Too little too late

In a speech to Policy Network ,a right-of-centre think-tank, the Communities Secretary John Denham MP managed to socialistically attack the middle classes, whilst addressing too late, the issues faced by the working class. It simply beggars belief, that a whole swathe of the electorate were simply ignored, that their wishes and aspirations were swept aside, in order to implement changes wholly detrimental to this nation. Yet we have seen the levels of inward immigration spiral, have witnessed such change under the dubious leadership of Labour, “the party of the working man” (sic) that we may never wholly undo the changes without large-scale governmental action, that is to say, repatriation for the good of the nation.

Are we to assume that Mr Denham and his ilk were not aware of the blight immigration caused amongst the working-class, that the concerns he now addresses have only just occurred to him, or can it be pre-election campaigning, a recognition of the peoples lurch towards the conservatives as opposed to his own party, are politicians merely

IMMIGRATION: 590,000 NEW ARRIVALS IN BRITAIN A YEAR

IMMIGRATION is continuing to rocket by more than half a million new arrivals every year, official figures revealed yesterday.

An extra 590,000 immigrants came to live in Britain last year, the statistics showed.

Only unprecedented numbers of people leaving the country caused a slight slowing in the rate of the UK’s population growth.

Critics of Labour’s immigration policy last night seized on the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics as fresh evidence that ministers’ vow to curb immigration is failing. Overall, migration both in and out of Britain added 163,000 to the UK population in the 12 months up to the end of March.

There were 590,000 arrivals between April last year and March this year, compared with 574,000 the previous year. Meanwhile, 427,000 people left the country in the 12 months to last March compared with 341,000 in the previous year.

This year’s exodus was the highest since records began in 1991.

Many were eastern Europeans returning home because of rising unemployment here. The number of non-Britons leaving the country rose from 169,000 in 2007 to 255,000 last year. Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green said: “Yet another of Gordon Brown’s soundbites has proved to be false.

“This government has created British jobs for foreign workers as the astonishing increase in grants of settlement shows.”continues here

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New Indian brides abandoned by British Asian husbands

Thousands of brides in India are being abandoned by their British Asian husbands after they are married.

Despite this, there is evidence to suggest that Indian women are continuing to fall for British suitors.

In a dusty village in the Jagraon district of Punjab, northern India, 35-year-old Suman (which is not her real name), lives with her widowed mother in a small room in a crumbling building.

Four years ago, the secondary school teacher married a British man in a wedding arranged by relatives.

Shortly after the ceremony, her husband, who is in his 50s, left for London with the promise he would send for her. At first all appeared to go well.

"He would visit two to three times a year.

"Whenever he came to India, we had a good time," she said.

However, on one visit he claimed her application for a spousal visa to the UK had been refused. It was like being a prostitute you take along and have a good time with and then leave behind
'Suman', 35

"He told me he had applied for an appeal.

"But he has never shown me a copy of that appeal. He's never shown me any documents."

The visits and calls ended, and for the past six months Suman has had no contact with her husband.

"In hindsight, it was like being a prostitute you take along and have a good time with and then leave behind.Jassi Khangura, a businessman from London and now a politician in the Punjab Legislative Assembly, says Indian families are obsessed with emigrating to the UK.

"When he returned to England, there would be no communication. A month before he was due to come back, he established contact again.

"Many a time I let that pass, thinking he might be busy, but now I get the feeling that I was being used all this time."

In the bustling city of Chandigarh, lawyer and women's rights activist Daljit Kaur has dealt with many similar women who have been deserted by their husbands who live in the UK, Canada and the US.

"There are 15,000 to 20,000 abandoned brides in India," she said.

In India these women are called "holiday brides" and Mrs Kaur believes British Asian grooms account for a third of all such cases.

In the village of Rurka Kalan, in the Doaba region of Punjab, an area that has strong links to Britain's Indian community, I was taken to a local community centre, a bare single-storey concrete building.

There I was staggered to discover up to a dozen women huddled together, clutching their marriage documents and wedding photographs.

The youngest of these "holiday brides" were barely out of their teens.

A pretty girl dressed in a shalwar kameez (tunic and trousers) had married a man from Coventry, central England.

She said: "He did not give me any reason, why he did this.

"I came to know later through relatives that he did not want to stay married to a girl from such a poor background."

The eldest was a 41-year-old lady who was deserted by a Glaswegian man more than 20 years ago.

She handed me a scrap of paper with an address scrawled on it, urging me to trace him for her.

Not one of these women had re-married. They said their lives had been ruined in this socially conservative part of India, where divorce is frowned upon. Many are forced to depend on relatives for financial handouts.

But Indian women are still falling for British suitors.

Jassi Khangura, a businessman from London and now a politician in the Punjab Legislative Assembly, says Indian families are obsessed with emigrating to the UK.

"People are desperate to migrate, because they don't think this land gives them the opportunities they need, particularly for girls," he said.

Rani, (not her real name) is one such 25-year-old is hoping for a better life in the UK. She got married in January.

"When the marriage date was fixed he asked for around £12,000 so my parents sold our house, to give him the money," she said.

In India, paying and accepting a dowry - a centuries-old tradition where the bride's parents present gifts of cash, clothes and jewellery to the groom's family - has been illegal since 1961.

But the practice still thrives in rural areas, and a British Asian groom can command a dowry of up to £20,000 in Punjab.

After Rani's marriage, her in-laws demanded more cash, but her parents could not pay, and she was dumped.

"After marriage, they physically and mentally tortured me.

"He made me abort my baby, then they threw me out of their house."

Rani still wears her wedding bangles in the hope that she will one day be reunited with her husband in England.

I managed to trace Rani's husband in England. He claims to have left her after discovering she had a boyfriend who she continued to see after they were wed.

Another "runaway groom" I located in England claimed he was duped by his Indian bride, who only married him for a British passport.

UK matrimonial expert Tahir Mahmood helps arrange marriages, and believes British men are the victims.

"Anyone from back home (India), they want British, British, British... the girls over there, don't care if someone has been married twice before, they don't care how he looks like or what his background is."

The British government's Forced Marriages Unit says it has been dealing with a rising number of forced marriage cases involving British men.

In India, legal action against missing British grooms is a complex and lengthy process.

Clampdown sought

Inspector General Gurpreet Deo, from the Punjab police force, said: "If the person is residing abroad, one has to seek recourse through the extradition treaty.

"The expertise and knowledge of the police officers themselves in this area is so restricted, I don't think any case would reach that level."


But politician Balwant Ramoowalia, of the Lok Bhalai party in Punjab, believes both India and Britain should clamp down.

He said: "If there is any misconduct, cheating or fraud, the husband should be sent back to India.

"There should be a provision that maintenance should be given to the girl till the case is final."

