Border Control - It’s Not Racism, It’s Simple Maths !

Firstly apologies for no blog posts recently, I’ve just changed jobs so the blog hasn’t been my number one priority, anyway back on track now with a subject I’m surprised I’ve never tackled before, immigration control !

It’s All About the Numbers

For me, immigration is quite simply about the numbers. This is the basic, simple, fundamental point that our politicians seem to continually fail to grasp. I suspect the vast majority of the British people aren’t currently overly worried about EU citizens coming to the UK and sponging off our welfare state though this liberal view is changing by the day as we see a general unwillingness of politicians to value the indigenous population of the UK.

  

I think, in general we understand that most immigrants work very hard. We see it every day of our lives and we appreciate their contribution to a successful economy in the UK.

We’re only Small

The concerns that many of us have, is about the size of the country in proportion to our continually growing population. We’re concerned how our little, overcrowded country can possibly sustain, literally limitless numbers of people coming in from the rest of the European Union. How can that growth be open-ended? How can it just go on forever?

It’s about our infrastructure which isn’t designed for a population of the current proportions let alone a growing one. It’s about places in schools; it’s about houses and flats; it’s about our overcrowded roads and transport infrastructure. It’s about the NHS, about hospital beds, A&E waiting times and how long we have to wait to see our GP.

Quite simply it’s all about the numbers!

Government Doesn’t Get It

The Government has been boasting that it has got non-EU immigration down. Well done, it’s a start. But why is that really something to be proud of? All it means is that it is far harder to work in the UK, and thats for the doctor from India, the teacher from New Zealand or the engineer from Canada. These are the people we should be welcoming with open arms.

The bigger problem is the numbers coming from the EU, in particular the Eastern Europeans, the benefit tourists, the ones that come here to use our free NHS and contribute nothing. At the end of the day though, benefit tourism isn’t the main issue and it never will be. Uncontrolled, infinite, limitless immigration is the real problem. The simple fact that anyone with an EU passport can come to the UK is the problem.

Recently the Prime Minister spelled it out to us in the clearest possible terms that as part of the UK’s ‘renegotiation’ with the EU he’s planning, he won’t even be attempting to negotiate controlling EU immigration. His actual words were “It is right that people should be able to move across Europe to work”. So he can’t make his position any clearer. Call Me Dave needs to wake up and smell the coffee, this one issue could easily lose him next year’s General Election.

So What Do We Do?

What can we do really? If immigration continues at the current level we could massively increase our infrastructure maybe? Nope, that one’s dead in the water, we haven’t got the space and can’t afford it anyway.

Personally I think we need to go back to basics, back to the simple things. Like getting an understanding as a nation of what we want from immigration. For that we first need to separate immigration and asylum seekers (which are another issue entirely). Immigration should be about what newcomers can do for us, not simply what we can do for them, the unaffordability of our welfare state, the NHS and our job market dictates this. As a model, the Australian one works for me.

This doesn’t sort the bigger issue of EU migrants and I’m sorry, but the only ways that one will be solved would be to blatantly disobey the EU rules and say “No, UK not EU rules take precedent”, this would be a legal minefield. In the interim though we should put some limits on our services in place, examples being you can only claim benefits after you have been a UK taxpayer for say two years, similarly, you can only utilise the NHS for free when you’ve paid National Insurance contributions for over a year. These are measures that show the immigrant is committed to living in and supporting the UK. These are simple things that I think most people would support.

Alternatively we simply leave the EU, Government’s willingness to avoid the issue means this is actually looking like the main option, especially after the results of recent EU and local elections where UKIP took significant votes from all the main parties showing the strength of feeling the people of this country have over the issue.

One thing I could guarantee, is that an in/out referendum on EU membership before the General Election would remove UKIP from the election frame; it would probably get David Cameron re-elected and it might actually sort the issue once and for all, as I suspect the result would be ‘OUT’.