There’s been a fearsome row lately over immigration, not to the US, but to the UK. This one hots up every few years or so when the Little Englanders think it’s time to throw out all the illegals yet again. The fact that foreign criminals who had served their sentences were not routinely being deported made lots of news and cost former Home Secretary Charles Clarke his job. But his replacement. John Reid, hasn’t been very lucky either. One of his civil servants, asked by a Parliamentary committee how many illegal immigrants were in the country, responded that he didn’t have the faintest idea. It’s a true statement, but it gives the impression that not only doesn’t he know, but he doesn’t really care either. It infuriated Parliament and the newspapers. Yesterday five illegal immigrants were caught as they were preparing to go to their jobs–cleaning the offices of the Immigration and Nationalisation Directorate in London. The IND says that it was their first day on the job. The employer (who holds the contract to clean the IND’s offices) begs to differ: two had worked there for more than two years, one for 1 year, and one for 6 months. I guess the other one was the neophyte.
I expect that Reid will order raids on all contract cleaning establishment to try to detect illegal immigrants. This has worked (partially) in catering establishments and restaurants. I expect that most of the cleaners who are non-white will be detained and forced to prove their nationality and status in the UK. Families will be deported, or split up.
The days when we could reasonably secure our borders have ended. The volume of traffic is just too great. Forgery of papers is too easy and too good a quality now. As a (legal) immigrant married to a (legal) immigrant, maybe it’s time the government rethought its attitude toward immigration. In large measure, the illegal immigrants perform jobs that we as a rule are not interested in doing. They pay their own way, and contribute to the society we are currently building here (with cheap labour making inexpensive products for sale to well-off people).
But the government, scared witless of the tabloids, the British National Party, and the booboisie, cannot do that. So poor Nigerian and Zimbabwean cleaners will be deported and be replaced by poor Poles and Lithuanians.
I suspect you’re quite right. The EU seems to be decidedly interested in shifting towards a very closed migration system.