Do you think the UK should halt immigration?

[LittenTree]

What would you think of a policy that pretty much, forthwith, limited immigration in to the UK to an 'Australian model', say? (where, for instance, it's bloody hard to get a residents visa but once you have one, fairly easy to get citizenship. I know the model may have changed from the 'points system' they used to use where you got more points for being educated, English speaking, in a high demand trade or profession, being within a certain age band etc etc).

What would you think?

OK, I recognise that various treaties etc we've signed up to means we cannot prevent an EU influx but let's say that was also under discussion.

Before anyone skim-reads this and shouts' racist', no I'm not. I am not suggesting we bar anyone as a result of their race. Being able to speak the language of your adopted country isn't a function of race, for instance.

But I am wondering how different Britain might look and function if we really did slow the rate of immigration right down and then only to those people we need and who would be net contributors to our society (yes, unlike many of our own people, but that's a different story!).

Could we ultimately see gains in the environment as our population gradually fell to something more sustainable? Would we see more social cohesion as previous groups of immigrants had far more time to assimilate before the next group arrive to 'threaten' their feeling of stability (it is to be noted that many of the strongest supporters of limiting immigration are the most recently arrived immigrants themselves as of course they often find themselves on the lower rungs and naturally aren't pleased to find themselves being squeezed by the resources being stretched to accommodate the next group. We've all done geography where we see how, for most ethnic groups, they arrive in a new country, all live close together in a specific area, then, over a few years, begin to move on up and out to have their 'place' repopulated with a new, distinct immigrant group).

I was going to add another bunch of caveats about how what I'm saying doesn't mean this or that; then I thought, my musing can stand alone. Do you think the UK should halt the current immigration model it uses and rethink to one that is very selective and prescriptive? Pros and cons?

Note this is in 'politics' as immigration is a political issue.

bbc news today

the truly destitute have no means to travel. the mere cost of emigration is enough to make it impossible for the majority of the worlds citizens.

Ahh good old Milliband. Jump on that bandwagon baby!

Given that immigration exploded under Labour and not in a controlled way, it's very hard to give their ideas any credibility. Especially when most of them are along the lines of yet more legislation and laws which would add more red tape. Tape which the current government is trying to unravel to stop businesses wasting time on needless form filling and getting back to their core business.

well, easy for Ed Miliband to say - a real simple piece of politics.

whilst in power and dealing with the reality of life in the EU and a staff shortage in the NHS, (which is where most immigration comes into play - non-eu staff filling spaces in the NHS and EU people who are part of our deal with europe)
Immigration was ok

now it is the Condems problem - not ok.

totally solution free account again!

longfingernails
^We should be extremely liberal with immigration when it comes to skilled workers and high earners.
When it comes to unskilled workers, especially those who don't speak English, the door to Britain should be firmly shut in their face.^

Yes, that's right longnails, it's about time the "skilled and high earners" were shafted for their jobs and income just as the working classes and middle classes have been. That's equality after all! D'oh!

Better to end nearly ALL immigration...too late now though!

That's the point. It is impossible to end immigration. Immigration and emigration has been a fact of human existence since the dawn of time, and the fact that it is now so easy goes hand in hand with the cheap foreign holidays we hop on a plane to, and the cheap TVs flow in from China that we have in our homes.

There is a real issue with the fact that the world's resources are not equally shared. That some have more than they will ever need, and some don't have enough to survive. This creates an impression that there is not enough to go round, so people are scared of having to share with those even less fortunate than themselves. What we ignore is the fact that half of the world's wealth is under the control of just 2% of the world's population. The poorest half of the world's population has to share a meagre 1% of the total wealth.

I know that the debate about land, water and food is harder to quantify, but access to financial wealth means access to education, healthcare and sanitation.

There is an awful lot of redistribution that could be done before our standard of living becomes unacceptable.

It is a sad indictment of our moral standpoint that we prefer to pursue futile policies, which we hope will safeguard our own resources but keep the poor poor, rather than ask the rich to put their hands in their pockets.

Interesting to hear that Milliband is saying he now realises the UK should have put 'some controls' in place to 'manage' the eastern European influx. I had no idea that that was even a possibility! We certainly weren't told that there was even a debate that might be had! Doing so might have prevented some of the issues that confront many people, especially those forced to compete with new, less well off immigrants for increasingly scarce resources.

