. Many said they would remain there until they could
find a way into Britain. At least five
other small camps have also sprung up in the area near the port.
Nearly 300 people, mostly young Afghan
men, were rounded up on Tuesday while the so-called Jungle, a ghetto of
tarpaulin and wooden houses built up over the past five years, was
destroyed. They were taken to a detention
centre in Lille and offered the option to claim asylum in France or return
to their home countries. The vast
majority refused both options, being determined to reach Britain.
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Border controls asylum
Keep out, Britain is full up Mark Reynolds Daily Express, 23 September 2009 |
French authorities yesterday finally
destroyed the Calais shanty town, known as The Jungle, used by migrants as
a launch-pad to Britain. ... Critics of
yesterday's operation said that while it was essential the five-year-old
camp was knocked down, there seemed no proper plan in place to deal with
the 1,000 or so Afghans or Iraqis left homeless.
While some reports said the French would
use British taxpayers' cash to offer the migrants financial incentives to
go home, most experts believe they will simply disperse to smaller
makeshift camps around the Calais docks and continue their attempt to enter
Britain illegally. ... Conservative MP
Philip Davies was among those insisting that France should take proper
responsibility for the immigrants on its shores rather than pass on the
burden to "full-up'' Britain but he feared it would not.
He said: "Asylum-seekers are supposed to
be dealt with in the first place they come to. If France was fulfilling its
international duties they would be dealing with these people.
"It is totally irresponsible to be trying
to pass them on to us. Obviously both the French government and the
asylum-seekers know how soft we are and that once people are here, however
bogus their claims, they will never be kicked out again.
"But we've done more than our fair share.
We can't cope with the people we have. There is still a massive backlog of
cases, people who have been here years. We need to put the 'full' sign up.
France is a big enough country. They've got lots of room." ...
Sir Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch,
said: "Simply closing the camp won't work. We tried that with Sangatte. I
think we have to get to the heart of this problem. We entirely support
asylum for genuine cases but it seems Britain is now seen as a soft touch.
That's certainly what the French believe. Why else should people be
queueing up in Calais when France is a safe country?" ...
Yesterday's raid on The Jungle began at
dawn when 500 police officers in dozens of vans and accompanied by
bulldozers began circling the wooded waste ground a few hundred yards from
the ferry port. In total 278 were arrested and 132 of these claimed they
were under 16. All were male. Many more had disappeared overnight, moving
to other parts of Calais where they will continue to plan their journeys to
Britain in the back of lorries or trains.
The Refugee Council demanded that Britain
accept some of the migrants, particularly children, with family connections
in the UK. But immigration minister Phil
Woolas said: "These people have no rights to claim asylum in the UK.
Indeed, we would question whether they were genuine asylum-seekers.
"If they were fleeing persecution, they
have the right to claim asylum in the first country of entry." ...
Dan Hodges, Communication Director of
Refugee Action, said: "You can sweep away the camp but you can't sweep away
the issue. "Unless the French face up to
their responsibilities and bring these people within their migration system
it is only a matter of time before the camp and the problems return".
[Site link] |
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Border controls asylum
Britain refuses migrants from Calais 'jungle' camp Daily Telegraph, 19 September 2009 |
Britain yesterday rejected a call to
accept migrants from the so-called "jungle" camp in Calais when it shuts
next week. French police are expected to
move within days to close the camp, where as many as 2,000 people are
living, many of them Afghans. Antonio
Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, suggested that
Britain should take in those with relatives already living in the country.
However, a spokesman for the UK Border
Agency said genuine asylum seekers should make their claim in the country
where they enter Europe. He said: "People seeking asylum should do so in
the first safe country they come to, those who are not in need of
protection will be expected to return home. ..."
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Border controls
France to shut illegal migrant 'jungle' in Calais Henry Samuel Daily Telegraph, 18 September 2009 |
The French government pledged
yesterday to shut the so-called "jungle" camp used by migrants in Calais as
part of a renewed effort to stop them illegally crossing the Channel to
England. Eric Besson, the immigration
minister, said a "very strong" rise in crime in the northern French port
had led him to order officials to clear the area by the end of next week.
He said the message to migrants and people traffickers was: "You can no
longer cross from England to Calais." ...
Up to 2,000 migrants, many from south
Asia, live in makeshift shelters around Calais. Aid groups said the order
would "simply shift the problem a few kilometres".
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Border controls asylum
France's 'jungle' refugee camp may close, but Britain's asylum problem will continue Ed West Daily Telegraph blog, 17 September 2009 |
I have a feeling we're going to hear
a lot more about Eric Besson, France's new immigration minister, ... he has
now ordered the closure of "the Jungle", the refugee camp near Calais that
sprung up after Sangatte was shut down in 2002.
