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Perching here and gathering my thoughts ...

Michael Howard's immigration farce

25 November 2004 ~ 11:59

I read a link my hubby had provided in his last entry about Michael Howard's proposals to limit immigration. These proposals include:

1) A points-based system for skilled workers similar to Canada's. But we already have one, called the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme.

2) An end to people sponsoring their parents to live in the UK. We have no such arrangement like the US does. Your parents have to be either financially dependant on you, or have at least �25,000 a year of their own to come live in the UK. Either way, they are not a burden to the tax-payer.

3) Parents cannot come if they have other children in another country. What if those children don't want them, or aren't able to have them? What if their country says the same thing (i.e., points to them having children in the UK)? Are they expected to just sit in a nursing home all alone for the rest of their lives?

4) A limit on the number of visas granted. Even the US doesn't limit visas for spouses. Are we going to say "sorry, Mr Smith, your foreign wife can't live here, we've allocated all the visas for this year"?

5) No automatic right to apply for permanent residence after 4 years working in the UK. This would mean a system similar to the US where you can affectively give several years of your working life to the UK, then be told to sod off and start your life over again in your own country if your employer won't sponsor you for a Green Card.

Next, Howard will be proposing a medical and, if you have any health problems, you'll be denied a visa, just as with "hippy" Canada, forcing the British half of a Brit/foreign couple to move to his spouse's country. Do we really want an inhumane immigration system like he proposes?

Just because there are many bogus asylum-seekers does it mean we should be draconian with legal immigration? How about only people from certain countries being allowed to claim asylum? If a country is deemed safe why waste money on a lengthy appeals process? And can we really say to someone who does come from a harsh regime "sorry go back and be killed, all visas are used up for this year"?

Michael Howard also points to a large increase in the number of visas granted last year from 1997. Er, couldn't this be because of the rise of Internet chat rooms? Many of the new immigrants are Americans, Canadians and Australians who met their British spouse on an English-speaking site on the 'net, and you can bet that for every Brit who brings their foreign spouse to the UK, there is another Brit that themself has emigrated to the US, Oz etc. The number coming merely replaces those leaving.

I think MH should at least learn what the current immigration laws are before he starts spouting about changing them.

Nightdragon wrote a commendable piece, but ruins it with an endorsement of Howard's proposed immigration policies.


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