The Home Office in the UK says it has not received a single extradition request in relation to abandoned Indian brides. continues here

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Citizenship language scam exposed

Immigrants who don’t understand English have been able to buy language certificates that give them the right to settle in Britain.

An investigation by The Sunday Times has found that staff at English language colleges in London and Birmingham have been offering migrants who speak little or no English Home Office-regulated English and Citizenship certificates for £250 each. Tests are rigged to allow almost anyone to pass.

Staff hand out crib sheets with questions and answers in English. Others let candidates write the sound of English words on the sheets in their own tongue, so the answers appear right, but they don’t know what they are saying.

At the UK Learning Academy in Birmingham, a staff assessor told an undercover reporter that candidates did not have to take any courses or speak any English to pass the tests. The assessor simply asked if the candidate knew their own name, date of birth and address. When told that they did, the assessor replied: “That’s all right then. That’s a guaranteed pass.”

Yesterday the Academy said it had sacked the assessor for “gross misconduct”. Directors at a second college under investigation said they had suspended its English course, while a third college removed the website advertising its course. continues here

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This man married his OWN daughter so she would be allowed to stay in Britain - and the Home Office knows about it

A Nigerian Home Office worker 'married' his own daughter to get her a British visa, the Daily Mail can reveal.

The extraordinary scam was apparently executed by Jelili Adesanya while ministers turned a blind eye.

Mr Adesanya, 54, has lived here for more than 30 years and holds a British passport, but wanted his daughter, her husband and their four sons to join him from Nigeria.



He faked a wedding ceremony complete with a photograph of the happy 'couple' which helped fool immigration officials that his daughter, Karimotu Adenike, was really his wife.

Miss Adenike, who is in her mid-30s, was duly granted permission to live in the UK.

The pair are waiting for her to be granted a permanent right to remain before they undergo a quiet divorce and attempt to bring the rest of her family here.

It is expected she would try to remarry her real husband to get them all visas.
But despite being tipped off two years ago, the Home Office seems to have done nothing to stop the scam by one of their own workers.

Until recently, Mr Adesanya was employed as an occupational health nurse for the Home Office, working with immigration officials at Gatwick airport.

A whistleblower sent letters to the High Commission in Lagos and the UK Border Agency including specific details such as names, addresses, passport numbers and even a copy of the wedding photograph.

When there was no response, he sent emails to then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and ministers Vernon Coaker and Phil Woolas on February 1 this year. He heard nothing.

Mr Adesanya, who came to Britain in 1976, flew back to Nigeria on May 29, 2007, and held the bogus wedding ceremony a few days later at a register office in Ikorodu, Lagos. "he sent emails to then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and ministers Vernon Coaker and Phil Woolas on February 1 this year. He heard nothing..."

A source said: 'They paid people to attend the wedding so that the British High Commission in Lagos would believe it was genuine. The commission then gave Karimotu Adenike a two-year settlement visa in October 2007.

'On her settlement visa application form, of course, she did not mention that she already had a husband and four children.

'The date of birth on her Nigerian passport is not her real date of birth.'

Miss Adenike is believed to have aged herself by ten years on her wedding certificate to disguise the age gap with her father.

Although her settlement visa expired last month, she is hoping to be given the right to remain.

David Burrowes, the Conservative MP for Enfield Southgate and Shadow Justice Minister, was also tipped off by the whistleblower and wrote to the Home Office.

This time there was a reply, but it said that although the matter was 'under investigation', no further information would be provided because it could 'breach of our obligations under the Data Protection Act'.

Mr Burrowes told the Mail: 'I am very surprised and concerned that no action appears to have been taken, because the allegations are extremely serious.'

Mr Adesanya, who lives with his daughter in Dagenham, Essex, vehemently denied the plot and said he had never been questioned about the allegations.

He said: 'Married my own daughter? I have never heard anything like this in my life. I deny it. She is my wife, not my daughter.'

However, asked to confirm his 'wife's' date of birth, he said he did not know without checking her passport, and refused to allow her to speak for herself.

Unbeknown to him, his daughter had confirmed the arrangement when she told a friend she would shortly apply for her own British passport and 'divorce daddy'.

Last night Jonathan Sedgwick, from the UK Border Agency, said: 'These individuals are already under investigation, and I want to make it clear that abuse of our immigration laws will not be tolerated. continues here

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150,000 MIGRANTS SET TO PASS THE 'TOO-EASY' UK CITIZEN TEST

HOME Office ministers faced fresh fury over soft-touch border controls last night after new figures showed more than 150,000 immigrants are expected to pass the Government’s controversial citizenship test this year.


Statistics showed a total of 115,807 newcomers had already successfully completed the “Life in the UK” test in the first nine months of this year.

The figures ignited fresh concerns that the test – the final step before being granted British citizenship or indefinite leave to remain in the UK – is far too easy.

Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green said: “Ministers want to talk tough on immigration these days but in the real world nothing is changing.

“This Government has let an unprecedented number of people obtain citizenship.” continues here

Immigration? Yes, we DID get it wrong, confesses Johnson

Alan Johnson yesterday admitted the Government had mishandled immigration and that it is placing a 'strain' on jobs and services.

The Home Secretary said Labour had been 'maladroit' in its approach to the issue.

And he promised there would now be no 'shying away' from the subject - which is one of the public's top concerns.

The 'moderate majority' had not had its views heard, Mr Johnson said.

It follows explosive allegations that Labour engineered a secret plot to use mass migration to make Britain more multicultural.

The comments also represent a different stance for Mr Johnson, who previously claimed he did not 'lie awake' worrying about the population reaching 70million.

In a central London address to the Royal Society for the Arts, Mr Johnon said some parts of Britain were 'disproportionately' affected by immigration, with an influx of new arrivals putting a 'strain' on jobs and services.

Distancing himself from his predecessors, he said ministers had ignored for 'far too long' problems in the immigration system that led to huge backlogs of asylum seekers and foreign national prisoners.

He added: 'I want to talk about immigration today, tomorrow, next week and on any occasion I can.'

Mr Johnson said he believed the moderate majority want immigration to be carefully controlled, while accepting it has enriched Britain's culture, and was good for the economy.

At the same time as accepting genuine refugees, they wanted Britain to send home illegal immigrants, failed asylum seekers and foreign national prisoners.

He said: 'Whilst I accept that governments of both persuasions, including this one, have been maladroit in their handling of this issue, I do believe that the UK is now far more successful at tackling migration than most of its European and north American neighbours.

As I've said, our record is not perfect. When we came in to government in 1997, there was no magic button we could push immediately to resolve all the historic, political and operation problems associated with immigration.'

He added: 'The legacy problems with unreturned foreign national prisoners and asylum seekers may have accumulated under previous administrations, but they continued to be ignored for far too long on our watch.'