Still, forgive me for not being entirely
optimistic when Mr Besson promises that cross-channel asylum shopping will
end any time soon. They said the same thing in 2002 when Sangatte was
closed, but the desperate migrants just moved down the road, and as long as
the United Kingdom offers illegal immigrants the chance to scrape a living
off the books while receiving (pretty minimal) state support, with a good
chance of remaining here even if they lose their asylum case, they will
keep on coming. None of which is either
the fault of the migrants themselves or of France. ... As Besson himself
says: "The paradoxical situation for France is that we are trying to bar
entry into the UK, which doesn't want these migrants, and we are lumbered
with handling their departure." And they
will still be lumbered with them, so long as Britain makes no efforts to
change its laws and to deport people who have no right to be here, and
while idiotic churchmen and others campaign for an amnesty the one
action guaranteed to create more squalid camps, more gang-related
trafficking, and more suffocated or drowned Chinese labourers.
[Site link] |
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Border controls terrorism
Only one in 2,000 visa requests checked Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 10 September 2009 |
Fewer than one in every 2,000 visa
applicants from Pakistan is being interviewed by British immigration
officials. The lack of checks on those
wanting to come to the UK from the "high risk" country renewed fears that
terrorists or illegal immigrants could slip through the net. ...
It also emerged yesterday that the early
release of nearly 150 convicted terrorists had prompted fears that they
could plan new attacks and that police and probation services would not be
able to cope. ... Between Oct 27 and May
31 there were 66,415 applications in Pakistan to come to the UK but
officials interviewed just 29. ... MI5,
the police and probation services will be swamped in coming months as
dozens of Islamic terrorists are released after serving just half their
sentences.
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Border controls crime
British people smuggling arrests increase Peter Allen Daily Telegraph, 4 August 2009 |
People smugglers arrested in Calais
are increasingly likely to be British, new figures have shown.
The French immigration ministry said that
dozens of Britons had been arrested on suspicion of people trafficking in
Calais in the past six months. It said
that 42 of the 235 suspected people smugglers arrested in Calais in the
period were British, along with 32 from France and 20 from Germany.
However there were only 50 convictions,
mainly because of the failure of witnesses to testify against them.
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Border controls France, English Channel
Alarm at 76% rise in stowaway migrants seized from lorries Mark Blacklock and Peter Allen Daily Express, 31 July 2009 |
The number of illegal migrants
arrested in the back of lorries heading to Britain from Calais has
increased by 76 per cent this year.
French police found a colossal 13,715
stowaways in HGVs or vans in the past six months, compared with 7,760 in
the same period last year. Astonishingly,
the vast majority were released without charge allowing them to
resume their bids to reach the UK to claim asylum or disappear into the
black economy. ... Sir Andrew Green,
chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said the figures must mean that illegal
immigrants are continuing to get through "or they would try somewhere
else". He added: "The root of the problem
is that Britain is regarded as a soft touch. We must clamp down on illegal
workers if we are to deter yet more thousands of would-be immigrants
queuing up in Calais." A French Frontier
Police spokesman described the problem as "a never-ending cycle" because
when people were simply deported to the country they came from
usually Belgium they rapidly returned to France.
In all, 18,922 illegal migrants were
arrested in the Calais region between January and June the vast
majority in the back of lorries. But many
others were found vaulting barbed wire fences or were picked up as
suspected people smugglers. The total
figure compares with just 11,340 arrests made during the same period last
year, an increase of 66 per cent. Yet despite the rise just 5,865 31
per cent were actually put under formal investigation.
Without money or official papers they
were almost impossible to prosecute, and were released without charge.
Many continued to travel to Britain
undetected, thanks to the increasingly sophisticated tactics being used by
people-smuggling gangs, according to France's immigration ministry.
[Site link] |
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Border controls
Tighter border controls agreed to thwart illegal immigrants Rosa Prince Daily Telegraph, 7 July 2009 |
Border controls will be tightened in
an attempt to prevent immigrants who have been gathering at French ports
smuggling themselves into Britain. At an
Anglo-French summit in Evian, Gordon Brown announced a £15 million
fund for new technology to search vehicles heading for Britain. ...
In return for the Prime Minister's
pledge, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, announced that France would
step up the removal of illegal immigrants to their home countries. ...
Mr Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister,
said: "We have one of the strongest borders in the world, and today's
agreement has made it even more secure. ...
"Last year we stopped 28,000 individual
attempts to cross the Channel and searched one million lorries these
changes will further strengthen the ring of steel that protects Britain."