Once again, I can see that managed immigration of required people can be a win/win for all concerned: the UK gets the personnel it needs, those people arrive with an income-stream ready to go (a job) thus the ability to afford housing and not rely on the state purse; this has the knock on effect of not sparking discontent amongst the existing population. And it also means numbers can be managed and limits imposed as needed.

As for 'fair distribution of the world's resources', and 'enough to go round', we get into tricky territory. People will as a result of human nature, only do enough to get their 'share' and it isn't long before some feel they are doing more than their fair share. Resentment builds, battles commence, resources get redistributed with the winners getting the bigger share. It's interesting how inter-tribal warfare wasn't an issue in the UK til late Iron Age times, the reason being no one had to compete for resources. The population was tiny, the average lifespan short. As people began to practice agriculture, more suitable, fertile and guard-able room was needed, populations grew, strife ensued.

Next point: 50% of the world's wealth may be in the hands of 2% of the population, but that doesn't equate to resources! You can't actually eat money.

As a country increases in wealth, the first thing it does is to champion the consumer model. Watch China, India and Brazil. Is it that they've learned nothing from watching us or is it human nature that causes us to acquire the moment we get security of health and wealth, clean water and education? No one has ever achieved these things and said 'Right, that's me with enough, now, who else can I bring up with me?'.

Finally, a sad but true thought: When BandAid ('the rich putting their hand in their pockets'?) went into the Horn of Africa in 1986, the population was about half of what it is now- when they've (we've) had to 'go in again'. Grinding poverty, desperate security, war and starvation haven't caused anyone to consider limiting their population numbers to match their resources.

I am not for one second suggesting those people should die, of course I'm not. I'm suggesting that a free-for-all no borders immigration system would lead to massive strife and, eventually, bloodshed.

But worldwide control of border and immigration is doing nothing to stop strife and bloodshed.

The alternative is to go the other way, like China has: not only do they take horrific steps to limit their population such as forced abortions and forced sterilisation of women, but they also control the movement of their population extremely tightly. They have a system of household registration, whereby everyone is required to register their place of residence, and to apply for permission from the State to move. They have even adopted a 'Points Based System' similar to the one we use to manage migration into the UK, but theirs is used to manage migration internally. Only people who have sufficient education, skills and money are allowed to move into an urban area where the best jobs are based. So if you have been born into a peasant village, and only had a basic education, you will not be permitted to move to a city within your own country to improve your prospects.

Is this really a desirable model for us, and the rest of the world to follow?

It has been shown that the more developed a country becomes, the better prospects each child has, and the more that women have access to employment, the lower the birthrate becomes. In many European countries the population is only increasing because of immigration.

We are doing subsequent generations a great disservice by failing to tackle world inequality now. Tougher immigration controls are the equivalent of putting a sticking plaster on a haemorrhaging wound.

thistle <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.com/imgres?q=round+of+applause+gif&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1192&bih=606&tbm=isch&tbnid=ZuQfXu9RCEifoM:&imgrefurl=www.gifbin.com/982109&docid=b-x9Js3uqxx1OM&imgurl=gifs.gifbin.com/1233495358_appl3456.gif&w=300&h=225&ei=7MPkT6PSKITc8AO138DGCg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=420&vpy=153&dur=1816&hovh=180&hovw=240&tx=137&ty=113&sig=111408983438209469052&page=1&tbnh=128&tbnw=176&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:78" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">one of these

A quick question: Say you have an academically top performing selective school of 500 DC. Financially it is just 'getting by'.

Everyone wants to go to that school. So they increase the school roll to 700, via widening the selection criteria. It continues to do well enough as the marginally less able are supported and 'brought along' with the better performing 'original DC' as they still form a critical mass; so the school is still popular and is still massively over subscribed, so they go along adding a higher intake every year until eventually The Authorities say 'Sod it', let's allow 50000 in. OK, we don't have the resources, but in the interests of fairness and spreading those resources all around, we must do it. But now, the school includes many DC of very average ability even of very low intelligence, DC with severe behavioural difficulties, children with highly specialist SEN, but all receiving exactly the same now available education. Remember there are no resources to pay for specialist teachers for these DC, no smaller classes, no differentiation in curriculum.

Do you think that school will still be academically top performing?

Well, stretch that analogy to flood-gate opening immigration. There seems to an assumption that the whole school would go from being an original 'A' grade establishment to maybe a 'B' when it allows everyone in. Where's the evidence for that? (Look in 'Education' on MN...) No, it becomes a 'D' or 'E' establishment, a 'lowest common denominator/race to the bottom' school. That people want to get out of or not go to.