Mr Johnson also outlined principles in the debate on immigration which he said should be accepted by everyone.

He said there was 'no sensible argument' for immigration to cease altogether, and an acceptance that some communities more affected by immigration than others had 'legitimate concerns about the strain that the growth in the local population has placed on jobs and services'.

He also said those who come to live here should learn the language, obey the laws and pay tax.

But he dismissed as 'complete and utter nonsense' the claims made by former Labour adviser Andrew Neather that Labour had intended to make Britain more multicultural in order to portray the Tories as racist.

His call for a debate on immigration is designed to tackle head on critics who say Labour's stubborn refusal to justify its policies has played into the hands of the BNP.

But opposition MPs criticised his remarks. Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: 'Three months ago the Home Secretary said he isn't losing sleep over immigration.

'Now he's admitting that it's putting massive pressure on many communities.

'And he's reverting to the old days when Labour accused Conservatives of dog whistle politics, rather than dealing with the issues in a sensible and measured way.'

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: 'This apology is three million immigrants too late. continues here

How to win an argument with a conservative - call them racist, heartless and stuffy

Any budding Leftist commentators hoping to fight the Culture Wars - or maintain the Culture Occupation, as our side lost years ago - could do worse than have a look at the latest piece of mass immigration-denial coming from the Guardian.

Francis Davis, who is a vague acquaintance and by all accounts a decent man, has penned a denunciation of our very own Damian Thompson, entitled “Thompson is wrong about immigration”, in response to a piece Damian wrote in the Catholic Herald about Christopher Caldwell’s book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe.

While Caldwell has struck a chord with liberals who now accept, or at least suspect, that we can have a rigidly policed multicultural society or we can have a democracy but we can’t have both, the true believers increasingly cling to mantras, junk history and name-calling.

Davis’s article is a textbook guide for anyone wanting to defend the discredited creed of mult-culturalism - destined to follow its cousin Communism into history’s dustbin - against any sceptic. Here’s how you do it:

One – accuse them of being heartless about their fellow humans, making them, therefore, an inferior moral being to yourself.

At the outset – perhaps by mistake? – he gives the impression that the plight of 70 migrants drowning at sea, while nine ships passed by within sight, is just one of those things. He takes a mild swipe at the Italian Catholic bishops, while admitting that their statement did, in fact, strike the right tone. Bouncing on, he criticises the church’s campaign for regularisation of immigrants, and Islam’s “adversarial quality”. Anyone who disagrees with him, he suggests, must be a modernist grounded in the liberalism of the 60s. For this friend of Catholic traditionalists, this is the ultimate put-down.

In fact Damian Thompson’s article does nothing of the sort. He says the drownings were tragic – what else is he supposed to say? He could mark the article’s publication with the release of an Elton John-style tribute song to the victims of the tragedy and he’d still be called heartless, because if you’re opposed to mass immigration you’re going to be smeared. Never mind that it is Europe’s insanely lax immigration rules, with their promise of amnesties in the land of gold across shark-infested waters, that cause these drownings. Just because someone opposes mass immigration, it does not mean they don’t sympathise with the plight of immigrants.

Two, dust off some pseudo-history:

First, it is worth remembering that the philosophical base of most mainstream Catholicism emerges from the thought of St Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. In turn Aquinas built much of his theology on insights gleaned from translations of Greek philosophy undertaken – and saved – by Muslim scholars. The roots of European culture have long been intertwined with Islam, and to positive effect.

This is a common belief among Guardian-readers and other haters of Europe, but untrue. As Dr Suha Rassam writes in Christianity in Iraq, “neither the Persians who lived in Iraq, nor the Arabs that ruled the state, were conversant with Greek. In fact, translation of Greek philosophical works to Arabic was almost exclusively performed by Christian scholars. Qanawati enumerates over sixty translators, all of whom were Christians, except for one Sabian and one Jew.”

The assertion that Islam is part of European history and culture is one thing, dubious though it is, but to back it up with a liberal historical myth is quite another.

Three, call them “Crusaders” (”dusting off crusaders’ crosses will not do”), second only to Nazis in Guardian demonology. It is a strange accusation for an opponent of the Eurabia theory to make – the Crusades were launched in response to the Islamic conquest of the Middle East, so to suggest that anti-immigration commentators are taking up the Cross is to imply that such a conquest is taking place in Europe.

Four – completely ignore the argument, and especially avoid any statistics. The central claim of the article, and the book on which it is based, is that current levels of immigration are unprecedented and dangerously unstable; the most recent figures suggest that over 10 per cent of children born in the UK last year were Muslim, and that this number is increasing at a still rapid pace. If Davis has read Caldwell’s book, he shows no sign of it.

Five – accuse conservatives of blaming the immigrants themselves.

Second, in the Thomist tradition, nation states are never an end in themselves but always defined against a greater “common good”, an eternal benchmark, as to what constitutes justice. This is why Pope John Paul II argued that a starving person who migrates in order to feed his family breaks no (moral) law.

Damian never suggests otherwise. Nor does Caldwell. Nor does any serious opponent of mass immigration.

Six - since conservatives argue that immigration, crime and social disorder are serious issues and spoil our quality of life, a common tactic is to suggest the people making this point are uptight, cowardly or otherwise uncool, and need to get out and mingle more, go to a street party and have a couple of Red Stripes.

Lastly, Damian Thompson needs to move from Notting Hill to Bethnal Green to learn a bit more about Britain.

Davis, incidentally, lives in Oxford.

Seven - mantras, don’t forget the multi-cultural mantras, which must be repeated until they become true.

Muslims in this country are a young, vibrant, diverse community with much to offer the nation.

Vibrant is just an estate agent’s euphemism for “violent”, but I’m not sure why liberals always use the word “young” to describe immigrant communities when that is exactly the point sceptics are making – immigrant groups are young, yes, and the future belongs to the young (and their offspring). Bethnal Green, incidentally, is 50.1 per cent Muslim.

Eight – legitimise mass immigration by creating a historical precedent.

In parts of the country they face intense poverty and the harsh ignorance of the regions in which they have settled. In this regard they share a historical experience with the Irish before them. In the 19th century thousands crossed the Irish sea to find jobs, brought their religion with them, worked hard, and stayed.

Ah, like the Huguenots and the Jews, the Irish are the mythical mass migrants of yesteryear. French Protestants, at their peak, constituted 0.25 per cent of the population, the Jews 0.7 per cent, but even the Irish, at their height between 1861-1871, amounted to only 3.5 per cent of the British population, and even after you reach a total Irish population by including people of Irish ancestry, the figure reaches nowhere near the projected Muslim population of the next decade. And this statistic ignores the two elephants in the room – that not only were the Irish not a visible ethnic minority, a factor in integration, but perhaps more importantly, their religion was not utterly alien to this country, and not a threat (although disliked). As much as Irish Catholics and English Protestants might fight, they had a common pan-European cultural and religious heritage that Catholics and Muslims simply do not share. continues here

Kennedy opened U.S. doors to Caribbeans

Were it not for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Boston’s Caribbean Carnival would be a lot smaller, if it existed at all.