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Border controls
Fears over migrants as UN returns to Calais Peter Allen Daily Telegraph, 2 July 2009 |
Concerns about an influx of migrants
to Britain has grown after the United Nations began giving advice to asylum
seekers gathering in northern France. The
UN has established a full-time presence in Calais for the first time in
seven years, to offer "information and support".
Its High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) said the 2,000 migrants sleeping rough in the area should be
allowed to make an "informed decision" about their options.
More are expected to arrive as facilities
improve and the summer weather makes living conditions easier.
"Most are motivated by economic or family
reasons, but a few have fled violence or persecution and their wellbeing is
of direct concern," said a UNHCR spokesman. "Many have no idea about the
situation back home, or about what they can expect in the UK."
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Border controls
New British £750 million electronic border control plan 'breaks EU law' Richard Ford Times Online, 30 June 2009 |
Britain's multi-million pound
electronic borders project breaches European data protection laws and the
free movement of EU citizens, MPs were warned today.
The £750 million scheme will also
lead to longer queues for passengers travelling by rail and ferry to the
continent. Under e-borders, airline,
ferry and rail operators must collect eight pieces of travel information
including a passenger's full name, date of birth, nationality, passport
number, passport-issuing country and passport expiry date. The information
will be collected electronically from everyone entering and leaving the UK.
The results will then be passed to the UK
and checked against security watchlists giving immigration officials early
alerts. But today Eurostar told the
Commons Home Affairs select committee that under French law it was unlawful
for anyone other than law enforcement agencies to collect the information.
As a result it would not able to collect the details required for
passengers travelling into the UK. Marc
Noaro, customer services director of Eurostar, said: "It is not lawful for
somebody who is not a law enforcement officer in France and Belgium to
demand that information at check in." He
said that his firm remained extremely concerned that the proposed system
will be operationally, legally and commercially difficult for Eurostar to
implement. Mr Noaro also said that if
Eurostar collected the travel information, French law forbade it being sent
to another EU state. The committee was
also told of other concerns that e-border programme breaks EU law.
Tim Reardon of the Chamber of Shipping,
which represents ferry operators, said if someone refused to provide the
information and then was stopped from travelling, it could breach EU law
allowing the free movement of people. He
criticised the UK Border Agency for failing to respond to letters demanding
clarification of EU law which were sent eight months ago.
Mr Reardon also warned that having to
take the eight pieces of information on everyone boarding a ferry would
lead to congestion and delays at ports. He said the scheme had been
designed for the aviation industry with little thought given to ferries and
rail travel. ... Mr Reardon added: "No
practicable method of capturing ferry passengers' passport data has yet
been identified - and in the absence of a defined process, no work has been
done to develop a system to support it.
"Progress is effectively now suspended
pending resolution of the legal questions which will determine what is or
is not permitted." The Port of Dover
warned of even bigger problems with coaches and lorries. "A queue of 100
passengers at an airport is not a big problem and individuals can step
forward easily - a queue of 100 passengers at a ferry port (if they are in
trucks) is a mile long and takes some moving," the Port said.
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Border controls
Police arrest 17 anarchists threatening to lead swarms of illegal migrants through Channel tunnel to Britain Peter Allen Daily Mail, 25 June 2009 |
French riot police have arrested 17
anarchists after they threatened to lead swarms of illegal migrants through
the Channel Tunnel to Britain. Weapons
including machetes, metal poles and a spiked club were found hidden by the
activists during raids in Calais late on Wednesday.
All those arrested had been massing in a
protest camp aimed at helping the migrants to 'tear down the borders' to
England. More than 800 elite CRS
riot-control officers are in the town, with another 1,200 on standby in the
immediate vicinity. A tense atmosphere
has gripped the port all week, with a spotter helicopter circling overhead,
roads blocked, and mobile police patrols circulating constantly. ...
'Many hundreds are massing in the town,
ready for a widescale demonstration against immigration control on
Saturday. All vulnerable targets are being guarded. We can take no
chances.' All the protestors are from a
group calling itself 'No Borders', which has pledged to 'tear down the
borders' stopping migrants getting across the Channel.
As their tents and marquees were pitched
on an official site to the east of Calais, some of the 2,000 odd migrants
sleeping rough in the Calais area began to join them.
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Border controls
'Relaxed' officials let smuggled migrants go, says judge Daily Telegraph, 11 June 2009 |
A judge overseeing one of the biggest
people smuggling cases has criticised "relaxed" immigration officials,
after scores of Chinese immigrants were freed.
