Thread: All over Europe, immigration is moving in from the political fringes

All over Europe, immigration is moving in from the political fringes

By Alasdair Palmer
6:30PM BST 23 Jun 2012

Immigration, from being the great unmentionable of British politics, is turning into the issue that dominates the political agenda. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, admitted last week that his party had failed to heed voters’concerns about the impact of immigration on employment, and on the provision to native Britons of services such as housing, health and education. He promised to do something to address those worries, although he did not say exactly what. But given that New Labour, for most of its 12 years in power, dismissed anyone who raised concerns about its dismantling of barriers to immigration as a closet racist, Mr Miliband’s apology constitutes a major U-turn.

A similarly agonised reappraisal is happening across Europe. A couple of weeks ago, EU governments adopted a measure that would allow them to reintroduce border controls, “when the control of an external border is no longer assured due to external circumstances” – a vague phrase which allows countries to impose controls more or less whenever they like. To appreciate what a major change in policy this represents, you merely have to remind yourself that to allow individual countries to control their own borders has always been anathema to the EU. The whole point of the Schengen agreement, from which Britain secured an opt-out, was to ensure that there were no border controls within the EU.

But voters in France and Germany have been increasingly alarmed by the fact that, once migrants from outside the EU manage to get to, say, Greece, they are free to move anywhere in the EU. Migrants could enter France and Germany, and there was nothing that those countries’ governments could do to stop them. The new measure was pushed through by the French and German governments to assure their people that there is something they can do: they can impose border controls, and they will do if necessary.

The European Commission fiercely opposed the change, arguing that it violates the basic principle of freedom of movement within the EU – which of course it does. But it couldn’t prevent it: the issue was too important to the elected governments.

What has caused the new sensitivity to voters’ opinions on this issue? Mass immigration has never been popular. But until now, governments have been happy to defy popular opinion over it. It may be that the alarming success of Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party, in the Greek elections, has reminded the political class that ignoring their electorates’ feelings about immigration does not make them disappear: it just ensures that they mutate into very unpleasant forms.

It might also be that migration is starting to have detrimental effects on the lives of the well-off and well-educated, from whose ranks politicians are predominantly drawn. In the past, it has only been those at the bottom end of society who have suffered from immigration, the poor and uneducated who have been competing for jobs with migrants. It is they who see the dramatic effects of the surge in new arrivals on services.

Now, however, the better-off, or at least their children, may be feeling some of the downside of immigration. Migration Watch UK, a body that studies this issue, looked at the career paths of non-EU graduates competing for jobs in Britain. The number of these students who, having completed their studies, have been given permission to stay and take up jobs increased from 870 in 2004 to 40,000 last year. That must have some impact on the unemployment rate for British graduates, which now stands at 20 per cent.

A similar increase in foreign graduates securing graduate jobs has probably happened in France and Germany. This may explain why politicians are finally starting to think that “something must be done about immigration”. Whether they will be able to “do anything” effective is a different matter.

All over Europe, immigration is moving in from the political fringes - Telegraph

Personally.and just a personal opinion, the attempt to share wealth with the world's politically abused and downtrodden is backfiring. It seemed that the belief was that if you made all citizens of the world equals that wars would not remain an alternative for anyone.


As goverments assumed the role of being charitable, and taxation replaced charitable contributions. charitable gifting declined. That does not seem unnatural to me, families usually have a tolerable ceiling that they apply based upon net income. Some being more greedy than others.

The taxation was withstood relatively well by many Americans, others not so well. Charities went to funding research, eduacation and other things and turned to doing less for individuals.


Now, it might be that when allowing our jobs to be a part of govenments charity to others, as here and apparently Britain, war may become an internal threat, rather than just an external threat. When people cannot feed and care for their own, crime rises, and if the numbers that cannot provide become large enough civil disobedience will degenerate into what we see in areas of the world now.


Science warned as early as the 1960's that the world's potable water supply was limited to suporting a certain world population size, and that the food supply would be strained or worse. If those coming here are to be believed, that if our families were hungry as they say their are, that we would do the same as they do, go where the jobs are.

We must find solutions to these errors in judgment. Continuing as we are, governments will degenerate to being again tribal affairs and civilization will again degenerate. The quesiton is degenerate to what level?

IMHO

Another thing the wealthy have that the poor do not have is lots of space, and we are rapidly running out of that too. We keep hearing about drop houses being set up in suburban neighborhoods. The wealthy are happy to have cheap landscaping and kitchen help as long as they are isolated from the heaps that they come from once they get here. But now those nests are starting to show up in the posher neighborhoods. And their kids are starting to show in the local colleges too.