GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT!

"We took more asylum applicants than Germany and more than twice as many as France in the year 2002. In the same year we took 29% of all the applicants who came to the EU."

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The Myth
"Immigrants contribute to our economy".
The Facts
Our economic output (GDP) is likely to increase if the population increases (since each new person adds something to output) but it doesn't follow the GDP per head - the measure that matters - rises. Most studies find any increase to be almost negligible e.g. "The Economist" magazine (27 June 2002) suggested that immigrants might add 1/8 % to GDP per year. Against that are the costs of increased congestion and, in some cases, negative social effects.

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The Myth
"Britain needs unskilled labour to run its economy."
The Facts
There are 1.5 million unemployed plus 4 million whom the Government wishes to move from welfare to work. Furthermore, productivity in Britain is 25% below that of the United States. It follows that there is a good deal of labour available if the labour market were to be allowed to operate. A large scale flow of immigrants ready to work for low wages impedes the proper operation of the labour market. It may suit employers but the tax payer pays for the extra schools, hospitals and other services the migrants need. Furthermore, we are denuding third world countries, whose needs are greater than ours, of doctors and teachers.


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The Myth
"Britain needs a large number of skilled workers".
The Facts
There are some skill shortages, notably in the medical profession, which could be filled by the issue of work permits. But this should be temporary. The only long-term solution is to train or re-train our own staff. The existence of skill shortages in limited sectors is not an argument for mass immigration.


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The Myth
"Britain (or usually Europe) has a declining population and work force"
The Facts
The British population is officially projected to increase by about 4.3 million between 2001 and 2026. (Almost 60% of this is attributable to the assumed level of immigration.) The work force will also increase, partly because women will be working longer. With a birth rate of 1.64, Britain is in a completely different situation from Germany, Italy and Spain whose birth rate is about 1.1. It is therefore misleading to treat Europe as a single entity for this purpose.


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The Myth
"Britain needs migrant workers to help pay for our pensions"
The Facts
False. Immigrants themselves grow older. To maintain the present population of working age to pensioners would require over 1 million immigrants a year up to 2050. That would double the population to 120 million and leave us with the same problem.


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The Myth
"Migrants contribute a net £2.5 billion to the exchequer"
The Facts
False. The relevant Home Office paper chose to define migrants as all those born abroad plus their dependant children. This comprised 5 million people - a much larger category than the recent asylum seekers. The study also ignored the cost of new facilities required and the costs of special education etc.


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The Myth
"People come to Britain as asylum seekers because there are so few legal avenues available".
The Facts
Most of the main source countries for asylum seekers, such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, are not "open" countries from which employers could easily recruit employees. In countries such as India, where we have massively increased the number of work permits issued in recent years, there has been no decline in the number
of people seeking asylum. The vast majority of these asylum claims are false - approximately 1in 20 of Indian applicants were granted asylum or exceptional leave in 2002.


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The Myth
"In 2001 the total number of successful asylum applicants was as high as 51% (Refugee Council)".
The Facts
False. This includes those granted Exceptional Leave to Remain (ELR) - a category now abolished by the Home Secretary because it had been awarded too liberally. Over the six years 1997 - 2002 just over 20% were granted asylum and a further 16.5% were granted ELR. Source: Home Office statistical bulletin 09/02 Table 1.1


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The Myth
"The UK ranked twelfth in the EU in terms of asylum applications in relation to the overall population on 2001"
The Facts
Misleading. It ignores the key point that what matters is not population but population density. England is twice as crowded as Germany, four times France and twelve times the United States. We took more asylum applicants than Germany and more than twice as many as France in the year 2002. In the same year we took 29% of all the applicants who came to the EU - up from 5% in 1992


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The Myth
"Britain takes only 2% of the world's refugees (Refugee Council)"
The Facts
False. The Refugee Council included the refugees in Asia and Africa and also confused a stock with a flow. The correct comparison is the number of asylum seekers coming to Britain compared to the number coming to Europe in a particular year. UNHCR figures for 2002 show that approximately 23% of asylum seekers arriving in Europe (and 29% of those coming to the EU) came to Britain.


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The Myth
"Those who oppose large scale immigration seek to establish "fortress Britain".
The Facts
Absurd. In 2001 there were 88 million international arrivals in Britain. Of these 61 million were British nationals returning home. 14 million were nationals of the European Economic Area and 12.8 million were from outside Europe. Not exactly a fortress. The issue is not how many come to Britain but how many come to settle here, often illegally.

