Immigration Still Too Hot To Handle

The political hot potato of immigration is set to be sidelined once again. Instead political parties prefer to burying heads in the sand and ignore one of the key issues on which voters want answers and clear solutions.

A cross party group of MPs is having a stab it today. But as an election issue, it's still too hot to handle.

"Poll after poll shows the public to be deeply concerned about immigration and its impact on our population," says Labour's Frank Field and Tory Nicholas Soames.

The unlikely bedfellows are part of a cross-party group of around 20 MPs and peers backing a campaign calling for curbs on immigration. But calls to make manifesto pledges not to allow the UK's population to exceed 70 million are likely to fall on deaf ears.

At the heart is former minister Field's long held view that unless restricted, current immigration rates will impact on public services and quality of life.

The problems of immigration won't go away. So groups like the BNP will continue to exploit the issue. As Lord Carey points out, uncapped immigration plays into their hands.

What is needed is open and healthy debate. Face up to the consequences of large-scale immigration and the urgent decisions the country needs to make. Fat chance.

The freedom to discuss one of the burning issues of the day has been hi-jacked by a warped sense of political correctness. England is destined to descend into a unrecognisable region of a 'multicultural' EU.

The abuse of our immigration and asylum system and how successive governments have done little about it is scandalous. The consequences grossly unfair to hard working decent people from whatever social or cultural background..

Most recent election campaigns have failed to bring to the fore a crucial issue voters reckon is among the most important facing the country.

The cross-party Balanced Migration Group warns that current levels of immigration into the UK were "unprecedented" and threatened the "future harmony of our society".

The government must "restore control" over the UK's borders and "break the present almost automatic link between coming to Britain and later gaining citizenship".

But that will require far tighter controls on immigration. Setting population targets are deemed 'unrealistic and counter-productive'.

The lies and deceit of 'open door' immigration was laid bare by former Blair speechwriter Neather, who claimed ministers had allowed immigration to rocket.

'Neathergate' blew the lid off a decade of minister's mealy-mouthed denials of a deliberate 'unchecked' immigration policy. An excuse to create a 'multicultural' Britain and rub the Tories noses in it.

The shameful 'unchecked' immigration policy was exposed in a telling probe by The Sunday Times, suggesting the 'smoking gun' of a vote-rigging scam. A deliberate, covert policy to change the country’s demographics, deliberately using 'unchecked' immigration to puff up New Labour share of the voting cake.

The Orange Party has no problems with controlled immigration to the UK for a better life and to alleviate a skilled shortage. But to entice over hapless workers for a pittance to prop up the feel good factor of the false boom years is a despicable act.

A frank admission that immigration is out of control would be a useful place to start.

The current crisis has nothing to do with those who have arrived and settled in the UK. It is centred on the sheer numbers of those still coming whether legally or illegally. The effect on local communities expected to accommodate them and on limited resources is devastating.

The UK's current problems with immigration stems from EU membership. The country has to recover control of its own borders from the EU.

Immigration can improve our standard of living and quality of life. But a line must be drawn somewhere, particularly when uncontrolled immigration robs other countries of their labour force. This does not mean refusing to admit new arrivals. What is needed is a clear policy of balanced migration.

But it is the issues of exploitation and inequality which most galls the Orange Party.

In terms of available land, the UK is not overcrowded. But the vast majority of land is owned by a very few. Royal estates, the MOD and country landowners make up the bulk. Land ownership by the privileged has made the country overcrowded.

The UK has now been accepting about 250,000 immigrants a year since 1997. Yet we have three million unemployed.

Dependence on immigration depresses wages and only helps the bosses. Those who compete with economic migrants in the labour market tend to be 'poor' and on a low wages. Those who employ them tend to be ‘rich’.

The Orange Party rejects the argument that foreign labour is the only alternative if a job is so badly paid no UK worker will do it. The answer is to fight for better pay and improved conditions in those industries.

Last year the Office for National Statistics said if current trends continued, the UK population would rise by 10 million to more than 71.6 million by 2033 - the fastest rise in a century.

The majority of people oppose mass immigration. Yet anyone proposing immigration controls is swiftly branded a 'racist'. A neat device to brush the issue under the carpet. And for this election it seems that is where it will remain.

