“Labour Were Thinking What The Tories Were Thinking”

[webofevil]

Unpleasant though it is to find myself quoting Guido Fawkes—life’s too short to be swamped by that much bile—the fact remains that here he’s absolutely right:

Immigration minister Liam Byrne told BBC News this morning that the Australian immigration control model had been closely examined by the British government: “I think that people want to know that only those who we need to come to Britain should be allowed to come and I think a points system has worked extremely well in Australia so we have studied that hard, we think it would work well in this country.”


The 2005 Conservative Party Manifesto promised: “We will introduce a points-based system for work permits similar to the one used in Australia. This will give priority to people with the skills Britain needs.”

Remember how the Labour Party made a huge issue of the policy and campaign posters ... condemning the commitment as a racist dog-whistle policy? Less than three years later Labour is implementing the same policy. [article]

Comments

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Yes, we only really want immigrants so wealthy that they won’t have to pay taxes. And of course, while we don’t want economic refugees, we certainly welcome genuine refugees:

In 1999, when refugees were struggling out of Kosovo, New Labour introduced an immigration and asylum bill. The unstated aim was to make it impossible for a refugee from Milosevic or any other psychotic goon to reach Britain legally. In all but rare circumstances, they would be forced to turn to criminal gangs and therefore, by definition, become ‘illegal immigrants’, who were no better than criminals.

From Bosnia to Zimbabwe, as soon as war or internal persecution produced refugees, Britain imposed visa restrictions on the afflicted country. Assuming your enemies allowed you to stroll unmolested through your capital, you would need to reach the British embassy. Once inside, you would tell the staff that you wished to fly to Heathrow to escape persecution, and would be grateful for a visa. They would show you the door. The immigration rules do not include a desire to claim asylum as a valid reason for visiting Britain. [...]

The policy was as harsh as the measures adopted by Whitehall when Hitler was sweeping through Europe. No modern politician, however, imitated the agonising of Sir Samuel Hoare, who was Home Secretary in Neville Chamberlain’s government when the Nazis moved into Austria in 1938. “Many persons were expected to seek refuge,” Sir Samuel told the Cabinet. “I feel a great reluctance in putting another obstacle in the way of these unfortunate people.” The hand-wringing didn’t stop Chamberlain introducing visa restrictions...

Very well, you reason, if Straw and Blair are going to be more authoritarian than Hoare and Chamberlain, you can skip the British embassy and head off without a visa. Should you carry your passport? You certainly should not, as a standard letter of refusal from the Home Office to asylum-seekers with passports makes clear: “The Secretary of State noted that you were able to obtain a properly issued passport which you then used to leave [insert country] through normal immigration channels without difficulty on [insert date]. He concluded that this indicates that the authorities have no further interest in your activities.”

OK, if having a “properly issued passport” is to be taken as a sign that your country’s regime doesn’t intend to shoot you, should you travel without a passport? You certainly should not. The standard letter of refusal for “undocumented passengers” makes clear that your claim for asylum will be rejected “owing to your failure to produce a passport when requested to do so on arrival”.

Forging, borrowing or stealing a passport is often a necessity. Milosevic destroyed the passports and property deeds of ethnically cleansed Muslims so they would never be able to seek restitution. As far as the record showed they had never lived in their homes, never existed. Saddam Hussein made 120,000 Kurds and Turks disappear from the files when he drove them out of Iraq between 1991 and 2003. The potential victims of other dictators have ditched their old identities and got new ones sharpish to protect themselves from the secret police. In opposition, Tony Blair condemned the Tories for believing that a false passport was the mark of a fraudulent refugee: “The Secretary of State spoke about those who destroy documentation. That is not necessarily evidence of fraud. There may be good reasons why this has happened.”

[contd.]

[strictlytrue.livejournal.com]

Moreover, this Q&A in that hotbed of Blairite lickspittlism, The Guardian, would seem to contradict your initial claim that:

Yes, we only really want immigrants so wealthy that they won’t have to pay taxes.

The only people complaining seem to be our old friends, the good old small businesses, upset that they can't employ illegal immigrants and pay them peanuts any more.