First off: hows about picketing those newspapers that are full of Class Hate? Or do you middle class lefties not give a sh*t about white workers?
Secondly: Given the SWP's new allaince with MAB will you be picketing the offices of the Socialist 'Worker' on the grounds of it supporting Sex and Sexual Orientation Hate? Hows about picketing those Left groups who are in the Socialist Alliance and thus give cover to the SWP's hate (like the ISG, Workers Power etc)?

What a joke! You're going to picket the Daily Mail cos it has attacked asylum seekers? Cant remember you fools picketing it when it runs stories attacking working class people..why is that? I know people who are homeless..are you going to tell THEM that their white skin has given them 'priviledge'?..especially as asylum seekers DO get housed over dirt poor white workers with kids (oh and dont scream 'racist' as im talking from personal experience..)..
..do you any idea why the Left gets at best 0.6% of the vote? Whens the last time you picketed the dole office for treating workers like crap (the dole office is where people like me go when we havent got a job)? In fact the capitalists WANT lots of immigrants to drive wages down..this is ABC! & dont say that they do the jobs that WE wont do..perhaps your daddy and mommy could turn their noses up at crap work but on the estates its always been the case that we couldnt afford to do that..although (on balance prob thank god) we dont have a bunch of middle class lefties fighting each other to prove who supports us the most!

WHITE WORKERS?????????

erm maybe you should put your comment on the BNP website you dick!

oh yeah i forgot you probably do...

i think its nice that you also give yourself a jewish'y sounding name aswell quite clever
or not as the case maybe

as for the other comment maybe this guy should either wake up....or go back to writing articles for the daily mail.

NO BORDERS, NO NATIONS!!!!!!!

jb

*yawn* how predictable: anyone who says white people are human too & most of them are bloody poor is smeared as a 'racist'...with views like that perhaps JB should join the new hate group the SWP/MAB 'Peace & 'Justice'' Party..(especially if you're sexist & homophobic too)..
I wouldnt write to the BNP as im against Rightwing Fascism..but it seems that Left Fascism is alive and kicking..

Good to see some intelligent debate on an important issue. Of course we would all like to see a world in which people's movements are no longer restricted by artificial restraints in the form of nation states, but this should not mean we simply base our political position and more importantly action on a vague idea about how a better world would operate. The Left has tended to take the side of asylum seekers and immigrants out of an entirely understandable empathy with the victims of the system, but this has often blinded them to the effects that immigration has on the 'native' working class, formerly its key constituency.

Consider the "Refugees Are Welcome Here" slogan. For all that we might wish that was indeed the case, it clearly isn't (in which case it would be unneccesary as a slogan), but it is also divisive. We cannot afford to pit the "white working class" against refugees. You only need to look at the recent trouble in Wales to see what that means and that the only people who benefit are the BNP.

I have no great strategy for what we should be doing, but it seems important that we at least debate the issues. If we don't we may be handing victory to our worst enemies.

When you go to the website of the organisers of this 'anti-racist' picket you find its a front group for the sad Trot lot 'Workers Power'..they are exploiting asylum seekers to make recruits!
Secondly when you look at their pompous 'manifesto' you find down the list (wayyyy down from the antiracist section of course!) the following:

"• Against women’s oppression within Revolution and in any alliances and united fronts we form with other groups."

Which considering REVO (ie Workers Power) are in the socialist alliance & the swp have vey publically said that they (and the Birmingham Soc All at least) will be in an electoral pact with the muslim association of britain (the british section of the muslim brotherhood..who call for the death of gays and 'uppity' women)....you have to conclude that REVO too have junked *their* previous (paper) position against womens oppression...

..perhaps a picket of REVO would be more in order...the Daily Mail not calling for women to abused as sanctioned in the koran..

Well I support the SA and SWP alliance with the Muslim community. When you start talking about calls for the death of gays and 'uppity' women, you are insulting every muslim in Britain. What's the next logical step to that? voting bnp or some other fash party of course. Remember they hate Islam as well.

What you're missing though is that the Muslim Brotherhood isn't even representative of mainstream Muslim opinion, meaning that the SWPsters are heading into some murky waters...hence they had to get rid of an apostate on Birmingham Socialist Alliance's Exec!

PLUS, the point is that, by appealing for solidarity on some amorphous ethnic/religious basis, the SWp are gonna further marginalise other elements of the working class- whether that be within the Sikh community (and there are serious tensions between sikhs and muslims in Brum, which you KNOW the blundering white liberals in the SWP will have no sensitivity to), or the white community, which is even more going to feel that no one's speaking for or to it, leaving the door wide open for the BNP creeps.

