- Thu May 25, 2023 2:58 pm
#44967
I know we’ve probably talked about this before, but I sometimes wonder whether I might be the only cunt in the whole of the UK who is completely unconcerned about immigration on any level. I regard immigration as, on balance, an overwhelming and unequivocal positive for this country - in Scotland, it is urgently essential. The more, the merrier, in my book. I actually would welcome the fictitious “open door” immigration policy that Labour in government was accused of operating.
Claims by the racists that immigration, both officially sanctioned and illicit, places intolerable pressure on local infrastructure and services, represent nothing other than a shockingly abject failure by government to carry out one of its most basic functions : the appropriate provision of the correct level of infrastructure and public services for the prevailing volumes of population in any given region at any given time. Where such pressure on services and infrastructure manifests itself, this is an open door for racists and xenophobes to insert and to spread their pernicious and poisonous credo. This was of course the case with UKIP/Farage at the time of the 2016 referendum, in which Farage dishonestly portrayed EU citizens exercising their treaty rights to live and work in another part of the EU, i.e. the UK, as a key element of the alleged immigration “problem”’ and of course, a key motivator for Farage to campaign, to deadly effect, for the UK to wrench itself away from EU membership. The truth is, of course, that EU citizens living and working in the UK were not technically “immigrants” at all. Most would return to their home state, either periodically or permanently, and would pay UK taxes to boot.
I also don’t see the supposed “small boats crisis” as any sort of crisis either, other than an urgent need to stop human beings risking their lives crossing the channel perilously and in desperation. We do that by ensuring that there are safe and legal routes for such people to arrive in the UK and lodge their claims for asylum. We do that by ensuring we have a system of processing asylum claims properly and in a timely fashion, without accumulating enormous backlogs of claims.In short, we deploy the correct resources in the correct way. In other words, everything that this government has deliberately chosen not to do.
In summary, the fault for all of the supposed problems around immigration can be laid squarely at the feet of this, Tory, government, and to an almost equal extent, the Farage/Ukip/Widdecombe/Tice axis of hatred.
Shame, shame, and shame again on all of them.
Last edited by Abernathy on Fri May 26, 2023 9:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
"The opportunity to serve our country: that is all we ask.” John Smith, May 11, 1994.
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