Channel deaths | Four confirmed dead after migrant boat tragically capsizes (p 41)

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

It's sort of bollocks though, isn't it? Let's be honest, we all start off in a massive deficit with our 18 years of free schooling and education before we contribute anything. Whereas immigrants often come pre-educated. But the problem is that issues with immigration are only ever used as a way to whip up hatred or fury, so sensible stuff never gets talked about. For example, it was clearly ridiculous that someone working in the UK could get child benefits at UK levels for their kids still living in Eastern Europe. And there clearly could be a sensible solution to that, but no, we had to have it presented as scrounging foreigners sponging off the welfare state. Let's be honest, what it really highlighted is the ridiculousness that people working full time are still having to claim benefits to have a reasonable life in the UK.

The other issue with this idea of the deserving and undeserving poor is that there are people in need of help who haven't built up a bunch of social contributions and never will. What about someone with disabilities that prevent them from working who is never going to contribute enough in taxes to pay for the cost of their care? Or someone who grew up in and out of social care, never got a decent education and as a result, suffers serious mental health problems and can't hold down a permanent job? Or the person who had to quit their job to become a full time carer. So what starts as undeserving immigrants or asylum seekers quickly morphs into "She's not disabled. I saw her mowing the lawn the other day." Or the odd exception who does game the system used to suggest that the whole system isn't fit for purpose when it actually helps millions and the country as a whole.

We also get the likes of military veterans, poor pensioners, nurses, etc, used to attack other 'less deserving' people, by people who have no intention of helping those groups either. People who will happily fight to cut firefighters' pensions while arguing that they're more worthy than someone fleeing a war when it suits them.

Until we see a redistribution of wealth in this country to the point where (what should be) reasonably well off workers are not in energy poverty and using food banks then immigrants are an easy target. You are bound to get resentment of any help for immigrants (and blame from some quarters) until the 'native' population is at least adequately housed, warm and fed. While this situation is not addressed I seriously worry we are creating fertile ground for the far right and even facism to take hold. So, until this is sorted I think the let everyone in and help them out approach to immigration is naive and possibly dangerous.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Until we see a redistribution of wealth in this country to the point where (what should be) reasonably well off workers are not in energy poverty and using food banks then immigrants are an easy target. You are bound to get resentment of any help for immigrants (and blame from some quarters) until the 'native' population is at least adequately housed, warm and fed. While this situation is not addressed I seriously worry we are creating fertile ground for the far right and even facism to take hold. So, until this is sorted I think the let everyone in and help them out approach to immigration is naive and possibly dangerous.

News just in....... its already here

( see Gullis, Braverman, Patel, Farage as examples )

 

[hilts]

It’s an old thread mate. Just been bumped after today’s tragedy.

Yeah but these things have been discussed on many a thread for many a year

 

[hilts]

Heard a guy on the radio today giving it the old discredited ideas

1/ They come to get benefits - they don't get benefits they get £5 a day for essentials
2/ They come to get houses - they don't - if they did why are we spending £7m a day on hotels?
3/ They come to take jobs - they don't - we could do with their help but they are not allowed to work.

When you hear some bigot get dismantled live like that with info that has been in the public domain for ages you have to wonder about their intelligence

You don't have to wonder about it at all.

 

[hilts]

He confirmed there was a backlog, for reasons that are apparent to everyone.

The huffing and puffing about breaking international law is just that, I'm happy to be proved wrong but as it stands we've not actually broken any laws as yet and I doubt if these charlatans will.

Everything around immigration is playing to the gallery, what irks me is that we have entrenched positions glaring across a divide. The progressive position is untenable, it brooks no criticism around this issue screaming racism at anyone who blanches at anything other than open door, and the right wing position plays to an ethnic nationalism while dog whistling swamping.

It's why Labour will never be trusted on the issue, no matter how fucked up a mess the Tories make of it.

That about sums it up

 

[The perfect fumble]

It's sort of bollocks though, isn't it? Let's be honest, we all start off in a massive deficit with our 18 years of free schooling and education before we contribute anything. Whereas immigrants often come pre-educated. But the problem is that issues with immigration are only ever used as a way to whip up hatred or fury, so sensible stuff never gets talked about. For example, it was clearly ridiculous that someone working in the UK could get child benefits at UK levels for their kids still living in Eastern Europe. And there clearly could be a sensible solution to that, but no, we had to have it presented as scrounging foreigners sponging off the welfare state. Let's be honest, what it really highlighted is the ridiculousness that people working full time are still having to claim benefits to have a reasonable life in the UK.

The other issue with this idea of the deserving and undeserving poor is that there are people in need of help who haven't built up a bunch of social contributions and never will. What about someone with disabilities that prevent them from working who is never going to contribute enough in taxes to pay for the cost of their care? Or someone who grew up in and out of social care, never got a decent education and as a result, suffers serious mental health problems and can't hold down a permanent job? Or the person who had to quit their job to become a full time carer. So what starts as undeserving immigrants or asylum seekers quickly morphs into "She's not disabled. I saw her mowing the lawn the other day." Or the odd exception who does game the system used to suggest that the whole system isn't fit for purpose when it actually helps millions and the country as a whole.

We also get the likes of military veterans, poor pensioners, nurses, etc, used to attack other 'less deserving' people, by people who have no intention of helping those groups either. People who will happily fight to cut firefighters' pensions while arguing that they're more worthy than someone fleeing a war when it suits them.

I can't argue with any of this. lloyd George and Atlee never envisaged a world of mass immigration so the welfare system was not designed to accommodate it, but the fundamentals of pay in draw down were sound. It was always factored in that there would be those who would draw down who, because of personal circumstances like a disability, had not paid in, because they would be outnumbered by those like myself who paid in and wouldn't draw down.

And of course there's progressive taxation, hated by the Right, the basis of which is those with deeper pockets should pay more to help those who don't.

As you say, there were arguments over the deserving and undeserving poor before mass immigration, but this was an in house argument fuelled primarily by artificially created scarcity and stoked up by the Right, and it goes on today....

The Return of the Scrounger Myth​

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/07/welfare-state-social-security-universal-credit-austerity-tv

But mass immigration adds another dimension to this argument and because the Left refuses to address it, it's been the Right that's framed it.

As you say...

the problem is that issues with immigration are only ever used as a way to whip up hatred or fury, so sensible stuff never gets talked about

 

[The perfect fumble]

You cannot accept that though - things like this are the issue - its law - its international law - its about our respect and standing in the world - this lot want us to race to the bottom suddenly occupied by Belarus and Russia and you have to be against that or our nation and its people are lost

International law indeed, signed in the days before the first jet passenger liners, by bad faith actors who never proactively set up any mechanism for it to be anything other than a gesture. These lofty aspirations descend into acrimony under stress, as it did in the 70s with the arrival of Ugandan Asians and it's collapsing now for similar reasons.

This was posted earlier....



This is a system that was never designed to work and it's not just Britain under the Tories, it was the same under Labour.

 

[bluethrunthru]

International law indeed, signed in the days before the first jet passenger liners, by bad faith actors who never proactively set up any mechanism for it to be anything other than a gesture. These lofty aspirations descend into acrimony under stress, as it did in the 70s with the arrival of Ugandan Asians and it's collapsing now for similar reasons.

This was posted earlier....



This is a system that was never designed to work and it's not just Britain under the Tories, it was the same under Labour.

Yet its a system that currently works around most of the globe

 

[The perfect fumble]

Yet its a system that currently works around most of the globe

Your evidence being?

 

[bluethrunthru]

Your evidence being?

There is no suggestion that any other signatory to the Convention undergoing the issues we are - maybe they have functioning law abiding governments