Sure, open the gates, no problem with that. But make it bloody clear that everyone coming over the new and incredibly porous border is absolutely 100% on their own. No help from the state at all because the taxpayers no longer want to be forced to foot the bill. Anyone coming in therefore needs either a realistic plan to support themselves or a willingness to get by on whatever they can attract in the way of voluntary/charitable support (and not the tax paid fake kind either). There will be a lot of grief initially since some will think it's posturing and come in anyway thinking to call the bluff. When they're told in no uncertain terms that no really, this is how it is from now on because the country's broke, so sorry it's either work, starve, beg or try somewhere else there won't be a need for detention centers or the UKBA for long.Jon Burnett seems to be blaming the government for the kids and their parents being taken in dawn raids and held at Yarl's Wood, but I feel his mistake - and possibly the reason he's currently being turned into thylacosmilus dung - is that he doesn't seem to consider that the government are also the reason that it was necessary to do that in the first place. By being both evil enough to rob from its own citizens in order to support anyone who rocks up with a semi-plausible reason for leaving their original country and to then snatch and lock up those whose reasons are later decided not to be so plausible after all it is doubly to blame.
Won't happen of course. The main parties would prefer to continue hosing money into the twin black holes of border security and handing out other people's money to anyone who gets in having thought of a halfway convincing sob story. Psst, secret to any wannabe asylum seeker heading to Britain. Simply say "Oh, I just had to escape from Cafeteria. They had no smoking ban and we were being oppressed and I had to think of my chiiiiildren." But be ready to go seek asylum elsewhere when Britain really does run out of money.
As I thought there was a slight rumble from the back of the cave and a pair of eyes turned in my direction.
As I said over there, I don't think so. Well, not necessarily anyway. If, as is currently the case, you are going to be all multi-culti about it then limits won't help. The country will change anyway and at best all the limits will achieve is to slow it. Therefore open borders are bad because the change will happen even faster, yes? Ah, well, yes if you do nothing else but not if you change the multi-culti bit too. Even if you throw the borders wide open the pace of change can be close to a natural one providing you make a few things crystal clear:"Sure, open the gates, no problem with that. But make it bloody clear that everyone coming over the new and incredibly porous border is absolutely 100% on their own."That would help, but there must be some limits, surely? Otherwise, you will eventually change the structure of the country completely...
- There are no handouts courtesy of hitherto robbed taxpayers. If you can find a charitable organisation supported by voluntary donations to help you then knock yourself out.
- Go where you will and do as you like but no state help is available to get you settled in - see above.
- English, motherfucker, do you speak it? Actually we don't mind if you never learn English but you'll be making your own life much more difficult. And in case you hadn't already guessed there is no help available from the state.
- Feel free to practise your religion and continue your cultural traditions as far as they comply with UK law. If your faith requires you to paint yourself pale blue and stand naked in the corner of your kitchen every other afternoon nobody will care much, but if it involves sacrificing your neighbours on a bonfire then the British people will only welcome you if you can move into a spare house in Downing Street.
- Serious breaches of UK law will result in deportation to your country of birth on conviction (allowing for appeal, natch). If that means sending you into danger, boohoo. We'll get over it.
- If you want to build a giant culinary temple in which you and your co-religionists can stand naked in corners every other afternoon feel free to make or borrow money and buy some land near the paint shop. There will not be any... yeah, don't really need to say it anymore, do we?
- Etc etc etc.
In short you make the country open yet very unattractive to spongers and simultaneously make it much easier for people like Deva Kumarasiri to get in. A point will be reached where nobody but self reliant The only other objection is availability of resources, but when pressures build to the point that they're being spread too thin fewer and fewer people will want to come.
Personally I'm already at a loss to explain why anyone wants to go to a cold, soggy rock in the North Atlantic which is already one of the most densely populated bits of real estate in the world. It can only be the money - pay them and they will come, but stop paying them and they'll find somewhere else regardless of how open the borders are.
For what it's worth I feel this approach reflects reality. Almost every country has porous borders because barring luck with geography or a Kim Jong-Il type nutter in control you simply can't secure them completely. For that matter even then it's hard. The DDR couldn't despite chain link fences topped with razor wire and lined with minefields. Sure, that particular border was pretty tight and was designed more with emigration than immigration in mind, but the point is that people did get through it from time to time.* And that was a small country with a highly authoritarian government that was pretty determined to close the border, and a reasonable sized conscript military to help them do it. The UK, still more free than the DDR was, and also a densely populated, fairly wealthy (still) and advanced nation on a fucking island with only, can't manage it either. Even if you managed to make the ports, airports and tunnel secure, with 12,500 km of coastline a small boat can always sneak in at night unless you go to some fairly extreme measures. This would probably involve setting a large proportion of the population to a constant watch of the sort not seen even during WWII, and since that in turn would likely mean a British Honecker - or Adam Sutler** if you prefer - it would make Britain as unattractive a place to go as old East Germany was. And since this topic comes up here in Oz as well I think it's worth mentioning that if the UK can't manage it with three times the population, more than twice the wealth and only half as much coastline, then Australia simply doesn't have a fucking prayer.
For both my favourite countries (yes, in spite of everything I'm still very fond of the land of my birth) the best option would seem to be making them attractive to people who would come in, integrate, settle and set about making the life they want for themselves, and at the same time putting off spongers simply by telling them that there's no money, accommodation or help on offer but what is available from private citizens and charities through the goodness of their hearts. What good does a hard limit do a country? Say you set a limit of 9,999 and the ten thousandth is fantastic heart surgeon or has designed a prototype for a net power fusion reactor - do you tell them to take their talents and fuck off to make a contribution elsewhere because you've already filled the places for this year? It's cutting off your cock to spite your bollocks really, and worse still it's inevitable. It might not be every year and if it's not the first person after your quota is full it'll be someone further along the queue, but sooner or later there'll be someone you'd want that your own limits force you to refuse entry. Alternatively you could take the lowest skilled migrant who's already been admitted and chuck 'em out again, but you'd soon get a reputation for being a bit of a bastard and this would put off anyone but the most elite skilled workers. After all, if you were only the 50th best heart surgeon in the world you might not feel too confidant about your long term future since the 49th best might want in one day and they could already have run out of burger flippers to kick out. But an open border with no state help for the new intake takes the pressure off of people who really want to be there and build their new lives themselves while providing that all important disincentive to those who'd walk off the plane with their hands held out.
UPDATE: I should add that of course I realise that there's an element of hypocrisy involved here since I'm one of the most recent in a long line of migrants to a country that was basically nicked off the indigenous people, and yes I've made no effort to learn any language that was spoken round here before the First Fleet arrived. Guilty as charged, but in my defence being all precious and righteous about it and refusing to migrate would have achieved precisely fuck all for any Aborgines and I'd probably now be single, consuming epic amounts of porn and visiting the doctor regularly for the blisters on the palm of my right hand.
* Mostly in one direction because inward migration was minimal. This was due less to the nature of the border and more to the place being a depressing shithole run by a weapons grade fucknuts that would only seem an attractive place to live to someone who'd already run out of windows to lick in one country. However, this is still not a reason for to vote for Gordon Brown next year.
** Or even Adam Susan for the purists.