Police and border guards caught almost
100 illegal immigrants after intercepting 27 smuggling trips during their
surveillance operation. However, the UK
Border Agency let them all go, telling them to report to the immigration
centre at Lunar House in Croydon, south London.
Only a "handful" ever showed up,
Southwark Crown Court was told. Judge
Christopher Hardy praised the detectives who smashed the "extensive and
sophisticated" gang behind the smuggling. "The attitude of the police
contrasts with the very relaxed attitude evidence by the UK immigration
authorities." he added. Five Turkish men
were jailed yesterday for their role in the smuggling. ...
... The network had links to Chinese
gangs and members in France and Belgium. It made millions of pounds,
largely sent to China and Turkey.
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Border controls education
Bogus colleges 'going unchecked for six months' Matthew Moore Daily Telegraph, 3 June 2009 |
A loophole in immigration rules means
that fake colleges can still open for six months without having their
credentials checked, MPs were told yesterday.
Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister,
admitted that he had no idea how many foreigners were living in Britain
illegally after enrolling on spurious courses at the colleges.
The home affairs committee was told that
tens of thousands of overseas "students" had entered the country through
about 2,000 fake colleges in recent decades.
Tony Millns, the chief executive of
English UK, which represents English language colleges, said the abuse of
the immigration system amounted to a "national scandal". ...
A spokesman for the UK Border Agency,
which is currently vetting colleges, said it was "simply not true" that
colleges could be on the list for six months without being checked. "All
colleges receive thorough checks before they are issued a licence to
sponsor foreign students," he said. The
agency claimed that the number of institutions bringing in foreign students
had already fallen from 4,000 to about 1,600. ...
Nick Lewis, the principal of Castle
College in Nottingham and a member of the Association of Colleges, told the
committee that the Government was warned about the problem of fake colleges
10 years ago, and failed to act.
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Border controls crime
Gang Jailed For UK's Biggest Visa Scam Mark White Sky News, 3 June 2009 |
Three illegal immigrants have been
jailed for a combined total of 19 years for their part in Britain's single
biggest visa scam. More than 90,000
counterfeit documents were produced at a property in west London, allowing
hundreds of people to cheat UK border controls.
Jatinder Sharma and Rakhi Shahi, who
masterminded the fraud in counterfeit documents, were jailed for seven and
eight years respectively. Mr Sharma's
wife Neelam, convicted of handling some of the proceeds of the scam, was
given a four-year sentence at Isleworth Crown Court in west London.
All three have been automatically
recommended for deportation at the end of their sentences.
The court had heard how the Indian
nationals took advantage of a "shambolic" system of immigration checks.
Prosecutor Francis Sheridan said evidence
gathered for the case presented a "damning indictment" of failures by the
Home Office to spot the fraudsters, who submitted hundreds of bogus visa
applications. Sharma, 44, was only caught
after he offered to get an undercover reporter a post graduate diploma in
business administration and other fraudulent documents for about
£4,000. The scam mainly targeted the
government's Highly Skilled Migrant Programme - a points based system which
gives preference to those in desired professions, like doctors and
dentists. The international Graduate
Scheme and other leave to remain applications were also exploited.
Mr Sheridan said: "The Home Office system
was designed to operate with trust. "The
evidence shows it was naive in its conception and a shambles in reality,
but it did not justify someone taking full advantage to cheat the system
time and time again..." Metropolitan
Police officers and officials from the UK Border Agency swooped on the
fraudsters' company Univisas, based in Southall, west London, in February
2008. They discovered a mountain of
documents, including false university certificates, academic records, bank
statements and pay slips. Investigators
also uncovered records of more than 900 people who had been given
documentation by Univisas. Of a sample
117 analysed in detail, 113 were found to contain fraudulent information.
Those behind the scam were so confident,
they offered a money back guarantee to clients who they charged fees from
hundreds to thousands of pounds. The gang
lived together in Clarence Street, Southall, and hid behind a complex web
of false identities and documentation. ...
Although the fraudsters behind this visa
scam have now been brought to justice, officials admit many other organised
criminal gangs are still out there, trying to find new ways of flouting
Britain's Border Controls.
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Border controls racism, education
Academics boycott visa 'snooping' BBC, 29 May 2009 |
University academics say they will
boycott new visa rules for overseas students that would make them into
"immigration snoopers". Delegates at the
University and College Union's annual conference said they did not want to
become a branch of the UK Border Agency.
Under the new rules universities are
expected to monitor whether overseas students really attend their courses.
The Home Office said such things were
part of their normal duty of care.
Institutions must also report concerns
that a student could be involved in terrorism.
