The BBC describe the (largely unenforceable) proposals in detail.
What really hacks me off are the hugely expensive adverts on prime time telly (the ones with the chap running the hurdles) reminding employers that they'll need to be registered to be able to employ overseas workers, and threatening them with large fines.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't immigration control (along with defence) one of the two inalienable core functions of the State? Isn't that what we are all paying The State to do?
If The State lets somebody in (whether or not they should have done), then they are in AFAIAC; and I don't see why somebody who happens to employ them (unless they have been complicit in people smuggling, kidnap etc) is any more guilty than a landlord from whom they rent somewhere to live* or the supermarket where they buy life's essentials.
* Oops. I shouldn't have said that. In theory, if you get caught smoking cannabis in the place you rent, your landlord can be prosecuted as well (I can't track down the exact statutory reference). So why not extend this to landlords who aren't licensed to house migrant workers?
Tuesday 9 September 2008
"Foreign worker limits introduced"
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7 comments:
The problem is that there's a difference between someone coming here to visit and someone coming to work.
Whilst we want Japanese/Russian/Latvian tourists to come here, but we don't necessarily want them coming here to work.
I can't really see a way that the state can police this except through employers.
1. The overall figures (let alone commonsense) suggest that net migration between the UK and other first world countries (N. America, Western Europe, Japan, ANZ etc) is negligible. So that's not an issue. The writer, and many readers, of this 'blog have lived and worked abroad and either stayed there or come back. And the writer of this 'blog is married to a foreigner, as it happens.
2. 90% of net immigration is from 'New Commonwealth' and 'Other'. If qualified, English-speaking people with no criminal record want to come here to work then that's fine by me. But rather than pay people-smugglers, they should rock up at our consulates, be vetted there and then, pay a few £1,000 for a visa and that's that.
3. If non-English speaking Islamists and criminals want to come here to murder people and sponge off Welfare State, it's a two-pronged approach:
a) Don't pay them benefits once they're in (so the UK is less attractive)
b) If they get picked up, just deport them (whether they came here as tourists or anything else).
4. We're an island for crying out loud. Net immigration has trebled since Nulab abandoned border controls and started shovelling welfare at these people.
5. So The State managed to police this before and there is no reason why it shouldn't do so again. I, for one, am totally against this idea that employers should be carrying out core functions of the state like sifting out 'illegal' immigrants or paying for CRB checks etc etc. Else, why not apply this to landlords and supermarkets?
MW
As usual - right on the button.
The disquiet produced by immigration largely comes down to your point 3. It's not skilled workers (or unskilled for that matter) which the electorate wants to keep out. It's the third world criminal scum who turn up (often demanding "asylum") and - as if by a miracle - receive benefits and jump the "social" housing queue on their way to jail after a short but violent career which drives the indigenous population to distraction.
The bureaucrats are lining up an expensive, hugely complicated (and ultimately unworkable) make-work scheme to "control" immigration. The whole thing's a crock but I guarantee that some of the third-world crooks who have already distinguish themselves at the Home Office (and, by virtue of their criminal expertise, probably qualify as "skilled workers in short supply" under the new dispensation) will find fresh opportunities for corruption in this scheme.
U, good link, and I guess that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Hi Mark,
As I mention here immigration has been used to artificially suppress workers' wages, to the benefit of employers.
Care homes for instance employ immigrants to do jobs that pay about the same as benefits to UK nationals...
Let the wages rise and some more of the economically inactive UK nationals will certainly step in.
This is why Frank Field MP is involved, but I haven't quite worked out what is in it for the Tory MP yet :)
NT, agreed.
But it's not just the absolute difference between low skilled wages and benefits that distorts this, it is far more due to the fact that you lose up to 95.5p in benefits for every £1 you earn up to about £10,000 a year.
It would be far better to reduce means-testing so that somebody on benefits who takes a low paid job can keep at least 50p for every £1 he or she earns. That'll fix it.
On a purely practical basis employers are relatively visible compred with flats/houses which might be being let out. If employers found it to expensive in terms of fines to employ illegals the incentive for illegal immigration woyuld disappear.
It is worth knowing that the oficial immigration rate in Japan & South Korea is 0.00% & I suspect the real one wil not be far off. Despite what politicians say it can be stopped if the will is there.
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