The first major legislation that Kennedy ushered through Congress rewrote the nation’s immigration law, opening the country to exponentially more people from the Caribbean, who ventured out to the annual carnival last Saturday in the wind and rain, not long after the late senator’s funeral concluded on nearby Mission Hill.

That 1965 law eliminated racially tinged quotas that favored immigrants from Europe and restricted the number who could come from Asia and the countries emerging from The 1965 law took full effect in 1968. In the following decade, “West Indian immigration exceeded that of the previous 70 years,”colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean. From the entire continent of Africa, for instance, the annual limit on immigrants had been 1,400 — less than 1 percent of Europe’s quota.

In the case of Jamaica and Trinidad, which both won independence in 1962, only 100 immigrants from each were allowed every year. That was the minimum for any country.

“Most of us would not be here at all. We owe a great debt of gratitude,” said Clarence Cooper, president of Unity Sports & Cultural Club in Dorchester.

Born in Trinidad, Cooper spent two years on a work visa in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands before arriving on the mainland with an immigrant visa in 1967.

Two years later, Neil Osborne, president of Jamaican Associates, immigrated with his parents at age 5. The family was able to resettle because his father’s brother was already in the United States. Reuniting close relatives was made a priority in the 1965 law that Kennedy got passed.

“Jamaicans significantly understood how he championed immigration in a fair and equal way, and your skin color shouldn’t matter,” said Osborne, a lawyer who represents victims of job discrimination. “He made sure people from the Caribbean could come.”

Kennedy’s assistance to Caribbean immigrants did not end with that law. Community leaders this week attested to his staff’s swift and effective intervention over the years to reunite families with relatives who had been left behind.

Beulah Providence, executive director of the Caribbean Foundation of Boston, which provides home health services, said she frequently referred immigrants to Kennedy’s office for help obtaining visas for family members.

“They called his office, and they got good help,” said Providence, who came from Dominica in 1960. “They got help with their papers.”

The Rev. Nicolas Homicil, senior pastor of the Voice of the Gospel Tabernacle in Mattapan, said Kennedy staffers helped Haitian immigrants in the same way, and also helped relatives in Haiti obtain short-term visas to attend funerals in the United States.

“The Haitian community and the minority community at large are going to miss Senator Kennedy,” said Homicil, who immigrated in 1971.

Kennedy’s staff could get results fast. Back in the 1970s, an immigrant couple who had been in the country for a couple years were having difficulty getting visas to enable their five children in Trinidad to join them, Cooper recalled.

The husband went downtown to see someone in Kennedy’s office and, by the time he returned home, consular officials were calling to say the visas would be available the next day in Port-au-Spain, Trinidad’s capital.

“You hear so many people here talking about things similar to that,” Cooper said in a telephone interview Monday.

His wife, Jemma Cooper, overheard his comment and got on the line to share her own family’s story. Thirty years ago, she said, her mother immigrated under her maiden name. Then she had a hard time obtaining permission to bring three other children from Trinidad — because she used her married name on those papers — until Kennedy’s staff straightened out the confusion.

That kind of constituent service for so many from the Caribbean has been needed only because of the transformative impact of the 1965 immigration law.

Despite the low quotas for Trinidad, Jamaica and the continent of Africa, even fewer immigrants from those places were actually entering the United States. In 1963, The Associated Press reported that no predominantly black nation was using up its quota.

The 1965 law took full effect in 1968. In the following decade, “West Indian immigration exceeded that of the previous 70 years,” author Philip Kasinitz has noted. “By the early 1980s, approximately 50,000 legal immigrants from the Anglophone Caribbean and another 6,000 to 8,000 from Haiti were entering the United States annually.”

Other factors contributed to the rise. The law’s focus on neutral criteria such as kinship ties and job skills was inspired by civil rights legislation, which made the country appear more welcoming to black immigrants. Independence also shifted the destination of most Caribbean immigrants away from the former colonial powers.

“We have discriminated against some people over others, contrary to our basic principles as a nation,” Kennedy said in opening debate on the immigration bill on Sept. 17, 1965.

The legislation was actually a Kennedy co-production. Before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy proposed a similar bill in July 1963. He specifically asked Congress to lift the quotas on Jamaica and Trinidad, limits he called “accidental discrimination against the newly independent nations of the Western Hemisphere.” continues here

EU moves to share out the burden of immigration

Immigration has raced up the European agenda following Silvio Berlusconi’s outburst at Brussels’ observations about Italy’s treatment of boat people arriving on its shores.

His complaint that Italy, one of the easiest routes into Europe, was being left in the lurch to deal with the problem appears to have been heard, even if the tone of the complaint has angered many.

“In essence Mr. Berlusconi is right. For the last 2 years we have been saying the whole EU has to look after these poor people expelled from Libya or wherever and who die at sea, and right now only Italy and Malta do. The EU hasn’t done what it should,” said European People’s Party leader Joseph Daul.

European Socialists leader Poul Nyrup Rasmussen agrees:

“We need a common immigration and asylum policy in Europe, and this must be combined with respecting fundamental human rights.”

The result is that the European Commission has presented a draft law that will increase the total number of immigrants and refugees into the EU. continues here

Federal Government set to maintain record high immigration levels

THE Federal Government is set to maintain record high immigration levels, despite growing concern about the impact on young job seekers and urban congestion.

The Rudd Government has admitted it wants to bring in up to 230,000 migrants annually over the next 40 years, according to a new Immigration Department report on skilled arrivals.

This is about the same number as last year's record intake, which was cut by 18,000 places amid the global recession.

Australia needed to maintain an annual migration intake of between 150,000 and 230,000 people to deal with the ageing of the workforce, said the issues paper, Select Skills: Principles for a New Migration Occupations in Demand List.

"Within the framework, it will be important that those skilled migrants we choose are not only young and healthy, but also have a high level of education, language and skills," it said.

Monash University demographer Dr Bob Birrell said yesterday the latest data showed that young Australians were losing jobs as migrants streamed in.

The number of employed 15 to 24-year-olds fell by 100,000 to 1,818,000 in the year to July, Dr Birrell said.

"The real brunt of the fall in jobs is being felt by young people," he said.

"Yet the Federal Government is barrelling on with its big migration numbers."

Dr Birrell said Australia could deal with its ageing workforce problem through better training and smarter work practices.

A major poll taken after the latest federal election revealed growing concern about high migration, with more than 40 per cent of Victorians wanting it cut.