In a debate at the conference, in
Bournemouth, delegates argued that the rules would place a strain on the
relationship between staff and students from outside the European Union.
General secretary Sally Hunt said: "UCU
members are educators not border guards."
She said later: "Politically, UCU is
absolutely opposed to this legislation and we know that many members have
strong and principled moral objections as members of society and as
professional educators. ... One of the
resolutions tabled for discussion said the new system "makes educators into
immigration snoopers which could damage UK education irreparably".
It deplored "this pandering to
anti-immigration racism" and committed the union to "non-compliance with
all such policing and surveillance duties".
But a Home Office spokesman said:
"Educational institutions have a duty of care to all their students and
checking that they are attending and making progress in their studies is
part of that responsibility. "The records
we expect education providers to keep are those which most will keep for
their own purposes anyway."
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Border controls terrorism, education
Four terror suspects won university places through bogus Manchester college Andrew Norfolk The Times, 21 May 2009 |
Four terrorism suspects were given
places at English universities after leaving the bogus Manchester College
of Professional Studies. John Moores
University, Liverpool, and Liverpool Hope University confirmed yesterday
that each had accepted two of the detainees and that all four students
submitted diplomas from the fake college as part of their application. Both
universities insisted that they had disregarded the Manchester
certificates, accepting the men instead on the basis of their university
degrees from Pakistan. ... The Home
Office says that in Pakistan, which it classifies as "high risk",
additional checks are made on applicants to seek independent verification
of prospective students' qualifications. As a result, the refusal rate for
student visa applications from Pakistan has risen from 53 per cent in 2006
to 69 per cent last year. Despite this, the number of Pakistani citizens in
the UK on student visas has soared. A
critical flaw in the new regulations, however, means that there is still no
limit on how many international students a sponsor college is allowed to
enrol. It may have become more difficult to beat the system, but it is not
impossible.
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Border controls terrorism, education
Sham colleges open doors to Pakistani terror suspects Andrew Norfolk The Times, 21 May 2009 |
Thousands of young Pakistanis
exploited a hole in Britain's immigration defences to enrol as students at
a network of sham colleges, The Times can reveal.
The gateway, opened by fraudsters who
have earned millions from the scam, has allowed in hundreds of men from a
region of Pakistan that is the militant heartland of al-Qaeda and the
Pakistani Taleban. Eight of the terror
suspects arrested last month in Manchester and Liverpool were on the books
of one college. It had three small classrooms and three teachers for the
1,797 students on its books. Another college claimed to have 150 students
but secretly enrolled 1,178 and offered places to a further 1,575 overseas
applicants, 906 of them in Pakistan. ...
The Times has uncovered close ties
between 11 colleges in London, Manchester and Bradford, all formed in the
past five years and controlled by three young Pakistani businessmen.
Each of the three men entered the country
on a student visa. One has fled to Pakistan after earning an estimated
£6 million from the scam. Fayaz Ali Khan and another man are in the
UK. All but two of the ten students
arrested last month over an alleged al-Qaeda bomb plot were enrolled over
an 11-month period at Manchester College of Professional Studies. Two
Liverpool universities admitted last night that they had given places to
four of them, ... The massive fraud has
fuelled a surge in student arrivals from Pakistan, which the Prime Minister
has identified as the birthplace of two thirds of terrorist plots in the
UK. Between 2002 and 2007, the number of Pakistani nationals with
permission to enter or remain in the UK as students jumped from 7,975 to
26,935.
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Border controls
Former pub became the centre of a web of bogus colleges Andrew Norfolk The Times, 21 May 2009 |
Among the fast-food shops, Haj travel
agents, halal butchers, curry houses and money-exchange outlets is a former
pub, reborn in 2006 as Manchester College of Professional Studies.
Here, two young men from a town in North
West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan in Britain on student
visas started a scam that would earn them a small fortune.
The Times has evidence that in 15
months from October 2006 they enrolled 1,143 foreign students, most
Pakistanis, and sold bogus college qualifications to enable another 654 to
extend their stay in the UK. ... Most
students, however, had no intention of entering a classroom. They were in
the UK to earn as much as possible for as long as possible. ...
... For the vast majority of students,
the documents were a charade. The college was a front that provided cover
for students to do whatever they wanted in Britain.
Most came from Pakistan, but hundreds
were also admitted from Nigeria and other countries in Africa, South Asia
and the Far East. ... Manchester College
of Professional Studies was also affiliated with Blackpool University,
again based in Dublin, established "under the order of the King of Belgium"
and licensed by the Accreditation Council of Higher Education (ACHE).
