Of course the Immigration Authorities want fewer cases like this, that much should be obvious to anyone. The reason is because the press has a ready made slag-off article with every one of these cases. The steady drip-drip of cases such as this have undermined the system and public confidence. The quality of decisions stopped being the most important factor some time ago. The old aphorism that good people go out and be good, very good people go out an look good is so apt with immigration.

The article says that the immigration system is falling apart, it is not clear how direct an experience of the system this conclusion is based on. When I was going through my wife’s immigration process what I found was people working hard in a ludicrously overblown system under (fair and unfair) pressures from the press.

No doubt politicians must share some of the blame for both the chaos in the system and that cases like that in the article are turned down. But journalists ad writers may like to dwell on the role that their Colleagues have played in bringing us to this point, and indeed the feeble way in which journalists have been unable to make any immigration positive coverage stick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Liverpool

“It is now generally accepted that Lord Liverpool was of Anglo-Indian descent.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Indian

“The Anglo-Indian community in its proper sense is a distinct (and statistically very small) minority community (0.018%-0.036% of the total population in India) originating in India, consisting of people of mixed British and Indian ancestry whose native language is English. An Anglo-Indian’s British ancestry was usually bequeathed paternally. Article 366(2) of the Indian Constitution defines an Anglo-Indian as “a person whose father or any of whose other male progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent but who is domiciled within the territory of India and is or was born within such territory of parents habitually resident therein and not established there for temporary purposes only”.[2] Under this definition, the mestiços (mixed Portuguese and Indian) of Goa are also included.”

The Conservatvies gave us our first ethnic minority PM, our first non-Christian PM (sort of- Disraeli), and our first female PM- the true progressive party. Has there ever been a Liberal/Labour PM who was not Anglo-Saxon, white, Christian and male?

The liberal left make the Tories seem actually multicultural. Ok I know Cameron’s a Scot, but before that we had four English, one a woman, another a Jew. Diversity indeed! I bet you’re more likely to see an Anglo-Indian Tory PM than a liberal…

“I can’t believe how simplistic and uninformed some of the comments have been. Scotland is relatively sparsely populated for a reason – most of it won’t support a large population.”

It can support more people then it does presently- Scotland’s population is not really growing, despite English subsidies for healthcare, as deep-fried Mars Bars are helping to shorten lifespans. And why not try and populate some of the more barren areas?

They’re coming by Euro-rail?

I can’t believe how simplistic and uninformed some of the comments have been. Scotland is relatively sparsely populated for a reason – most of it won’t support a large population. It did once, it might again; but unless you have a plan to make re-population viable then you’re whistling in the wind.

As for the idea that we can have some sort of check-list which will put people into three neat categories, it’s sophomoric.

The ones who ignore 20 safe, first world countries on the way to the UK are not interested in fleeing from tyranny, but rather in feathering their own nests.

And leaving aside the point, that apart from the arse-end of Scotland and Wales, there’s just too many people in this country.

Give me five million hard working and industrious Hong Kong people any day of the week.

The way we abandoned Hong Kong was a disgrace, frankly.

I agree. But people don’t ask my opinion when making decisions to move to this country

If she could get to Mexico, then cross the Rio Grande, she’d be home free.

Doing it the honest way doesn’t work. You have to get into the country and become a fact-on-the-ground to be taken seriously

Europe has tired of asylum seekers, but the U.S. needs people and would give her a better hearing.

My idea for solving the Northern Ireland problem was to build a new Hong Kong on the coast off Belfast and invite the entire Hong Kong populace over. Hey presto, 6 million Hong Kongese and only 1.5 million NI folks. Problem solved. *grins*

“The British right has, over the past decade or so, made such a stink about immigration in this country that any sense of fairness, humanity or competence seems to have been drained out of the system.”

So the immigration system worked better under the Conservatives eh? Interesting.

As somebody who is staunchly pro-immigration myself, I do worry that there is increasingly a backlash against immigrants, especially when it comes to housing and other public services. I believe that people who are legally entitled to come into this country should have access to the same services, otherwise we are treating our immigrants as second-class citizens, which is wrong.

The debate at the moment is focused on numbers, but why not have more of a discussion about density? Scotland has a tenth of the population of England, so why not encourage more immigrants to move there? You could do so by pointing out that they have a better chance of getting a council house there, and other benefits. Better voluntary dispersal would suck the poison out of the BNP’s and friends’ bigoted arguments, causing them to loose most of their ‘protest’ support, leaving them with an insignificant hard-right rump, which will always be there whatever we do.

Then we can have a proper immigration system, which does not send persecuted people to Iran or Zimbabwe, and which will have a better chance of fairness because there will be less shrill debate. The right has played its part in damaging the debate on immigration, as it sometimes plays on populist fears, but the left is also guilty, since for years it labelled anybody who wanted to debate immigration reform as a racist. We have to move beyond that if we do not want our immigration system to be viewed as a joke and used by the BNP for electoral gain.

Therefore a Filipino who worked illegally as a maid and cleaner for below minimum wage and had the misfortune to be found out is much more likely to be deported than a radical cleric who openly preached death to non believers and homosexuals.

This is simply because the latter is more likely to call upon the Human Rights Act whereas the former, being totally ignorant of her rights, is likely to “go quietly”.

2) People (and their children etc) who have come *directly* to the UK or to a UK Embassy/Territory/Representative and whose lives are threatened or in danger. That means those people who travel through a dozen safe countries to get here and then claim asylum should all a priori be denied.

I think part of the problem is defining what a “safe” country is. It would only result in the UK denying asylum on the basis that they passed through what the Home Office deem to be “safe”, when in fact it is not. So this shifts the same administrative problem around.

So this policy only works if all the countries between the UK and the country in question have a unified stance on the matter. Perhaps all the countries on the continent should form some kind of ‘union’ to push this through?

I don’t see why people get irritated with asylum seekers choosing our country over others. We should surely be flattered that they wish to be a part of our British system, and not (say, the French or the Ukrainians). If I was fleeing famine, pestilence, religious intoleration, sexual abuse, AIDS, ethnic cleansing, zero-education etcetera, I would maked dammned sure I claimed asylum in the nicest place possible. Asylum is a ‘supply and demand’ problem. Sure, we can make the “pull” factors less attractive, but weakening the “push” factors is surely more humane.

Its quite simple:

We have two categories of acceptable immigrants:

1) People whose skills we need, and who have passed through an Australian-style points programme or have a work permit, which may, depended upon behaviour, be converted into citizenship at a later date.

2) People (and their children etc) who have come *directly* to the UK or to a UK Embassy/Territory/Representative and whose lives are threatened or in danger. That means those people who travel through a dozen safe countries to get here and then claim asylum should all a priori be denied.

Apart from these two exceptions, *no immigration whatsoever*.

People who do lodge legimate asylum claims should be given a temporary work permit, which will allow them to work and pay tax like everyone else. This permit can be revoked if their claim is unsuccessful, or converted into citizenship if successful.

I know from first-hand experience that many Pakistani folk lie through their teeth to get in and loads of Jamican people lie and claim that they are gay to gain Asylum too. In a way, this is also leading to a situation where war-torn residents from Eritrea are being turned back because they claimed in an interview that they got to the station at 10.30pm instead of 10.15.

It’s just an endless bunch of spiderwebs, how do you reform such a system?

What we need is a govt. that has the courage to completely reform our immigration system. The trouble is, I believe, that although Labour is content to meddle around the edges, it wants to retain the materialist “open door” policy over that of maintaining coherent communities. Completely confusing officials in the process – ie, pay lip service to concerns about immigration, yet keep the door open because the economy’s booming.