This was way above the 27 per cent who wanted a reduction during a 2004 survey. It is believed that rising concern about jobs, urban congestion and water shortages is driving negative attitudes towards migration. continues here

POPULATION WILL SOAR TO 70 MILLION, STUDY WARNS

HOME Office claims that Britain’s population will be limited to below 70 million were demolished by a new study yesterday.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas had dismissed forecasts that nine million ­more people will be added to the country’s current population of 61 million within 25 years.

But research published by think-tank Migrationwatch UK showed official figures from the Office for National Statistics confirm the trend towards 70 million by the year 2031.

Mr Woolas had seized on a fall in net migration revealed last week to claim that population growth was slowing.

But MigrationwatchUK found 35,000 asylum seekers and visitors who decide to stay in Britain increased that figure. It showed that immigration was adding 153,000 people to the population every year.

The Office for National Statistics had predicted that a net migration of 130,000 a year would mean a population of 69.2 million by 2031.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationwatchUK, said: “There are bound to be uncertainties about both birth rates and immigration but it is thoroughly irresponsible to dismiss projections that have been carefully arrived at. continues here

English-speaking pupils are a minority in inner-city London primary schools

Children who speak English as their first language are now a minority in inner-city London primary schools, official figures showed yesterday.

Youngsters with a different mother tongue form a majority in primaries in 13 out of 33 London boroughs and in nearby Slough.

In inner London, 54 per cent of primary pupils and 48.5 per cent in secondary institutions do not speak English as their first language. This amounts to an astonishing 159,340 children.

Across the country, English is a foreign language to more than one in seven primary youngsters - almost half a million.

The figures from the Department for Children, Schools and Families point to the major demographic changes over the past few decades. Around a fifth of pupils are from ethnic minorities - up from 11 per cent in 1997.

There are concerns that school finances are under strain as growing numbers of youngsters require help with English.

Heads' leaders have urged the Government to fund schools adequately and give fair treatment during inspections to those with large concentrations of non-English speakers.

The figures show there are 14 council areas in which primary children with English as their second language are in the majority - 13 London boroughs and Slough.

In Tower Hamlets almost four out of five youngsters do not have English as their mother tongue. In other areas, including Leicester, Luton and Bradford the proportion is approaching 50 per cent.

For primaries overall, 15.2 per cent are non-native English speakers - up from 14.4 per cent last year.
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The figures indicate that many recent migrants have settled in London. The lowest populations of youngsters with English as a second language are in the South West and North East.

Sir Andrew Green, of the Migrationwatch think-tank, said: 'These figures confirm the huge impact immigration is having on our society.

When Government funds are as tight as they are, this is bound to have a negative impact as children with English as an additional language will need extra tuition.'

He added: 'In inner London it's hard to know who immigrant children are supposed to integrate with since they heavily outnumber local children.'

The figures reflect a five-fold increase in immigration since Labour came to power. Net immigration has increased from 48,000 in 1997 to 237,000 in 2007 continues here

Do you consider the actions of both this government and others, to be genocide against the indigenous people?

LABOUR'S LIES HAVE BROUGHT THE UK TO RUIN

LABOUR'S rhetoric on immigration is a colossal exercise in deceit.

Ministers are fond of talking tough, endlessly boastingof “crackdowns” and “robust new rules” on entry. The greater the levels of mass migration, the deeper we sink into economic misery.

But in reality they have presided over the wilful collapse of our borders and the destruction of our british identity.

Our once well-ordered, cohesive nation has been turned into an overcrowded land full of disparate cultures. As the influx of foreigners continues at an unprecedented rate, many britons increasingly feel like aliens in their own country.

Labour’s spectacular dishonesty on this issue has been highlighted again by a series of announcements from the Home secretary alan Johnson. a former postman, Johnson likes to think of himself as Labour’s “man of the people”, all amiable grins and cheeky wisecracks. But in truth he is just another hypocritical socialist politician bent on the destruction of our british heritage.

His barrage of policy changes, launched with fanfare today, is as bogus as the immigrant marriage racket that his party has encouraged.

He declares that more stringent tests will be set for the award of british citizenship, this from the head of a Home
office which has dished out British passports like confetti in recent years.

On present trends, thanks to Labour’s deliberate laxness, more than 200,000 migrants will become British citizens this year.

One of Johnson’s supposed new requirements will be that applicants for citizenship will have to prove their patriotic credentials. On that basis, all of the current Cabinet would fail, such is the level of their treachery.

Over the past 12 years, the Government has been engaged in a vicious cultural war against the concept of British patriotism. Labour’s obsession with diversity means that our civic institutions have traduced our history, smashed our traditions and treated our instinctive national pride as a dangerous form of racism.

With the same duplicity, Johnson declares that, in the spirit of “fair play”, migrants will be stopped from queue-jumping for state housing.

If Labour really meant this, it would be an admission that the whole social housing system is biased in favour of migrants, something that british taxpayers have known for years though the Government has always tried to deny it. but Johnson’s announcement is just more empty words.

The Government has no intention of implementing such a policy, not least because of the Human rights act of 1998, that charter for spongers and anti-british campaigners, and Harriet Harman’s new Equality legislation, which makes it compulsory for public authorities to practise overt discrimination in favour of ethnic minorities.

The same is true of Johnson’s promise to end the use of marriage as a means to gaining settlement in britain and access to welfare. this is a practice particularly common among families from India, Pakistan and nigeria, where oppressed, bullied wives are used to milk the benefits.

What is sickening about Johnson’s announcement is that his Labour party cynically abolished in 1997 the Primary Purpose rule, which stopped immigrants using marriage as a means of obtaining british residency.

Labour presented the rule’s abolition as a triumph for compassion and justice but in practice it has opened the floodgates for migration from asia and africa, as well as imposing a huge new burden on social security.

But Labour did not care, for thereal reason behind this move was to boost the party’s votes in its seats in the Midlands and the north by importing large numbers of ethnic minority electors.

There is a fascinating passage in the published diary of Chris Mullin, the former Labour Minister, in which he writes,
“We’ve barely touched the rackets that surround arranged marriages. The trouble is that we are terrified of the huge cry of ‘racism’ that would go up the moment anyone breathed a word. There is the added difficulty that at least 20 Labour seats depend on asian votes.”

That comment says it all. Political expediency allied to multi-cultural dogma means that Labour will never do anything to halt the tidal wave of immigration.

Under Brown and Johnson our border controls will remain feeble and our welfare system a honeypot for migrants.

Only last weekend it emerged that an illegal immigrant had managed to smuggle himself into britain in a coach full of border agency officials returning from Calais. The incident was a perfect metaphor for the shambles of frontier controls under Labour.

But Labour’s stance on immigration can now be seen as a gigantic lie. We were told that a mass influx of foreigners, currently running at over 500,000 a year, would be the engine of economic prosperity.