All of which might sound impressive until
one learns that ACHE is based in Wallis and Futuna, an island group in the
South Pacific. Finally, the college also
posed as a study centre for the University of Newcastle, which is really
the online University of New Castle, incorporated "in the sate (sic) of
Delaware" and, like Blackpool University, accredited by a group of South
Pacific islands. Mr Fayaz and his
friends could run their scams for so long because the UK's system for
controlling and monitoring international students was until last
month lamentable. He was able to open a college and gain a place on
the Government's register of educational providers by completing an online
application. No one checked his background, no one came at the
outset to inspect his premises and no one sought to discover whether
the teachers he said he was employing had the qualifications claimed.
Advance notice was given of the periodic
Home Office visits made after the college opened, so there was always time
to make sure associates and employees were sitting studiously in a
classroom when an inspector arrived. Astonishingly, there was not even a
system for limiting or monitoring how many students a college enrolled.
... One bad apple would have been one too
many, but The Times has uncovered a tangled web linking 11 international
colleges formed during the past five years, in Manchester, Bradford, London
and Essex. A few barely existed beyond
their registered office address, others had impressive internet sites and
some even gave lessons to a minority of the students they enrolled. ...
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Border controls European Union
Exclusive: EU'S £14bn vain bid to halt migrants Ted Jeory Sunday Express, 17 May 2009 |
Vast amounts of taxpayers' money has
been squandered on a "disastrous" scheme to stem the flow of illegal
migrants into Europe. More than £14
billion of which Britain's share is an estimated £1.4 billion
has gone on a French-inspired project called the Barcelona Process.
But much of the cash has ended up in the
pockets of north African officials who fail to prevent mass migration.
Yet despite the enormous sums involved,
the European Union has not once published a detailed breakdown of spending
on the venture and produced just one high-level audit of the project's
total spending in 14 years. Incredibly,
EU leaders are set to sanction another £550 million on a similar
project in eastern Europe. The Barcelona
Process is an alliance between the 27-member EU and 16 countries from the
southern Mediterranean and Middle East.
Its main aim has been to combat illegal
immigration from north Africa to southern EU members such as Spain, Italy
and Portugal. But more than 100,000
migrants a year are still estimated to enter Europe illegally via the
Mediterranean, a fifth of the total.
Leading Eurosceptic Tory MP Bill Cash
said: "The process has been disastrous. It does us no good to raise the
volume of expenditure in the vain belief it will curtail illegal
immigration. It doesn't work like that. The money just disappears into
rivers of slush funds and hopeless corruption."
Labour MP Michael Connarty, who chairs
the European Scrutiny Committee, said: "If we create a stable buffer
between north Africa and Europe it will be money well spent, but we've made
no progress." An EU spokeswoman claimed
the Barcelona Process fostered "cohesion and co-operation".
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Border controls crime, education
Fewer colleges for foreign students Daily Telegraph, 13 May 2009 |
The number of colleges accepting
foreign students has been cut by more than 13,000 after the introduction of
new rules earlier this year. Each college
applying for a licence was visited by an official from the UK Border Agency
as part of a drive to root out fake institutions. There were fears that
many colleges were fronts for illegal immigration.
The list of colleges sponsoring student
visas has fallen from 15,000 to 1,500.
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Border controls crime
Foreign lorries responsible for 90% of smuggled migrants David Pilditch Daily Express, 25 April 2009 |
Nine out of 10 lorry drivers who
smuggle illegal immigrants into Britain are from overseas, shocking figures
revealed yesterday. Even Labour's
official statistics show the Government has failed to collect more than
£1million in fines owed by hauliers registered abroad who have been
caught red-handed. Yesterday critics said
the damning figures expose the full scale of Britain's shambolic
immigration policies and lax border security. It comes after the UK Border
Agency revealed 1,571 foreign truckers were issued fines last year after
illegal immigrants were found hiding in the back of their vehicles.
This compares with only 195 British
lorries found to have stowaways. In theory drivers and owners face fines of
£2,000 for each illegal migrant. But the figures, released under the
Freedom of Information Act, show just £2million has been collected
from foreign firms, a shortfall of at least £1million. British
hauliers have been fined around £300,000.
Last night, British operators complained
the system was being abused by unscrupulous foreign drivers who can earn up
to £1,500 from each person they smuggle across the Channel.
Trucker Mervyn Osgood, 54, from Maidstone
in Kent, said: "It's an absolute farce. We always see the foreign drivers
talking to the migrants in Calais." Immigrants gather to scramble on to
vehicles at the ferry port in a notorious area known as Diesel Alley.
Mr Osgood said foreign truckers simply
ignored the fines, sometimes not even telling their bosses they had been
caught. "To them it's worth the risk.
