From The Evening Standard:
Eighty illegal migrants have been arrested after a crackdown on unlawful working at the London Olympic site.
Half were caught after using fake passports or other false documents to obtain a job. The others were detained for overstaying their visas or working despite being barred from doing so under immigration or asylum rules... (1)
[The arrests] come in the wake of Gordon Brown's pledge to provide “British jobs for British workers”.(2)
Protesters have accused 2012 bosses of using cheap agency workers, often from overseas, in breach of labour agreements. There have been further complaints about the small number of locals gaining work on the £9.3 billion project...(3)
Announcing the enforcement action, Tony Smith, the UK Border Agency's Olympics director, said: “The UK Border Agency has officers based permanently at the Olympic site to check the identity of people seeking work and to help ensure the Games are delivered on time, with a workforce legally entitled to be there. A spokesman for the ODA added: “These figures demonstrate our efforts to ensure people working on site are legally entitled to do so...” (4)
(1) Let's be honest about this. All migrants are economic migrants. Quite whom we should let in or not let in is a different topic, but once they're here, let's get them working. If you don't stop them at the border, then it's too late.
(2) Shit policy.
(3) There's plenty of money for the top level people to fill their boots, hardly surprising that so little trickles down. The fact that employers would prefer to employ foreigners is not just because they can pay them less than natives, it is because the welfare state has deliberately eroded the work ethic and the education system does not prepare young people for work - neither for simple jobs that require merely the ability to turn up on time and keep your nose to the grindstone, nor for more sophisticated engineering-type jobs.
(4) In plain text, they knew bloody well that this would happen but they have been failing miserably to deal with it.
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10 comments:
The British workplace is a dire place at this time. Just to have a job is something special but to compound it with unemployable deadheads is not the greatest plan.
If you don't stop them at the border, then it's too late.
Not at all. Pack them onto R.A.F Hercules, open the ramp and drop them off back home.
NO problem.
I've gotta say I don't think the UK Borders Agency can win on this really.
Let's turn the tables for example and say that an undercover Daily Mail reporter found these illegal workers at the site. We'd then be bemoaning the UK borders agency for not doing its job.
I don't really see why its a shit policy either. Preventing these people from working in the UK effectively restricts supply so raises the price of eligible workers.
Now if you were going to argue that this higher cost of employing people has to be met by increased Olympics costs, then you'd have a good argument ...
Paul, "Preventing these people from working in the UK effectively restricts supply". Yeah but I didn't say that - I said decide whom to let in first of all, but once there in, let them work without let or hindrance.
Thinking about it, it is a sad indictment that these people cross half the globe (at huge personal risk and expense) to bag this sort of job while our generation of NEETs just hangs around on the dole.
And why would this increase costs? You have to factor in the welfare savings as well!
"it is because the welfare state has deliberately eroded the work ethic"
Well, worse than that, it has made employment unaffordable for many who have that ethic and would like to work. The system is truly fucked when people can say to me "I'd like to work for you, but I would be earning less I currently do on benefits if I did": and that was for more than the minimum wage.
Bayard, that's what I meant - two-thirds of the problem with the welfare state is because people are scarcely better off in a low paid job.
By paying a Citizen's Income to our people but not to Johnny Foreigner, it'd tilt the playing field in the other direction.
"Let's be honest about this. All migrants are economic migrants. "
Not 100% true of 100% of migrants. I will moving to Colombia in the future. Partly because we can get a bigger house but also partly because sadly my Colombian wife is 100% unadapted to this climate.
GO, "we can get a bigger house".
'nuff said.
"“The UK Border Agency has officers based permanently at the Olympic site" Not very good at their jobs then if 80 were caught already working.
Still I suppose that " something is being seen to be done ".
Agree with Mark that these people should be working.... rather than being forced onto benefits while their 'immigration status' is determined.
Better though, in my opinion, is to simply throw open the borders to all. Yes, I'm quite serious. Let them come. If someone is so minded and willing to chance their luck in the UK then we should welcome them. But, once here, they work. No hand outs, no benefits, no leaping to the front of the queues.
If they pay their way, they stay. If they fail... well, "Thank you for giving it a shot, there's the door". And just to make it fair, the same rules apply to the locals whether UK natives or our friends from across the EU. No out of work benefits.
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