Migrant numbers 'must be reduced'

[dipsydoodle]

Source: BBC News

The number of migrants allowed into the UK under the points system may have to be reduced because of the economic crisis, an immigration minister says.

Phil Woolas told the Times immigration became an "extremely thorny" subject when people were losing their jobs.

"It's been too easy to get into this country in the past and it's going to get harder," he said.

The Home Office said the current points-based system provided "a powerful and flexible set of controls".

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7677419.stm

[izquierdista]

1. Just how to do that

People migrate for economic opportunity, certainly NOT to be thousands of miles away from their family, certainly NOT so they can adapt to a foreign culture, and NOT because they have heard that the welfare benefits someplace were a real draw. If a government wants to discourage migrants, for whatever reason, they have to convince these people that economic opportunity can come to them if they just stay.

The article is about the UK, but the same holds true for the USA. If you want to discourage "illegal immigration", don't make it so there is no opportunity in Mexico, but plenty of minimum wage or paid-under-the-table jobs in the USA. NAFTA played a cruel trick on the poor of both the US and Mexico. By undercutting the prices of commodities the Mexicans were producing for themselves, they sent them north, and in the north, those same Mexicans were put to work at lower wages and benefits than Americans just down the street from the factory in question. The Mexicans lose, the working class Americans lose, but the factory owner makes out great.

Unless the economically advanced countries want a steady stream of migrants to their shores, they need to help the lesser developed countries create self-sufficient economies and give people an opportunity to stay. But aid money gets wasted on military hardware, airports, highways, and showy hydroelectric projects. It never goes to building schools and hospitals in remote villages, community water wells, sewage treatment plants, and less flashy infrastructure.

[bean fidhleir]

2. Well said. Pity we can't recommend individual responses. (nt)

[tazkcmo]

4. Thank you!

Well said. Being in the construction biz my wages have been depressed for quite some time due to the large influx of cheaper, illegal labor. I've never blamed the immigrant but the system that causes them to leave family, country and culture at great risk to themselves as well as the bastards that take advantage of these people's situation.

[jwirr]

6. IMO helping other countries become self sufficient without destroying

our own self sufficiency is the absolute issue of the future. It is the only way to stabilize the world to face global warming and oil shortages and many other problems. If we had gone this way instead of toward empire for all these years what a wonderful world it would be.

[blue97keet]

3. Economic independence

Economic independence is not served by either capital investment or migration.

[StopTheNeoCons]

5. Watch V for Vendetta, its all there