They get £1,500 from each illegal, so if they get four on, they pocket
around £6,000. Then they just unload their cargoes and head back to
their countries." The Shadow Immigration
Minister Damian Green insisted the Government was to blame. He said:
"Clearly many foreign truckers are abusing our immigration laws and they
should be punished effectively. "However, the problem often is that they
may be convicted of offences relating to illegal migration but are
continuing to operate in the same vehicles."
Last night the agency admitted: "These
figures don't reflect the actual figure because there is often more than
one clandestine found per vehicle." He said 28,000 migrants were caught
trying to sneak into Britain on board lorries crossing the Channel last
year. The records show foreign truckers
were fined a further £811,507 for working in Britain without the
necessary haulage permits. Lorry drivers can unwittingly bring in illegal
immigrants who jump inside their vehicles without them realising what is
happening. But other operators accept
cash from people-smuggling gangs led by east Europeans, Afghans and Iraqis.
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Border controls
France 'ready to dump migrants in Britain' Peter Allen and Anil Dawar Daily Express, 24 April 2009 |
France wants Britain to sign a deal
allowing thousands of migrants to flood into the UK.
Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart's
controversial plan to scrap passport controls was announced as migrants in
the port staged an angry demo yesterday, waving placards written in
flawless English. The banners expose how
Britain's open-door asylum system and benefits culture are a magnet for
Afghans, Kurds and Eritreans. Exasperated
by the sight of migrants sleeping rough as they try to board England-bound
trains and lorries illegally, Mrs Bouchart outlined her scheme to rid
Calais of the blight to French Immigration Minister Eric Besson.
"It's necessary to speed up negotiations
with the British because at the moment we're ready to charter a boat to
dump them over there," she said. She said
all Britain had to do was sign up to the Schengen Agreement, which allows
anybody to travel between EU states without passports or visas.
Mr Besson challenged Britain to share
responsibility for France's problem by asking why migrants from places such
as Iran, Somalia and Sudan travel across the world to reach the UK.
"Britain should step up its controls and
take on more of this burden," he said. "Britain should also question why
migrants and the traffickers in migrants believe that the British illegal
job market is a golden opportunity." ...
Mrs Bouchart said if Britain signed up to
Schengen, then the migrants could make their way direct to the UK to claim
asylum, rather than using France as a platform to get there illegally. ...
Responding to the plan to make Calais a
passport-free zone, Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said: "UK policy is to
not sign up to the Schengen Agreement. Weakening our controls will only
play into the hands of the traffickers.
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Border controls welfare state
Calais mayor blames Britain for immigration problems Peter Allen Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2009 |
The mayor of Calais, Natacha
Bouchart, has blamed Britain's asylum and benefits system for "imposing"
thousands of illegal migrants on her town.
In an angry attack in which she also
called for millions in compensation, Natacha Bouchart said the UK was
entirely to blame for the hordes of foreigners who use the French port as a
staging point to get across the Channel. ...
Mrs Bouchart pointed out that the Calais
Chamber of Trade was having to spend £12 million each year securing
the port area money she suggested the French government should pay
back. But it was Britain's immigration
system which was predominantly to blame for thousands of Africans, eastern
Europeans and people from central Asia trying to clamber aboard lorries and
trains in Calais to get to the UK every day.
"Requesting asylum is easier with them
(the British) than in France," said Mrs Bouchart.
"The asylum seeker is given accommodation
and receives £31 to £40 a week according to their case, when the
annual salary of the average Eritrean is around $200 (£136).
"That seems enormous and it's attractive,
even if in some places it's nothing."
Calling for a "change in attitude", Mrs
Bouchart said the current build up of UK-bound foreigners was untenable.
... French immigration minister Eric
Besson is due to outline new policies for dealing with the worsening
situation in Calais. Some 2,000 UK-bound
migrants are currently sleeping rough in the area, with around 800 in the
town itself.
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Border controls
'Risky' students who want a visa will be interviewed by phone Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 21 April 2009 |
Fresh questions were raised yesterday
over Britain's security after the Home Secretary admitted some visa
applications were decided over the phone.
Pakistani students wanting to study in
Britain who are deemed a risk may only be interviewed over the phone, and
from outside the country, it emerged. And
the Home Office revealed that final decisions on any visa applications from
Pakistan were now being dealt with by officials in the United Arab
Emirates. The disclosure raises fresh
security fears around the student visa system after it emerged all but one
of the 12 suspects being held over an alleged plot to bomb shopping centres
in Manchester came to Britain from Pakistan using student visas. ...
