Tim Worstall

Judges block Home Secretary from deporting convicted terrorist A convicted terrorist banned from Britain for being a risk to national security has been stopped by the courts from being deported. And yes, so the courts should. There’s two entirely different points here. The challenge hinged on interpretation of the Immigration Act 1971 and other immigration [...]

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Someone’s got to pay the debt….

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Foreign footballers and international businessmen are to be offered a £15,000 personalised visa renewal service to avoid them having to queue, as part of an increase in immigration fees announced yesterday. Officials from the UK Border Agency will offer to visit highly skilled migrants at their office or home to sort out their immigration documents. [...]

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Tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers will be able to obtain free health care following a Government rethink, it has been announced. Yes, yes, I know, Johnny Foreginer freeloading…..but there are public health implications. We do want everyone to get their vaccines, get treated for communicable diseases, don’t we?

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Last time around these strikes were all about “British jobs for British workers”. Essentially, anger over EU nationals being shipped in to do jobs while UKites didn’t get them. Rightly or wrongly, that was the issue. Around 1,200 contract workers walked out of the Total plant in Lincolnshire last week after 51 employees were laid [...]

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See: The “e-borders” system will log passenger information according to the data provided by the airline, which in most cases will be from the non-British passport used for the outbound journey. As a result, a dual national – even if readmitted to Britain by an immigration officer on showing a British passport – could be [...]

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Mark Wadsworth tells us that economic migration is indeed the largest part of total immigration. Can’t say I’m convinced. Table 2.04 from the 2 series at this page which he points us to. A quick eyeballing says that out of 1991′s numbers of 329 k immigrants there were 50 k with a definite job, 21 [...]

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Frank Field lays them out. Employers would have to advertise jobs, first locally and then throughout the EU – as they should now, but some plainly do not. For its part, the government would wish to ensure applicants’ qualifications were genuine. These workers would then be admitted, but only for a maximum of four years. [...]

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This is interesting. A cross-party parliamentary group – the first to tackle such a politically divisive issue – says net immigration must be reduced to zero, with the numbers arriving balanced by those leaving. Under such a scheme my moving back would deprive someone of the opportunity to immigrate? As there are no rules whatsoever [...]

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Harsh as it may sound, it’s also a pretty simple answer. He and his brother, Ian, are third-generation fruit farmers and produce 5,000 tonnes each year, requiring an extra 100 workers at harvest time. ‘We think we are fully booked, but quite often people don’t turn up,’ he said. ‘The bottom line is, if there [...]

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I would call this utterly predictable. Confidential guidelines have been issued by bishops to warn clergy of the scam, which has exploded since a Government crackdown on sham marriages was introduced in 2004. Official figures show that the number of bogus weddings performed by Anglican priests has risen by as much as 400 per cent [...]

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An interesting thought: if this is indeed true (and I see no reason why it wouldn’t be) just how long would the "white majority" have lasted? Taking the current borders of the country, so that we include say California and Oregon right from the beginning, when did the US first have a white majority? Certainly [...]

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The number of immigrants entering Britain should be capped, an influential House of Lords committee has warned. OK, how? The vast majority of the immigration is from other EU states. We can’t change that in any way at all. Asylum seeking is regulated by UN agreements isn’t it? Which leaves extra- EU immigration for either [...]

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OK: "Our overall conclusion is that the economic benefits of net immigration to the resident population are small and close to zero in the long run," the report will say. Let’s say they’re right. The benefits to the immigrants are large, if not huge. It’s thus a net addition to human happiness.  

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Many British expatriate communities refuse to integrate with their host nations. They congregate in ugly ghettos in the French countryside and along the Spanish coast, eating their own food – egg and chips; imported Marmite – and speaking their own language. They offend the tolerant and peaceable people of their host nations with their imported [...]

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The basic principle here seems sound enough: Foreigners coming to Britain are to face a new "immigrant tax" under Government plans to try to make them help pay for the schools and hospitals they use, ministers are to announce. Why not charge people who want to come here? However: Sources indicate that the additional levy [...]

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Yes, I know, we have limited resources, we don’t want to have health tourism, we can’t have open immigration and the welfare state, yes, I know the arguments: The deportation of a Ghanaian woman with terminal cancer was defended by the head of the immigration service yesterday, who disclosed that there were hundreds of similarly [...]

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Nice to welcome Migrationwatch to one of the better known ideas in economics: The report says more effort should be expended on getting our own population into work rather than encouraging immigration. But this becomes more difficult with generous benefits and means testing. The report shows that: * A family with two children is just [...]

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A new report: More than 100,000 young Britons may have been pushed into unemployment by the new wave of Eastern European immigrants, an economic analysis on the impact of migration has revealed. Mhm Hmm. Since 1997, 1.5 million foreign workers have entered the British workplace, with many of these arriving from Eastern Europe in the [...]

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I’m still really rather amazed about this scandal over Enoch Powell: Nigel Hastilow, Conservative candidate in a Midlands marginal, wrote in a newspaper in Wolverhampton (where Powell was MP when he made his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968) that most local people think immigration is our biggest problem, and that “Enoch was right” [...]

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