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Immigration Cover-Up's 'Smoking Gun'

New Labour's shameful 'unchecked' immigration policy was a deliberate ploy to beef up the share of the vote in vulnerable seats. The cover-up has been laid bare in a telling probe by The Sunday Times, suggesting the 'smoking gun' of a vote-rigging scam.

'Neathergate' blew the lid off a decade of minister's mealy-mouthed denials of a deliberate 'unchecked' immigration policy.

Now the "whiff of a smoking gun" behind the lies and deceit of 'open door' immigration is revealed by Sunday Times, David Leppard.

The Orange Party has long pondered the issue since former Blair speechwriter Neather, wrote an article claiming ministers had allowed immigration to rocket. Why did New Labour secretly open UK borders, while pretending to control numbers?

Was this really just an excuse to create a 'multicultural' Britain and rub the Tories noses in it, as had been suggested?

Was it to entice over hapless workers for a pittance to prop up the feel good factor of the false boom years?

Those explanations have a ring of truth. But all have the ring of idealistic motives and beg questions of incompetence, corruption, conspiracy and cock-up.

Neather’s account, says Leppard may be only half the story. The more simple explanation was that uncontrolled mass immigration was a deliberate, covert policy to change the country’s demographics.

Leppard points out that former minister Chris Mullin, recalled in his memoirs:

"... There is the added difficulty that at least 20 Labour seats, including Jack (Straw’s), depend on Asian votes”

With up to 80% of ethnic minorities voting Labour, it is obvious, said Leppard, that the more immigrants who get the right to vote, the greater is Labour’s electoral share.

Leppard reckons Mullin may have stumbled on a smoking gun, deliberately using 'unchecked' immigration to puff up the Labour share of the voting cake.

Couple that with the sham of rigged postal votes as the icing on the cake and what remains are the crumbs of a despicable act of a desperate government.

The Orange Party never bought into home secretary Johnson's explanation Labour was "maladroit" on the issue and the immigration door was left wide open because of a “cock-up”. Too much spin and damage limitation.

Evidence of a concerted cover-up is buried deep in documents ministers tried desperately to prevent being made public, according to The Sunday Times. Illegal activity was revealed following an FoI application by whitehall whistleblower, Steve Moxon, which force the government to release the material.

That cover-up knowingly risked allowing dangerous migrants to settle unchecked. Documents show that far from being a mistake, there was a deliberate home office endorsed policy to promote concerted risk-taking by immigration staff.

The Orange Party has no problems with controlled immigration to the UK for a better life and to alleviate a skilled shortage. But to entice over poor souls for selfish petty political reasons to rig votes, then cast them off like an old boot sticks in the throat.

A sensible debate on immigration can only be held if more of the lies and deceit could be brought out into the open and ministers had the guts to come clean and tell the truth, instead of deliberately misleading the public.

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Plight of 'Illegals' On Streets Of London

The plight of the capital's illegal immigrants has been exposed again but few are willing to raise their heads above the parapet and offer sensible practical solutions, preferring instead to brush it all under the carpet in the hope they will go away. 

Meanwhile poor souls suffer with no status and no protection, at the mercy of ruthless exploitation, forced to eek out a squalid, meagre existence in the underbelly of a twilight world. 

A study for London Mayor, Boris Johnson, puts the number of illegal immigrants at around three-quarters of a million, with London home to an estimated two thirds of illegal immigrants in the UK. 

Burying its head in the sand and scared of a backlash for failed immigration policies and highly spun figures, the government would not comment on the estimates, preferring instead to hide behind the useless statistic that the UK border is one of the toughest in the world.

Illegal immigration isn't confined to the capital but, as with many western cities, that is where they are drawn, with the false hope and promise of a better life before they are left to rot in the shadowy, anonymous underbelly of any large metropolis. 

Wandering around in limbo-land, falling victim to exploitation, their lack of status makes them easy prey for the slave labour bosses in the hotels, restaurants, sweat shops and food processing factories. Or just living on the streets and off scraps of hand-outs. 

Sucked into society's underbelly, they are forced to live in squalid accommodation and work propping up the lifestyles of the better-off, doing the menial jobs and scratching a living, without any state protection, falling victims to brutal harassment and meagre wages.

Mayor Johnson's  suggestion for some kind of amnesty doesn't curry favour in all quarters but behind the idea does lie a solution to an every-growing and squalid problem. 

Send them home is the cry from some quarters but where is home? Home is where the heart is, where there's a glimmer of hope and where people can live with a sense of pride. And that's certainly not in the squalor of third world slums or refugee camps. 

