Monday, January 14, 2008

Spot the deliberate mistake

Immigration minister Liam Byrne has outlined his 10 points for controlling immigration:


* within 15 days to check fingerprints before a visa is issued anywhere in the world;

But no one from the EU needs a visa, so that's them out.
* within 60 days to introduce on the spot fines for employers who don't make the right right-to-work checks;
Everyone in the EU has the right to come to live and work in the UK.
* within 80 days to begin the introduction of a new points system for managing migration;
But not from the EU because they are allowed to come here without registering and stay for 3 months without telling anyone and they can't be kicked out unless they are terrorists.

* within 100 days to introduce a single border force and police-like powers for frontline staff;
How about embarkation controls? Wouldn't it be good to know who was actually in the country? Not that we can have them for 'internal borders'...
* within 180 days to confirm the number of foreign national prisoners deported in 2008 will exceed 2007;
Quotas strike me as somewhat silly. How about we say any prisoner who is not a British national can fuck off after you've done your sentence. And don't give me any Human Rights crap: they had their chance, they fucked up. Obviously this doesn't count for EU citizens as we can't just deport them because of a crime unless it threatens the security of the country.
* within 200 days to activate powers to automatically deport foreign national prisoners;
See above. And also how about we stop people with serious criminal records coming in...apart from the obvious because we're not allowed to.
* within 300 days to expand detention capacity;
Good. And don't just let them out, either.
* within 330 days to begin issuing compulsory ID cards for those foreign nationals who want to stay;
This strikes me as another document for people to forge. And considering that we have a huge problem with illegal asylum, that won't help that issue. Next step, ID cards for nationals. The one after that, numbers stamped on our arses like the fucking sheep we are.
* by Christmas to begin counting foreign nationals in and out of the country and to introduce compulsory watch-list checks for high risk journeys before they land; and

* within 360 days to make and enforce 60 per cent asylum decisions within six months, with alternatives to detention for children.

By foreign nationals do we mean everyone from outside the UK, or the EU?

I did rather repeat myself there, but as usual the white elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about is the EU. When this bloody Constitution is signed, most of these decisions will go over to Brussels anyway, not that the government will mention that either, because then we might want a referendum...even more than we already do.

When Jim Murphy said it was time for a proper debate, did he actually mean it? Because this would be a good place to start.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well done for trying to tackle a difficult subject.