It later emerged Abu Dhabi is being used
as a "hub" for UK immigration officials to take final decisions, although
fingerprints and documents of applicants are being checked in Pakistan
first.
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Border controls
£8m for border agency ads Matthew Moore Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2009 |
Britain's border agency is spending
nearly £8 million a year on advertising and public relations, it was
disclosed yesterday. The Home Office body
has allocated large sums to its promotional budget despite concern about
its failings to stem illegal immigration.
While other government departments and
private sector companies are cutting jobs in the recession, the agency is
advertising a range of roles in a new communications campaign team, paying
up to £56,000 a year. The figures
were released in a parliamentary answer to the Tories by Phil Woolas, the
Immigration Minister. New research
indicates that at least 250,000 migrant workers are employed in the country
unregistered.
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Border controls education
Bogus foreign students free to flout new laws Richard Ford and Andrew Norfolk The Times, 15 April 2009 |
Thousands of bogus students remain
free to enter Britain despite new laws aimed at tightening controls on
immigration. The Times has learnt that hundreds of colleges recently
approved by the Home Office to accept non-EU students have not been
inspected by its officers. Weaknesses in
the student visa system have emerged following the arrest of 12 terror
suspects last week. Ten of the men entered this country from Pakistan on
student visas. It has also emerged that
the vast majority of non-EU students will not be interviewed by the Home
Office but admitted on the basis of written applications and evidence of
sponsorship, educational qualifications and bank statements. ...
John Tincey, the chairman of the
Immigration Service Union, said that the failure to include interviews
could be exploited by terrorists. Under
the system, universities, colleges and schools must register with the Home
Office to accept students from outside the EU. They must agree to alert the
Home Office if a student fails to register, stops attending classes or if a
course is shortened and keep copies of the students' passports as well as
up-to-date contact addresses. The new
regime came in two weeks ago and is intended to end a scam in which
thousands of foreigners enrolled at bogus colleges to work here. So far,
2,100 establishments have been registered and 400 rejected. There are
14,000 establishments on an earlier database that need to register.
Today The Times highlights the abuses
under the old regime, described by the Immigration Minister as the
Achilles' heel of the system. At one
college in Manchester that claims to have more than 100 students
most of them from North West Frontier Province in Pakistan only two
turned up for classes yesterday. An
international college in London with links to Pakistani businessmen was
raided by the police and the UK Border Agency in December. It was alleged
that individuals attached to the college earned £5 million processing
up to 2,500 fraudulent visa applications.
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Border controls crime, education
£100 fakes helping terrorists into UK Nick Meo and Emal Khan Sunday Telegraph, 12 April 2009 |
Forged degree certificates, fake
income tax returns and bogus payslips were on sale in Pakistan yesterday
all valuable tools for terrorists to obtain student visas for
Britain. An investigation ... has found
that documents could be obtained for less than £100 by anyone seeking
to support their application to study in Britain.
As concerns grew about the screening
processes that allowed 11 of the 12 bomb suspects to enter Britain,
self-styled "immigration consultants" in Pakistan were hard at work trying
to beat the system. ... Many British
universities have representative offices in Pakistan's main cities through
which they recruit students. ... ... ...
Such documents are widely available under the counter from immigration
consultants all over Pakistan. The
paperwork is designed to convince British immigration officials that
applicants want to learn and can pay for their courses, even though some
are virtually illiterate and only want jobs.
Britain has a reputation for being easy
to enter. ... Nearly 4,000 immigration consultants are thought to be
operating in Pakistan's capital Islamabad and its twin city Rawalpindi. ...
Many of the forgeries are crude and
unlikely to fool immigration officers, but others are sophisticated. The
size of the industry shows how much effort is put in to thwart the system
at every stage.
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Border controls education
One in four colleges for foreigners 'bogus' Tom Whitehead Daily Telegraph, 1 April 2009 |
Bogus colleges that help illegal
immigrants slip into Britain are the "Achilles' heel" in the system, a Home
Office minister admitted yesterday. Phil
Woolas, the Immigration Minister, said fake colleges and language schools
were the "biggest loophole" in the system because figures indicated that
almost one in four was potentially bogus. New visa rules that came into
force yesterday meant overseas students needed to be accepted by genuine
institutions before they could enter Britain.
Colleges and universities who wanted to
take foreign students had to register with the Home Office. Of the 5,000
thought to take foreign students, only 2,100 had so far applied to have
their credentials checked. Of those, 460 were rejected. ...
It was estimated that up to 2,000 "bogus"
colleges could be forced to close. Frank
Field, the co-chairman of the Commons cross-party group on balanced
migration, said the number of colleges rejected was "worrying" but " |