Published Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 10:28
by
julian_schaerbeek 
(941 views and 3 comments)
Socialists should listen more to genuine public concerns about the impact on public services of migration, UK Immigration Minister Liam Byrne told a fringe meeting at Labour Party conference in Manchester.
He argued that immigration was a fact of globalisation, and that Britain is richer as a result of migration – but that impacts on schools, hospitals and housing were real and that local and national Government must do more to anticipate and deal with these impacts.
Byrne outlined what the Labour Government was doing create a fair and progressive migration policy including independent assessment of the skills needed in the country, a points system for legal migration, a clampdown on illegal immigration (including illegal work and illegal employers), and better planning to anticipate impacts on services. He also said that more needed to be done about integration – especially language acquisition – and that employers would be expected to contribute to language training of migrant staff.
Interesting ideas ...
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Comments
1. Society by kenezaniko
on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 09:12
Migration has a main role in our society.2. Interesting ideas... by montymonty7 on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 10:11
A points system for legal migration...So, basically the idea is to rate some migrants as good and some others as bad. This sounds a bit border line. According to which criteria such a classification should be built?3. Rights and duties by pattheact
on Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 10:29
I don't think it is really a matter of good or bad migrants, but much more a matter of rights AND duties.
Migration has for sure largely contributed to the development and the wealth of our European countries and I can only agree with the statement that the impacts of this migration on our services is important and becoming more and more problematic for normal citizens as no clear regulations or rules are applied.
This usually leads to reject reactions by the population and offers more and more voters to extremists parties which do clearly wish all migrants to stay out of the country, or at least keeping them outside the system where they can be used as a "scare-factor" as soon as pouplist politicians feel the need for it.
Who wouldn't wish to accept the migrants from all countries and let them live in better conditions, helping our societies to grow and to become richer with their help? The reality shows that our system has not the capacities to absorb all these migrants and the challenge today is to find some kind of ruling that respects migrants and ourselves, without putting our system at risk and without stigmatising migrants for their origin or condition.
Is it shocking to assess the real needs in the country and to develop policies to to cope with this needs? Is it shocking to to try to find a way of regulating an immigration factor that becomes more and more problematic, pushing migrants to choose more and more the illegality to remain in our countries, putting them in an extremely precarious condition and offering a chance to all bad intentionned employers to take profit of their weaknesses?
On integration I agree with the fact that language learning should be a pre-condition for any migrant wishing to enter a country. Although in my opinion the efforts should not only be asked to migrants in the sense that they come to our countries offering us also a possibility to enrich ourselves with the new or different cultures migrants bring with them. Integration is an effort that needs to be shared by the citizens of the welcoming country as well as by the migrants that choose to lay down their bags in our countries. Governments should promote cultural exchanges and help to a better understanding of both parties. This is part of our duties.
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