Forget sending people to Australia for failing the test, programmes like a ‘A Place In The Sun’ are already doing it!

If I failed, I would want to go to New Zealand.

Sunny’s language, restrained though it was, still made me laugh my head off. Sarah Standing is indeed an airhead… and what the hell is Fraser Nelson on about??!

“I think people who fail the citizenship test should be sent to Australia.”

Nobody deserves that fate, whatever their crime.

Sarah Standing is correct. No? It is the black man and woman who needs to, how do you say, acculturise his or herself to our way of life. No?

I remember when Sarah Standing used to write for the Daily Telegraph; she wrote in the Weekend section on fashion. Says it all really. Every article would carry a big picture of her, presumably demanded by the author herself. The Spectator does have good articles now and then, but it is really going downhill. Some of its jokes are quite funny though.

still – all very useful information.

If this mock up is accurate I would, in fact, have narrowly failed (10 out of 14).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4099770.stm

I know all this, so basically he’s complaining about Sunny’s loose language.

Fair enough then.

I didn’t have a problem reading the sentence as “Illegal immigrants don’t have any legal (employment) rights if they work because they are illegal.”

Of course they are entitled to protection of the law over murder, theft and rape, although in reality that protection might well be less effective because of their status and the fear and concealment it engenders.

Regarding the Greek workers, the error there was the Observer’s, which failed to distinguish between legal and illegal workers;
‘…illegal labourers is growing rapidly. Migrants now account for almost half the workforce in many key industries…’

I bet most British people haven’t a clue – having taken the Life in the UK Citizenship test I’m convinced most Brits would fail it miserably!

it might be more accurate to say that non-citizens who aren’t part of the EU or the EEA ( though recent changes mean bulgarians and romanians are no longer eligible and will need work permits) and do not have a work permit – don’t have any legally acknowledged or recognised employment rights in this country.

i.e. when your employer fucks you over, you do not have recourse to State law. However, you could of course have recourse under the international human rights declaration. But that is hardly ‘automatic’ and difficult to prove. you’d probably get deported and then you could fight your battle internationally if you so wished, but who is going to do that? that is why if you’re illegal you’re pretty much fucked. you could of course seek asylum to try and stay in the country, but again, that is up for negotiation.

but actually, it is more complex because if you’re an illegal immigrant, you’re not considered by the nation-state as worthy of its protection. one of the things that protects you is the UN Human Rights Declaration, and in Europe, the EU Convention on Human Rights, which the assumption is that the nation-state would have to listen to. of course, too many people do abuse those who are illegal immigrants because it is easy to do so and get away with.

You are absolutely correct to state that in fact things are a little more complicated than this but I really can not see what this has to do with what Sunny was complaining about in relation to an article on a British day in the Spectator.

Perhaps you could explain.

“Illegal immigrants don’t have any legal rights if they work because they are illegal.”

??

You mean if I find an illegal worker I can murder them? Rape them? Steal their clothes? Because they don’t have any legal rights because they’re illegal workers?

“Last week 54 Greek migrant workers employed to plant bulbs in Cornwall complained that they had been starved and threatened with sticks.”

Greeks, being EU citizens as you and I are, have exactly the same rights to work in the UK as you and I do.

So, perhaps it’s not quite to do with illegal immigrants working then, but perhaps something a touch more complex?

No surprises there. Sounds like the sort of culturally retarded statement made by the average Conservative.