This is one issue the government wants to sweep under the carpet for fear its previous lax immigration policies are exposed again for the sham they were, as a neat way of propping up the economy for the false boom years. 

The government totally misses the point when it admits it would be impractical to round them up and send them home, preferring instead to treat this  big issue as a lost cause and flagging up the strict border controls now in place. 

But how many illegal immigrants come through passport control waiving their visas? They are smuggled in, crammed in container lorries through the slave labour supply routes across Europe with the bosses making all the bucks. That's if they don't end up as dead bodies in the back of a lorry.

Immigration minister, Phil Woolas, is talking bollocks when he says that far from helping, an amnesty would just encourage more illegal immigrants to come. So is the solution to criminalise a whole bunch of people and let them rot in a metropolitan hell-hole?

Government posters put the frighteners up everyone just to show they're being tough. But without status, 'illegals' live in fear, looking over their shoulders, falling prey to blackmailers, with the threat of being reported if they don't toe the line. 

By giving 'illegals' some kind of status they would be taken in by the state safety net and afforded some kind of protection against ruthless exploitation. 

Sure there would have to be be some tough criteria. Obviously no serious criminals, a legal job and they should have been here for a reasonable period of time.

But leave things as they are and it would take decades and cost billions to clear the backlog of all the people who are currently in the UK illegally.

Johnson is just being practical, but with the whole issue of illegal immigration a political hot potato, both the Conservative Party and the government do not seem to want to grasp the nettle, living instead in a smug, self-satisfied world, instead of listening to Ralph McTell's poignant lyrics for 'Streets of London': 

Let me take you by the hand 

And lead you through the streets of London 

I'll show you something 

To make you change your mind 

Immigration - Time for an Amnesty? is the subject of BBC1 Panorama, 8.30pm. 

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Stats Office Squares Up To Spinners

While it wasn't only the sea bass being grilled in the commons, served with lashings of Brown sauce, the row brewing at Westminster is how that reckless lot at the ONS had the cheek to publish clear, accurate and relevant jobs and immigrant figures, without letting Downing Street spinners get their grubby little paws on the press release. 

Yesterday's ONS release has left ministers "fizzing with anger" about the publication of numbers showing how many UK jobs go to immigrants.

The figures show the number of foreign workers increased by 175,000 to 2.4 million last year while the number of British workers fell by 234,000 to 27 million. Not good news for ministers still smarting from the BJ4BW protest. 

Such a release would have been unthinkable during the Campbell/Blair years and indeed up until very recently. But that was before home secretary Smith's political advisor was slammed by a commons watchdog after ordering the release of misleading knife crime figures. 

Then ministers and Downing Street spinners were blasted for 'corroding public trust'  using 'selective' figures to claim they are winning the war on the streets as ONS officials tried in vain to stop the government's 'reckless' release. 

The ONS is desperate to prove its independence and restore public confidence but juggling with any figures within a tight and highly skewed criteria set by the government has made a complete mockery of any government statistics, which no-one believes anymore, anyway. But well done guys for trying. 

Playing the numbers game has been a low point of the powerful Downing Street spin machine with obsessive control over what, where and when any information is released. 

Now it seems the spinning top had no idea what is coming out of the Office of National Statistics, as it fearlessly goes its own way. 

As usual, Mike Smithson over at politicalbetting puts his finger on the issue: "Isn’t this also a measure of the decline of Labour’s power? Whitehall has a strong sense that the game is up and bodies like the UK Statistics Authority can launch moves without fear."

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Anger Over Top Tory Arrest

Conservative leaders have expressed anger and disbelief after immigration spokesman, Damian Green, was arrested in connection with alleged leaked information over media stories about immigration.

The Conservative Party has confirmed the MP was questioned under the Official Secrets Act in connection with alleged leaks of information from the home office.

Downing Street is claiming this is a matter for the police and the prime minister had no prior knowledge of the arrest but Conservatives point out a police investigation into a high-ranking politician would have to have been cleared at "the very top".

The Orange Party smells a big political rat at work here and some scary heavy-handed Big Brother tactics. 

The arrest of a senior opposition MP was made by counter-terrorism police and came to light earlier this evening, after parliament had gone into recess, so no awkward questions could be asked in the House. It also raises serious questions about how the State deals with individuals, let alone an MP, who disclose matters in the public interest. 