The opposite is true. The greater the levels of mass migration, the deeper we sink into economic misery.

Our public services are buckling under the strain of over-crowding, our welfare system has become hopelessly unaffordable.

The idea that all migrants come here to work hard is just a myth. In fact migrants are far more likely than British people to be unemployed, in receipt of benefits or housed in state-funded accommodation.

Meanwhile our society is now beset by extremism, barbaric violence, ethnic tensions and superstition. But for Labour, this is not a badge of shame. continues here

An excellent article but will anybody listen?

ONE NEW HOUSEHOLD EVERY 2 MINUTES IN MIGRANT BOOM

LABOUR’S immigration policies were denounced as “madness’’ yesterday after an official report highlighted how Britain’s population is expected to soar.

One new household will be formed every two minutes until 2021, almost half of it driven by immigration, according to projections which have been steadily revised upwards in recent years.

Around 70 per cent of the population increase up to 2031 will be due to immigration, according to the Government. By 2021, newcomers will account for nearly four in 10 of the four million new households formed in England and Wales.

Labour MP Frank Field and Conservative Sir Nicholas Soames, chairmen of Parliament’s cross-party Group on Balanced Migration, said: “As we face severe cuts in public spending, it is the politics of madness to continue with immigration policies that will mean us having to provide thousands of new homes for newcomers.

“Not to mention the necessary roads, schools and hospitals on this unprecedented scale, when our own citizens, both black and white, cannot get homes.’’

The figures were spelt out in the Office for National Statistics’ latest Regional Trends report.

It showed that the projected number of households in England and Wales will rise by nearly four million over 15 years, from 21.52 million in 2006 to 25.44 million in 2021.

Of these, more than a million will be in London and the South-east. By 2031, experts forecast there will be a further 2.5 million households in England – a total of 27.82 million.

The Group on Balanced Migration said the Government now envisaged there would be nearly 1.5 million more households in 2021 than it was forecasting just three years ago. In 2006, the Government estimated there would be 24 million households in 2021.

Last year it revised the projection to 24.97 million. Now it believes there will be 25.44 million.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of thinktank Migrationwatch, said: “For years the Government have been in denial about the massive impact of immigration on housing.

“They cannot any longer deny we will have to build a new home every five minutes for the next 15 years just for new immigrants.

“Given the financial crisis that the Government faces, this is absolutely crazy. Where is all the money going to come from to build not only houses but also schools, hospitals and roads that will be needed?”

Tory immigration spokesman Damain Green said: “This is why we propose to establish an annual limit on the number of work permits issued, along the lines of the Australian and American systems.

“This is the best way to bring some control over our immigration numbers.’’ Immigration has spiralled upwards under Labour since 1997. It jumped massively after the Government decided that citizens of 10 eastern and central European countries, which joined the EU in 2004, should be allowed to work in Britain as well as travel here.

This week it emerged that the number of immigrants granted British citizenship had increased by more than half in a year.

A total of 54,615 applications were approved in the first three months of 2009 – 57 per cent more than in the same period last year. If the trend continues, the total this year is likely to reach 220,000, dwarfing the record of 164,540 in 2007. continues here

Amid swine flu outbreak, racism goes viral

“No contact anywhere with an illegal alien!” conservative talk show host Michael Savage advised his U.S. listeners this week on how to avoid the swine flu. “And that starts in the restaurants" where he said, you “don’t know if they wipe their behinds with their hands!”

And Thursday, Boston talk radio host Jay Severin was suspended after calling Mexican immigrants "criminalians" during a discussion of swine flu and saying that emergency rooms had become "essentially condos for Mexicans."

That’s tepid compared to some of the xenophobic reactions spreading like an emerging virus across the Internet. “This disgusting blight is because MEXICANS ARE PIGS!” an anonymous poster ranted on the “prison planet” forum, part of radio host and columnist Alex Jones’ Web site.

There is even talk of conspiracy. Savage speculated that terrorists are using Mexican immigrants as walking germ warfare weapons. “It would be easy,” he said, “to bring an altered virus into Mexico, put it in the general population, and have them march across the border.”

As more than 140 cases of H1N1 virus, known as swine flu, have been confirmed across the United States — from San Diego to New York City — the growing public health concern has also exposed fear and hate.

Fear and blame are counterproductive and even dangerous in any disease outbreak because the more stigmatized any group feels, the more reluctant people in that group may be to seek medical care. That only helps propagate the disease.

The attempt to scapegoat Mexicans, immigrants and Hispanic Americans is no surprise to Latino rights groups, who are now mobilizing a countereffort.

‘Ignorant beyond the pale’
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, called such comments “racist and ignorant beyond the pale … these so-called commentators shame themselves turning public health concerns into an immigrant bashing fest.”

“What we have seen is that the anti-immigrant groups are using this to shamelessly to promote their agenda,” said Liany Arroyo, director of the Institute for Hispanic Health at the National Council of La Raza.

While the war of words is mainly between the conservative commentariat and Latino advocacy groups, individual Mexican-Americas are beginning to worry.

“Our people are calling us and they are concerned,” said Florencia Velasco Fortner, chief executive officer of Dallas Consilio of Hispanic Organizations, an umbrella of affiliated service groups. “Even our staff members are starting to get a little discouraged. There was anti-immigrant sentiment prior to this and this adds fuel to the fire.”

The Consilio has mounted its own education campaign to teach Dallas-area Hispanic audiences proper disease prevention and hygiene techniques. Because many are uninsured and may avoid seeking medical care, the Consilio is also helping them find non-profit clinics and encouraging them to visit these immediately if they develop symptoms rather than waiting until they are severely ill.

As swine flu fears have spread, the backlash has also affected some Mexican restaurants’ business, possibly fueled by disparaging comments like those of Savage questioning the hygiene of workers.

Jennifer Pesqueira, whose family has owned and operated El Indio Mexican restaurants in San Diego since 1940, said her business has seen a 20 percent drop in business since the outbreak began.

Activist groups have advised their communities to be aware and on guard. “Board members put an alert out,” said Jan Hanvik, executive director of Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center in New York. “It was a heads up, saying ‘pay attention.’ ”

Blaming ‘the other’
Fearmongering and blame are almost a natural part of infectious disease epidemics, experts say.

“This is a pattern we see again and again,” said Amy Fairchild, chair of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “It’s ‘the other,’ the group not seen as part of the nation, the one who threatens it in some way that gets blamed for the disease.”

Often, a disease outbreak is an excuse to vent pre-existing prejudices. “It’s fear of people we do not know or who look different,” said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan and author of “When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed.” “You take the fear of the unknown that already exists and then combine that with a real or perceived threat that is contagious disease and it’s explosive.”