This isn't conjecture - it's already happening. During the May local authority elections, the Socialist Alliance SWP candidate in Birmingham Bournville - who insisted on standing on a "Stop the war" platform - opted to canvas only the middle class, largely Quaker areas on the basis that they would be "anti-war", while ignoring some seriously run down working class estates. And, of course, the result was derisory. (Coincidentally, this candidate has now become Chair of Birmingham Socialist Alliance. But that's another story...)

It's sad the amount of right wing trolls you get on Indymedia these days, and the amount of sectarian crap.

Revo was set up by Workers Power and everyone involved knows this so it's hardly a front! This is combined with the fact that Revo has its own manifesto and 90% of Revo members aren't in Workers Power, but never mind this is all a load of crap anyway. Also women's rights are a always prominent in Revo as several sections on the website and past actions show, again sectarian rubbish. And to blame Revo (who isn't even in the SA by the way!) or Workers Power for the disgusting behaviour of the SWP is laughable....

The left has got a shit record in the UK over defending asylum seekers and we should build campaigns like in Australia and Italy. Militant and working class. This campaign is being launched by Revo and I'm proud of that. Hopefully a lot of other organisations and individuals will get involved. At the moment we only have CDAS which is not very active and never does any direct action.

Revo has a long record of fighting against low pay and unemployment, of fighting for unionisation drives, of supporting the firefighters (in South London one of the local firestations marched with us after the solidarity work and fundraising we'd done), campaigns against sweatshops in the UK and abroad etc etc. Asylum seekers are part of the working class and the issues go hand in hand. On a recent newsnight piece ex miners in Wigan said how they had absolute solidarity with asylum seekers and hated the scum who are the BNP and Daily Mail and Sun etc Because after all the hardships and attacks they had suffered they knew where their real enemy was. The governments who had sold them out and the ruling class spongers. They despised the BNP and saw solidarity in the fellow working class asylum seekers.

It's the government cut backs from the Tories and Labour over 20 years that have meant our public services are fucked and council houses sold off. These problems have nothing to do with asylum seekers. The rich have got richer while we suffer. The scapegoating of asylum seekers is a cop out for the government and just feeds fascists like the BNP.

By the way the reason we chose the DM as our first demo of the campaign is because Wapping is really hard to get to, out of the public eye and built like a fortress since the strikes. So get off the soap box, I'm working class, I've done union work for years being a TU rep (also been on the dole at various points) and am proud to stand in solidarity with asylum seekers and all working class people. And don't forget that the DM had headlines in the 1930s screaming about how the Jews fleeing the Nazis shouldn't have been let into the country. Sound familiar?! And to say the DM isn't full of class hate is laughable....

As for the "facts" that someone put up, where are your sources?

1) If it wasn't for immigration the NHS, education service, old peoples homes etc would have collapsed. For instance black and Asian GPs are a big percentage of the total number of GPs and we're already well down on the number of GPs needed anyway.

2) Taken from per 1000 people of the population the UK ranks 12th in terms of asylum seekers taken in to the UK. To argue that the UK is overcrowded when we have 700,000 empty homes and loads of empty land space is an absolute nonsense....

3) Immigration has contributed a huge amount to both the UK and US economy and the Economist that you speak of actually supports far more immigration, in fact it supports open borders, so not a very good source there!! Also the social problems you speak of are caused by the sponging rich and Labour and Tory governments cutting back our services while representing the rich. And what are you saying exactly that if immigrants were removed from the country that would help resolve all our problems?! Do me a favour, we're hardly overpopulated. And again, what about those 700,000+ empty homes that are all around the UK?! And increased congestion....are you taking this piss, I suppose you mean all those ayslum seekers driving Rolls Royces with their mobile phones.....oh I forgot actually they get £30 per week and shit housing (that I used to inspect as part of my job. Cockroach infested shit holes that no-one wanted).....

4) If there are low wages and bad working conditions and a lack of skills this has nothing to do with asylum seekers but the fact that business owners and the government are fucking over the working class. If you look back at history this has always been the case, immigration or not....

5) And why the fuck should comparisons only be made with Europe?! The vast majority of refugees are in developing countries, that's the fact of the matter.....2% of refugees come to the UK and that's the figure....

5) What you say about pensions is bollox. We need a new generation of younger people and this can only come from immigration. Unless you suggest forcing women to have more babies in the UK!!!