In a statement the Conservative Party said:

"We can confirm that Damian Green was arrested ... As shadow immigration minister, Mr Green has, on a number of occasions, legitimately revealed information which the Home Office chose not to make public ... Disclosure of this information was manifestly in the public interest. Mr Green denies any wrongdoing and stands by his actions."

Green, a former broadcaster and journalist, was appointed shadow immigration minister in 2005.

The Telegraph reports: "Mr Green was arrested at his home in Kent by counter-terrorism police officers. The arrest follows a series of leaks to the Conservatives about Government policy, including a sensitive memorandum from the Home Office's most senior official on crime figures earlier this month."

Both shadow chancellor George Osborne and Conservative leader, David Cameron, have condemned the arrest. Cameron is said to be extremely angry, accusing the government of "Stalinesque" behaviour.

In February this year, the shadow immigration minister criticised the government over leaked documents at the Home Office.

The Telegraph reports an alleged whistleblower, thought to be a home office official, was arrested 10 days ago. Last November, documents from the private office of home secretary, Jacqui Smith, were leaked to the opposition.

They showed that ministers had known for four months that thousands of illegal immigrants had been cleared to work as security guards but had not told Parliament.

Other documents, the Telegraph reports, included information about an illegal immigrant working at House of Commons and a list of Labour MPs preparing to vote against the government's anti-terrorism measures.

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What Lies Beneath Immigration Distraction

A government propaganda drive to try to take the heat off the busted economy kicked off, with some clever spin trying to put the frighteners on people over immigration, to make ministers appear strong while the whole economy is falling around their ears. 

The distraction worked, for a short time, before it back-fired as people tried to work out what new immigration minister, Phil Woolas, was getting at, when he told The Times yesterday immigration would become "extremely thorny" if people were losing jobs.

But then, what he actually said, in terms of  policy, was nothing much at all. Sure, there was a vague line about capping the UK population below 70 million in years to come, picked up and ran with by much of the media at first as some major policy shift. But the rest? And why raise an immigration debate now of all times? 

This is all part of the pathetic attempt by Brown and his vast army of spin doctors to try to show the government will be doing something about that real economy which is crippling people's lives and deflect away from the decade of New Labour false and failed boom that got us into this mess in the first place.

The whole decade of boom was on the back of slave labour brought over by the Blair government, with no controls, to prop up the country and help create the false feel good factor for the lucky ones.

But in the dark and dirty underbelly, people were slaving away in appalling conditions for a meagre wage at the disgusting jobs no one else wanted to do. 

To achieve the grand plan of keeping kids in school and further education for longer, to stop the NHS from collapse, to get cheap food in the supermarkets, to clean up the filth on the streets, that all meant someone had to be brought in to do the crappy jobs that no one else wanted to do.

People from African, India, Eastern European and the Far East were enticed over here with a promise of a promise land, or to escape abject poverty and that was put around as some kind of magnanimous and philanthropic New Labour gesture. 

But the promised land turned into the devil's kingdom as they were forced into the reality of working in food processing factories, sweat shops, hotels and restaurants, on the land and to clean the shit up in hospitals. 

Now, after years of enticing people over here, the government slaps them in the face and turns round saying, thanks guys but we don't need you any more. What an insult. 

The myth of an overcrowded islands raises its head too. These islands are not over crowded. Immigrant labour is forced to live in ghettos created by the warped idea of New Labour multi-culturalism. A euphemism for packing the labour force into tight pockets where the labour is needed, out of sight of the political and media elite.

There's plenty of land but it is owed by the big landowners, the Crown and the MoD. Better to keep it all for shooting parties, playing soldiers and a playground for New Labour's new rich. 

And what on earth is the point of an immigration policy which just caps the number of people coming into this country. It can only apply to outside the ever expanding EU. It may be a sensible idea now but no one wanted to think of it before.

What is the point of such a policy when the government hasn't a clue how many people actually leave the UK after coming here on short term work permits to do the dirty jobs and act as cash cows for the colleges. 

Counting the heads of people leaving the country was abandoned. Without an adequate entry and exit policy and tighter border controls, the whole idea is pointless. 

Expect more of this spin, as the government tries to look tough on bust but of course, not on the causes of bust.  And next up, expect a couple of planted feel-good stories to reassure voters over public services.

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