During the medieval Black Plague, Europeans blamed Jews, saying they poisoned the wells. In an 1892 cholera pandemic, the U.S. blamed immigrant European Jews. In the flu of 1918, Markel said, “Italians blamed the Spanish. The Spanish blamed the Italians. For HIV it was gay men and Haitians.”

Americans “have a history of trying to keep ourselves ‘pure,’ ” Fairchild explained. “You saw it after the Civil War when slaves were denied citizenship, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when we were alarmed over southern and eastern European immigrants. There were fears that they would pollute America’s germ plasm, make us a weak nation of imbeciles.”

Americans have time and again responded to emergencies by clamoring to shut the borders and pull up the bridges.

“I’ve blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration,” conservative columnist Michelle Malkin wrote on her Web site. “9/11 didn’t convince the open-borders zealots to put down their race cards and confront reality. Maybe the threat of their sons or daughters contracting a deadly virus spread from south of the border to their Manhattan prep schools will.” (The cluster of New York school students who first contracted H1N1 brought the virus back from Mexico. The school is in Queens.)

“People who do not really know anything are creating ideas that don’t really exist,” said Sergio Ornelas, owner of a bi-national publishing and advertising business in El Paso. “I am worried these kinds of articles and comments might create panic.”

Fighting racism with information
Blame-the-victim reactions can be fought with clear, accurate information about the disease and about how it is spreading, said Dr. Larry Kline, a San Diego physician and member of the United States-Mexico Border Health Commission. “People get snippets of information here and there, and unfortunately much of it is inaccurate. That makes things ripe for blame and blame and fear never helped anybody.”

Tamping down blame and fear isn’t just the right thing to do morally, experts agree, it’s also the right thing to do medically. Germs, Markel stressed, don’t care about skin color or national origins or borders. continues here

ASYLUM SEEKERS WIN THE RIGHT TO STAY IN UK AFTER SUICIDE THREAT

Two Tamil asylum seekers have won the right to live in the UK - after threatening to kill themselves if they are sent home.

The ruling was granted to a brother and sister who said they would commit suicide if forced to return to Sri Lanka, where both were raped and tortured in prison.

The ground-breaking case has massive implications for immigration law, which will have to change if the decision opens the floodgates to others mounting similar
pleas.

It could even mean ripping up European human rights laws with the help of our EU allies.

”Members of the right-wing BNP face being banned from serving in Britain's border police.Under present rules the political extremists are free to join the UK Border Agency and would only face the sack if guilty of racist behaviour.
Now Immigration Minister Phil Woolas says, I will review that policy."….”

pleas.


Immigration Minister Phil Woolas is to contest the decision, fearing it could leave him powerless to deport any asylum seeker who threatened suicide.


Mr Woolas told The People: "We will appeal and consider our legal options. The judgement goes well beyond the intention of Parliament and defies common sense." The ruling in the Appeal Court last Wednesday applied to siblings who have been battling against deportation since arriving here in October 2003.


The Government will now take the case to the House of Lords in a bid to get the decision overturned. A law change will follow if that appeal fails.


Intolerable


Home Office insiders say the brother and sister could go back to Sri Lanka safely and it was only their "subjective fear" which made them suicidal.


But Appeal Court judges said the pair's "only perceived means of escape" from their situation would be to take their own lives, which would make deporting them a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.


Lord Justice Sedley, sitting with Lady Justice Arden and Lord Justice Moses, said: "Hope can alleviate intolerable stress. Take away hope and stress may become unbearable.


"Lifting the threat of removal would remove one of the principal sources of depression." Sri Lanka - racked for years by war with Tamil separatists - has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.


Thousands of Tamils are mounting a daily protest outside the Commons demanding the UK puts more pressure on Sri Lanka to improve their human rights.


Mr Woolas released new figures showing 60,000 appeals are now coming before immigration tribunals, resulting in a total of 4,474 judicial reviews last year.


And the Institute for Public Policy Research today calls for an amnesty for illegal immigrants so they could pay £1billion in taxes.


TORY PLEDGE


The Tories will let in thousands more immigrants if they come to power.


Shadow Immigration minister Damian Green plans to give the right to ANY foreigner who has served in our military to settle here with their families.


He said: "People would qualify simply by having served in the British armed forces." Defence minister Kevan Jones said: "That would include personnel from India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Burma and Singapore to name a few." The vow comes after the Government was blasted for its "shameful" decision to refuse all Gurkhas settlement rights..


Ban On Bnp Members of the right-wing BNP face being banned from serving in Britain's border police.


Under present rules the political extremists are free to join the UK Border Agency and would only face the sack if guilty of racist behaviour.


Now Immigration Minister Phil Woolas says: "I will review that policy." He will act in the summer when the border police are turned into a full Government agency. some.html" target="_blank">continues here

Now let them stay! Humiliating defeat for Brown forces rethink over Gurkhas... but news comes too late for one hero

• 'Elation' as furious MPs turn on Government over its betrayal of veterans
• 
  
• But sadness for the 'exemplary' Gurkha who died without knowing he had won his last battle

Gordon Brown is under overwhelming pressure to scrap 'offensive' rules barring Gurkhas from Britain after Labour rebels dealt him a crushing Commons defeat.

He paid a heavy price for attempting to introduce guidelines preventing thousands of veterans who had risked their lives for this country settling here with their families.

In a sign of his faltering authority, a total of 27 Labour MPs rebelled, including a ministerial aide who quit. Following a heated two-hour debate called by the Lib Dems, MPs voted to scrap the rules by 267 to 246.

The result was symbolic as it is not binding on the Government. But it sent out an unmistakable message to Mr Brown that he urgently needs to rethink the Home Office guidelines amidst widespread public anger.

The result was announced amid shouts for Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who is responsible for immigration rules, to resign.

The Labour rebels included Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz, ministerial aide Stephen Pound and former cabinet minister Andrew Smith.

Mr Pound said he had resigned as a parliamentary private secretary in the Department for Work and Pensions to vote against the Government.

As many as 75 Labour MPs were understood to have abstained in a further sign of the Prime Minister's diminishing authority. This took the total number of Labour members who failed to vote with the Government to over 100.

In an emergency statement to the Commons last night, Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said 1,350 outstanding applications by Gurkhas to stay in the UK would be determined by the end of May.

He said proposals to reform the rules would be published before the summer break in July.

The High Court last year declared that preventing Gurkhas who had served in the Army before 1997 from living in the UK was unlawful.

Last Friday the Government came up with a new set of rules which campaigners said would allow only 100 veterans who were war heroes or badly injured to live in Britain.

Yesterday's vote brought cheers from 1,000 Gurkhas who had gathered outside Parliament.


Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg and Tory leader David Cameron joined actress Joanna Lumley, who had campaigned on behalf of the Gurkhas, as she held aloft the regiment's distinctive Kukri knife in victory.

