Thread: Why Britain has given up policing its borders

Why Britain has given up policing its borders
Wednesday, August 27, 2008, 12:15 PM GMT [General]

It's not the demographic forecast that's so depressing; it's the accompanying fatalism. Britain is to become, not just the most crowded country in Europe but, amazingly, its most populous in absolute terms. This is despite the fact that our birth rate has not been at a self-sustaining level since the 1960s, that we are dying more quickly than we breed, and that 300,000 Britons emigrate every year. To put it another way, the places we have freed up have been more than filled by grateful settlers.

Which ought, when you think about it, to make population growth manageable. Governments cannot regulate the size of families, at least not without an unacceptable loss of freedom. But they can and should determine who can enter the national territory. If, after a collective debate, we decide that Britain is too sparse, and that we need the world's huddled masses to fill the empty tracts of Surrey and Middlesex, fine. But if we take the view that the island is already crowded - that our airports are hellish, that water is rationed, that green spaces are disappearing, that new houses are being crammed into the southern shires without accompanying infrastructure - then we ought to be in a position to do something about it. Without immigration, our population would decline.

The trouble is that voters have long since given up on believing that any party will control our frontiers. They half sense that at least some politicians would like to reduce the net influx of population. But they know that the forces arrayed against those politicians - EU treaties, human rights codes, judges determined always and everywhere to block deportation orders, a Home Office that is not fit for purpose - are too powerful to overcome. And so voters are resigned to higher immigration, just as they are resigned to higher taxes. They treat politicians' promises as so much election-time white noise.

It doesn't have to be this way. Switzerland is a country surrounded by land frontiers, more than a third of whose residents are foreign nationals. It is a member of the Schengen accord, and grants passport-free entry to many European citizens. But Swiss voters none the less decide who may live permanently among them. Some cantons settle even naturalisation applications by referendum: they invite the applicant to submit a photograph and a hundred words on why he should be allowed to stay in Switzerland, and then put the proposition to the population at large. Precisely because these decisions are taken at local level, and with popular participation, the system has never been allowed to get out of control. And, of course, Switzerland is outside the EU, and therefore in a position to take sovereign decisions.

Britain could do something similar. We are an island, with natural frontiers. But Parliament cannot control those frontiers until it wrenches power back from the EU and, even more so, the judiciary. The answer, yet again, is direct democracy.
http://tinyurl.com/586wcf

It doesn't have to be this way. Switzerland is a country surrounded by land frontiers, more than a third of whose residents are foreign nationals. It is a member of the Schengen accord, and grants passport-free entry to many European citizens. But Swiss voters none the less decide who may live permanently among them. Some cantons settle even naturalisation applications by referendum: they invite the applicant to submit a photograph and a hundred words on why he should be allowed to stay in Switzerland, and then put the proposition to the population at large. Precisely because these decisions are taken at local level, and with popular participation, the system has never been allowed to get out of control. And, of course, Switzerland is outside the EU, and therefore in a position to take sovereign decisions

Smart people. Wonder if they'll take me?

Originally Posted by crazybird

It doesn't have to be this way. Switzerland is a country surrounded by land frontiers, more than a third of whose residents are foreign nationals. It is a member of the Schengen accord, and grants passport-free entry to many European citizens. But Swiss voters none the less decide who may live permanently among them. Some cantons settle even naturalisation applications by referendum: they invite the applicant to submit a photograph and a hundred words on why he should be allowed to stay in Switzerland, and then put the proposition to the population at large. Precisely because these decisions are taken at local level, and with popular participation, the system has never been allowed to get out of control. And, of course, Switzerland is outside the EU, and therefore in a position to take sovereign decisions

Smart people. Wonder if they'll take me?

I've heard it is a nice place to live.