Article extract >> SOURCE : SKY NEWS ONLINE

The Prime Minister has pledged to end abuse of the immigration system following a top-level meeting.

Tony Blair said manipulation of the process would not be tolerated, but that immigration was vital for the British economy.


Flanked by Home Secretary David Blunkett, he said: "There is and should be no tolerance of abuses."

His defiant speech was prompted by allegations that normal procedures were waived for people coming to Britain from Romania and Bulgaria.

Home Office minister Beverley Hughes was last week forced to resign after she admitted misleading the public about the claims.

And after a series of attacks by the Conservatives, the Government moved to fend of criticism and increasing public anger.

Mr Blunkett said: "We are determined to get a grip on the situation.

"We appeal to people to have trust in the system because we can't have Fortress Britain. We need people to come here and work."

He said the National Audit Office would review asylum statistics to ensure that would-be refugees had not simply been forced down other routes.

Taskforces will also be set up to accelerate changes already being brought in at the Home Office.

New measures on the accreditation of private colleges will be brought in to combat the problem of bogus students and officials are also examining the problem of sham marriages.

The announcements were pre-empted by Tory shadow home secretary David Davis who branded the meeting a "stunt".

He said an independent inquiry was needed to decide if Mr Blair's pledge to cut asylum claims by 50% had led to checks being waived on some routes.

End extract <<

Full article, no link.

First time i've really touched on this but a fair bit of "you know what" has hit the fan in relation to this subject recently in Britain as you can see by this piece, i was wondering what Brits thought about it here, what other WHTers think about the issue where they live in the world and then globally/more generally speaking.

I think there are some fairly big problems as far as Britain is concerned, when it comes to monitoring the entry and departure of people into and out of the mainstream population it isn't just an immigration issue but common sense or that is how i see it at least.

So...

Opinions?? Comments??

Critic, :cool:

I think people should be free to move to wherever they want, provided they can prove they aren't going to leech of money from the state.

The immigration system in Britain is a complete mess.. All they do is leech off of the tax payer. Plus they are thinking of building an imigration place near here meaning that the value of my property ect will drop. It'd be fine if these people imigrated, got by with a job ect but very few actually do this and just end up leeching off the tax payers with eventually if it gets bad enough will lead us into economic crisis. (Tony Blair will probably send us into that anyway without the immigrants, this will just make things worst :P).

a bit controversial but here goes..

Sod the lot of em, it gets right on my tits to see them come in my shop with a wedge the thickness of 2 telephone books. They buy 40 quids worth of mobile phone credit with the tokens they are given to buy food, they have all the latest designer gear on and they get council houses before anybody else, a friend of mine cannot get a house for love nor money from the council and can't afford to buy as he gets 11 grand a year and the average house price is getting on for 80 grand here.

and thats not to start on the NHS or crime or anything, tony blair has seriously underestimated the strength of feeling on this, he is turning a blind eye to everything concerning immigration and wont even talk about it for fear of upsetting the immigrants :eek: excuse me but when did they become more important than the british people ????

ahhh sod it i'm getting agitated now i'll leave it but thats some of my thoughts on the subject.....

A real mess is probably quite an accurate assessment if recent reports are anything to go by.

Now i don't just apply this to economic migrants but native Brits alike, the government was going to reduce my DLA [Disability Living Allowance by about 75% before i appealed and i wasn't the only one in my position and then i see all these cases of others sponging to the maximum. It makes my friends and family more angry than myself as they say "look where our taxes are being distributed."

Then you hear the labour market and ageing population argument which i feel is exploited too much.

The amount of inward migration that is occurring is a burden that Britain can ill afford. I've got no problem with migration but not on this scale with this kind of inbalance, refugees and the like sure but we need to learn to send some back or deal with why they won't go back.

I remember talking about migration with some friends a few years back, [late 90s maybe] then and now i believe that they way to deal with large scale migration is to ease the problems at the source where possible [as i'm sure you will all remember from your Geography lessons, The Push Factors.

Maybe if we weren't so free and easy with our benefit system or if money could be diverted we might be able to have the required border controls. Other country's adhering to the treaties they signed would help the situation on a more global level.

Something needs to be done and soon, it's getting out of hand.

Critic, :cool:

From a report by the home office entitled "The migrant population in the UK: fiscal effects" :

"It is estimated that in 1999/2000 migrants in the UK contributed £31.2 billion in taxes and consumed £28.8 billion in benefits and state services, a net fiscal contribution of about £2.5 billion after rounding,"

Seems they are not quite the leeches some think, also from the same report :

"The public debate over migration is often over-simplistic and ill-informed, sometimes distorted by myths about the extent to which migrants draw on our welfare state, and without sufficient appreciation of the benefits they bring,"

Looks like the home office researchers got it spot on given some of the comments here.

And look at the hom office and the government now, one Minister has gone and another is being seriously questioned, not to mention the threat to their continued reign with elections not too far off.

If they call the events in the past few weeks "spot on" then their election chances for Europe and in the General Election are't sitting to pretty i have to say.

Although, there is no need for me to go into the nitty gritty on the domestic issues of this subject and migration with you bagpuss, i think we covered a lot of that in that thread on housing expansion plans.

There's always the continental and global issues if the thread turns in that direction however or if the domestic debate picks up.

Critic,

Originally posted by Critic
And look at the hom office and the government now, one Minister has gone and another is being seriously questioned, not to mention the threat to their continued reign with elections not too far off.

If they call the events in the past few weeks "spot on" then their election chances for Europe and in the General Election are't sitting to pretty i have to say.


All of which has to do with a minster lieing and a system that needs changes, but has absolutely nothing to do with research into the economic net gains or losses that immigration brings to the UK or that some of the public are ill-informed over the issue.