Mr Clegg, who had secured the emergency debate championing the Gurkhas' cause, said: 'This is a great, great day for everyone who believes in fairness and decency in this country.

'This is the kind of thing that I think people want this country to do - pay back our obligations and our debt of gratitude to generations of Gurkhas who laid down their lives for this country. People who are willing to die for our country should be allowed to live in our country.'

Earlier, Mr Clegg had torn into Mr Brown during Prime Minister's Questions, accusing him of 'doing a shameful thing' but not having 'the guts to admit it or change it'. He said it was symptomatic of a leader with 'no principles and no courage.'

The complex new guidelines state that Gurkha veterans who retired from the British Army before 1997 can stay only if they can prove a sufficiently 'strong connection' with the country.

The case must be made through bravery medals, combat injuries or serving at least 20 years, although soldiers from other Commonwealth countries can apply for UK residency after just four years in the Army.

The Government says about 6,000 Gurkhas and their family members have already been allowed to come to Britain under changes since 1997. The new guidance will allow in a further 10,000, including dependants, ministers argue.

Mr Brown claimed that axing the rules would open the door to 100,000 Gurkhas and their dependants, costing the taxpayer £1.4billion. But representatives of the Gurkhas believe that even if the rules are axed completely, no more than 6,000 would want to move to Britain.

Using Government figures, this would cost the country £230million - less than half of the £540million wrongly paid to Income Support and Jobseeker's Allowance claimants last year.

Furious MPs from all parties turned on the Government over their 'betrayal' of the veterans.

LibDem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: 'We can play the numbers game, and if we do the Government will lose the argument because its figures, frankly, are fantasy.

'But the numbers are not the point. The point is a simple one. It is that Gurkhas have given an unconditional commitment to this country. They have put their lives on the line for us time and again.'

Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green said: 'The underlying reason why the Government is having to behave in such an unfair and ungenerous way to this group of people is that its overall immigration policy has been out of control for so many years.

'It boils down to this. Why are they trying to stop Gurkhas coming here? Because they have failed to stop so many much less deserving people from coming here - and what is worse, staying here.'

Mr Cameron said: 'Today is a historic day when Parliament took the right decision. The Government now have got to come back with immediate proposals.

'Gordon Brown has misjudged the mood of the public about the Gurkhas. The Government has been in power for a long time and has lost touch with public opinion.'

Miss Lumley, whose late father Major James Rutherford Lumley served with the 6th Gurkha Rifles, said she and everyone involved in the campaign were 'elated'.

'Just before this vote was taken our spirits were nearly at zero,' she said.

'When it came through I can't tell you the sense of elation, the sense of pride - pride in our country, pride in the democratic system and pride in our Parliament.' continues here

So what do you think, should the Gurkhas come here, so many voices cry out in support all citing bravery as reason, so what is your view, surely in times past they fought alongside us but didn’t others, are we to permit the influx of mass non-whites merely because at one time or another we fought together, in that case lets bring in the world, lets sink Britannia under a sea of wriggling brown bodies.

Nepal is a poor country, four in ten live in poverty and the income received from salaries and pensions paid by the British government is vital to some families and tribes, moreover, available places for military personnel are limited and highly oversubscribed, many rather crestfallen young men must return to the hills empty handed. We see from this, that rather than bravery or patriotism the initial motivation is purely financial, there can be no doubt that at certain times the Gurkhas have acted bravely, many beyond the call of duty, yet individual valour occurs across all sections of society.

Many individuals of all races and creeds display courage, bravery, what makes the Gurkha any different, after all shouldn’t we questioning our exploitation of these people rather than shipping them in to further erode our resources. They fought one must remember, not for the flag but for the money, the complete reverse of why most of our own youth enter the services, many motivated by patriotism, although poverty amongst the working classes plays its part. Hopefully the working class has learned its lesson and it will never again fight or bear arms for tyranny, though I fear this is a wish rather than a statement of truth.

It is my view that the Ghurkhas warrant no special treatment, that they as with others only wish to comer here to escape their own countries failings, again perhaps a building up of infrastructure, rather than importing a problem may be the answer. We have no room, we face the impending danger of extinction and yet still we bring in more, still we the people, let them seal our fate. So no, much as I admire and respect their proud history, much as I comprehend the many occasions of bravery, I still after all, can not sanction the importation of alien elements into the country, all again hell-bent on availing themselves of our resources, so what do you think?

UK govt urged to ease limits on Gurkhas in Britain

Opposition parties and some government lawmakers called on the British government Wednesday to ease restrictions on the right of Nepalese Gurkha soldiers to settle in the country.
The opposition is urging authorities to overturn a recent decision which loosened, but didn't eliminate, immigration restrictions for the Nepalese veterans of Britain's armed forces.
Several Labour Party lawmakers were expected to defy the government and vote with the opposition following a debate on the issue in the House of Commons later Wednesday. Any vote would not be binding, but a defeat would embarrass Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour government.
We should be honoring our veterans, not rejecting them, said Labour legislator Martin Salter.
The government says new rules announced last week will allow about 4,000 more former Gurkhas to live in Britain. But Gurkha advocates say the actual number is much smaller.
The Nepalese soldiers have fought for Britain for almost 200 years, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have a reputation as fearsome warriors. They enjoy wide public support in Britain.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said there was a simple moral principle at stake.
If someone is prepared to die for this country, surely they are entitled to live in this country, Clegg said during the prime minister's weekly question-and-answer session in the Commons.
Immigration rules introduced five years ago allowed Gurkhas with at least four years' service to settle in Britain, but the rules didn't apply to veterans who left the army before 1997.

Under the new rules, Gurkha veterans who retired before 1997 _ more than 30,000, according to government estimates _ can settle in Britain if certain conditions are met. Those could include having served 20 years, receiving a military award or having been injured while serving. continues here

Academics plan to boycott new student immigration rules

A group of academics are threatening to boycott the government's new immigration rules for students, saying orders that they monitor international students' movements are discriminatory.

The 35 academics, who describe themselves as being involved in researching the "uses and abuses of state power" say that they are increasingly being drawn into the role of "policing students" by the immigration authorities. The lecturers include some at Liverpool John Moores University, which was caught up in the terror arrests of 12 Pakistani nationals on student visas last week in connection with a major terror plot.

In a letter to the Guardian, they say that under new rules they are being asked to report students who don't turn up to lectures and to check the ID of students and visiting academics from other countries. 

The letter says: "We strongly oppose the imposition of such changes in the way that academic institutions are run. We believe these practices are discriminatory and distort academic freedoms. The implementation of UK immigration policies is not part of our contractual duties and we will play no part in practices which discriminate against students and staff."

The new points-based immigration system rules that international students have to be sponsored by an accredited institution, an attempt to weed out bogus colleges that are fronts for immigration scams.  continues here