Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Hidden Article

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Act now... or say goodbye to the Britain we know

anon@indymedia.org (FRANK FIELD AND NICHOLAS SOAMES) | 06.09.2012 10:55



The public are fed up with mass immigration. That was the message of the public petition on the Downing Street website launched last autumn.
Only 11 of the 36,000 petitions on that site have reached the 100,000 signatures required to trigger a House of Commons debate.
This petition reached that 100,000 within a week, with the resulting debate in the House of Commons today taking place.  We will at last be giving voice to the widespread public concern.
Over-crowded: Figures released last week showed that, while falling slightly, net migration to the UK still stands at 216,000 a year
The fact is that the public do not believe the claims of the immigration lobby and they are right. Nor do they think that enough attention has been paid to the impact of such huge numbers on the lives of ordinary people – particularly not by the BBC.
The reality is that we are experiencing by far the largest wave of immigration for nearly 1,000 years.
Certainly, there has been some limited immigration over the centuries and many immigrants and their children have made a positive contribution to this country. But mass immigration is entirely new.
This really is the last chance saloon. If the Government were to lose its nerve and fail to press on with reform we would be saying goodbye to the country we inherited.
Unsustainable: If immigration is allowed to continue at its current rate our population will climb from 62.3 million to 70 million in just 15 years time
The Office for National Statistics recently published the immigration figures back to 1964. It is very interesting to see that, until the early 1980s, more people left Britain than came here. From then until the mid 1990s net migration was never more than about 50,000 a year, and often much less. It took off in 1998 and by 2010 had risen to 250,000 a year – five times higher than in 1997.
There has never been a declared government policy. Nor any planning. And certainly no public support - quite the opposite. By 2008, about three quarters of us wanted to see immigration reduced; half the public wanted it reduced ‘by a lot’.
Their wishes are yet to be met.
The impact of these numbers is already being felt throughout the country and the big cuts to public expenditure are still to come.
A huge job: Mark Harper has been named as the new Immigration minister after Cameron's Cabinet reshuffle. He must implement policies and challenge the crisis facing the UK
Maternity units are struggling. Primary schools are running out  of places. And pressure on housing is getting worse, especially given that housing construction has plummeted.
This pressure on services is nothing when compared to what we will face if the government does  not succeed in reducing future net immigration.
For the last ten years net immigration has averaged about 200,000 a year.
If that is allowed to continue our population will climb from 62.3 million to 70 million in just 15 years time. About 2.5 million of that will be natural increase – more births than deaths. The other five million will be down to new immigrants and their children.
 
 More...

Deporting a brave Briton while we shelter terrorists is sheer insanity
University begins legal action after being banned from taking overseas students following Government immigration probe
Scandal of 50,000 bogus students free to work in the UK after Home Office failures

 
What that means in practice is that we will have to build the equivalent of our eight major cities outside the capital – that is to say a Birmingham plus a Leeds, a Glasgow, a Sheffield, a Bradford, a Manchester, a Liverpool and a Bristol.
All this in just 15 years! Where will the money come from when the Government is already borrowing £1 for every £4 that it spends?
This is obviously unsustainable. That is why the petition, launched by MigrationWatch UK, an independent think-tank, called for the Government to take all necessary measures to stabilise our population, below 70million.
Epidemic of 'fake' students: Last week, border officials stripped London Metropolitan University of its right to sponsor non-EU students after UKBA found more than a quarter of a sample of the university's students did not have permission to stay in the country
Can they do it? They have promised to get the net immigration figure down to the tens of thousands by 2015. In later years they will need to get it down further to about 50,000 to stabilise our population.
It is proving slow going.
The latest figures, published last week, show a reduction from 252,000 in 2010 to 216,000 in 2011.
These numbers are not precise but they do show the scale of the challenge to the Government.
They will have to hold their nerve in the face of pressure from the immigration lobby.
Foreign students will be a test case. Of course they are valuable if they are genuine in the first place and don’t overstay their visas. But we are currently admitting a quarter of a million every year with no checks on their departure.
The Government must press on with face-to-face interviews before they come and creating some means of recording their departure. Otherwise the student route will remain a back door to Britain and the reputation of our colleges and universities will be dragged through the mud.
To be fair to the Government, they have taken up the proposals by the Cross Party Group on  Balanced Migration, and these are now policy.
With a new Immigration Minister, these policies must be vigorously implemented. 

x

anon@indymedia.org (FRANK FIELD AND NICHOLAS SOAMES)
- Original article on IMC Northern England: http://northern-indymedia.org/articles/2621

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech