Immigration

Britons have suffered a slump in living standards, official data shows, as a surge in net migration wiped out any gains from economic growth.

So-called real GDP per head shrank by 0.3pc between April and June compared with a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, suggesting living standards have slid backwards as the population grew.

It comes after net migration hit a near-record 685,000 last year.

Are we not enriched by our diversity?

And that ne migration number is, erm, about 1% of total population……which is, by the standards ofthese things, v v high. Like Germanics enteringthe Roman Empire in 476 type high.

When lecturing on Irish immigration history, I usually start by asking: in which decade was the first footage of people of colour in Ireland filmed? Some students guess the 1960s. Others reach back to the 30s when the singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson performed in Dublin. The answer? The first filmed footage depicting an African diaspora gathering in Ireland is older than the independent Irish state.

The film, a silent black-and-white British Pathé reel, shows members of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, an early jazz band, at Dublin port in October 1921. The men and women were survivors of a shipwreck. After their safe arrival on another vessel, the band performed for Dublin audiences. In the same month that Dubliners enjoyed the orchestra’s music, Irish republican leaders negotiated national independence with the British government. The footage provides a visual metaphor: Ireland’s history of diversity predates the state itself.

So the Protestants – Church of Ireland, all the littler churches – are to be allowed back then? Not the religious cleansing of the country that did in fact happen after independence?

OK, fair enough.

Except that’s obviously not what Matey means, is it?

The Willkommen is turning frosty even in Germany’s integration capital
Almost ten years after Angela Merkel opened the borders tensions are visible in Offenbach, the city with the highest proportion of migrants

What’s that “even” doing there?

Think on it, immigration’s a problem or it isn’t. Integration’s a problem or it isn’t. If either are problems then they’ll – logically – be greatest where immigration is highest and therefore integration has the greatest effect – or not.

Low-paid migrant workers are an immediate drain on the public purse, costing taxpayers more than £150,000 each by the time they hit state pension age, according to the Government’s tax and spending watchdog.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said the average low-earner who came to Britain aged 25 cost the Government more overall than they paid in from the moment they arrived.

Bit of a pity they say this after, not before, allowing a few million in…..

‘The end of Schengen’: Germany’s new border controls put EU unity at risk
Jon Henley
Europe correspondent
Critics say tightened land border checks a ‘transparent’ bid to appease far right that breaches free movement rights

If demoracy means the people get their say and the people are getting their say then what are you going to do if democracy comes up with the wrong answer?

A British man killed by a Spaniard with a garden hoe belonged to an “expat hooligan” community, the suspect’s lawyer said.

Martin Allwright, 59, died in hospital from head injuries on Aug 19 after being assaulted by one of his neighbours in southern Spain.

José Ramos has admitted striking Mr Allwright with a garden hoe but claims that the Briton threatened him first and he had previously reported his neighbour to police.

José Ramón Cantalejo, defending, said his client was a Spaniard in his fifties with no criminal record who had co-operated with police investigators.

Mr Cantalejo said that Spaniards in villages like El Palacés de Zurgena in Almería – where the attack took place – “live in terror of these British residents, many of whom are complete hooligans”.

80 km or so along the coast. Closer to my brother actually…..

France wants migrants to be able to claim UK asylum from within EU

No, no, I know, you don’t *have* to apply for asylum in the first safe place. That’s not the rule. The rule is that the first safe place *has* to grant asylum. Everyone else can do what they wish, grant or not as they wish.

So, given that folk here will be, by definition, in a safe place inside the EU why would we grant asylum?

Migrant tries to flee Britain across the Channel in kayak

They have not succeeded in turning the country into a hellhole for migrants so they wish to escape.

A migrant believed to be fleeing British police

This is a one off, not a general trend.

Refugees who arrive in Germany will be denied benefits if they do so from another country in the European Union, Olaf Scholz has announced.

The chancellor will deny these asylum seekers cash payments and payment cards if they flout EU rules demanding that they claim asylum in the first member state they reach.
…
will only receive ‘bed, bread and soap’

If only, eh?

Not got the reference, no idea how true the claim is. But the claim has been, somewhere out there:

Now the country’s migration minister is celebrating the fact Sweden has “negative net immigration”, with more people thought to be leaving the country than entering for the first time in more than half a century.

“The number of asylum applications is heading towards a historically low level, asylum-related residence permits continue to decrease and for the first time in 50 years Sweden has net emigration,” Maria Malmer Stenergard announced earlier this month.

That claim being that they’ve totted up all the people who outmigrated over the past few decades but didn’t tell anyone and dumped them into the one quater’s (year maybe) figures and thus reached nett outmigration.

How true that is I’ve no idea but who would bet against a politician doing something like that?

Nesrine’s not going to stray far from that wokester accept line now, is she?

But it will not be that. Because that minority reflects, and draws on, decades of racism, Islamophobia and anti-immigration rhetoric and policy broadcast by parts of the rightwing media, the Conservative party and the Labour party itself. Those years will not be swept aside by a policing crackdown. And their legacy will not, more importantly, be dismantled without its narratives being taken on and confronted.

Everything’s about the lies people are telling. Nothing is about the underlying at all. The largest – in total numbers – immigration in the history of the isles has and should have passed off without a murmur. It’s only people telling lies about it that caused violence.

Well, guess it’s possible. But I also think it’s an interesting guide to how censorship[ is going to work if they ever get those full powers they’re seeking.

Afghan asylum seekers in Germany are going on secret holidays back to the war-torn country despite claiming they fled persecution.

Rogue travel agents are offering package holidays to Afghan refugees and asylum seekers, even though the country is deemed unsafe, the German broadcaster RTL reported.

Germany has taken in around 300,000 refugees from Afghanistan, which has been under the rule of the Taliban since the United States’s chaotic withdrawal from the country in 2021.

If asylum seekers in Germany are caught travelling back to the country from which they fled, they risk being stripped of their protected status.

Now, whether it will actually happen is another thing…..

A group of well-dressed partygoers dubbed the “Prosecco Nazis” have sparked a police crackdown after they sang a song telling foreigners to go home while one performed a Hitler salute.

A video shows the revellers in the Pony nightclub on the German island of Sylt, a high-end holiday destination, singing to the tune L’amour Toujours by Gigi D’Agostino.

“Foreigners out, Germany for the Germans,” they sing while one performs a Nazi salute and moustache gesture in apparent reference to Adolf Hitler.

Drunks – even posh drunks – in a nightclub are only ever a very local problem.

But:

Police say that between October 2023 and June 2024 they have been called over 360 times to reports of the chant, according to the German news agency RND. Arrests have been made.

Ah, it’s striking something of a chord, is it? And always remember, it’s not the acction itself, it’s the chord, that matters. One singing of a nazi-style song isn’t a problem. Mass incidents of it being sung are.

Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to scrap the Rwanda plan will lead to “open season” for small boats crossings, a former Border Force chief has said.

Kevin Saunders, who was Chief Immigration Officer covering Calais and Dunkirk, told Times Radio: “The trouble is he [Sir Keir Starmer] is being very negative about Rwanda. Well, that’s fine. He’s bound to be.

“But we don’t have anything from him about how they’re going to stop the boats. It’s going to be open season.”

We have a nice little test in fact. When Rwanda was threatened did crossings fall? And now the threat is lifted, will they rise again?

It’s possible to hope that someone’s collecting the evidence, y’know?

Standard economics would say that the incentive to commit – or not commit – a crime depends on hte likelihood of getting caught and the punishment if you are. So, as the threat of deportation to Africa – with whatever probability that had – is lifted there should be an increase in the incentive to paddle over.

The interesting bit will be well, is that analysis correct?

Labour will pledge to deport thousands more of foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers under plans to be set out this Thursday in its election manifesto.

Nevertheless, our politics is obsessed with distinctions based on national identity. Many of the arguments against immigration rest on the idea that there is a true and pure national identity, which means some people “belong” while others do not. Ethno-nationalism is particularly overt among far-right parties, even if the message has been softened from “racial identity” to “cultural identity”, to make it more palatable. But the cord that tethers us to a particular land – our national identity – is not innate; it is based on recent or ancient migrations, or the happenstance of your mother’s location at the moment of your birth.

So, let’s try this at Murrayfield for the England Game. Or Cardiff for the same. You Celts are know nothing far-rightists for hating the Anglo Saxons who atre, after all, simply immigrants who have enriched your diverse lands.

Hey, it might even be true too – but it’s not the way humans work, is it?

The suddenness of the transition from a country that was almost entirely monocultural and white to one in which 20% of the population was born abroad created an obvious space for pushback.

Umm, yes, that is quite the change, isn’t it?

Brexit Britain should not be beholden to a European court. Our Prime Minister appears to be keen to engage in many televised election debates, and I challenge him to debate with me on this issue. If he refuses, that will confirm the fact that Sunak can’t stop the boats.

It’s not only fun it’s a good one too – it works often enough.

English courts are in talks to abandon compulsory wigs for barristers amid claims that they are “culturally insensitive”.

The Telegraph understands that the judiciary is poised to update its court dress code following complaints by some barristers that the traditional headpieces discriminate against those with Afro-Caribbean hair.

The number of parents homeschooling their children has surged in Scotland amid claims of declining educational standards and an epidemic of classroom violence.

Figures released by Scottish councils show that over 2,200 children are currently being educated at home, an increase of 40 per cent in just two years. The total has more than doubled in seven years.

OK, small overall numbers, obvs.

But is it a change in the educational system? A change in the other people being educated? Or some change in those making the choice? Fairly important to find out which, no?