One of the real policy debates in the general election is immigration. Let's face it, most Brits are unashamedly xenephobic if not outright racist. The idea that "Britain is full" and immigrants "steal our jobs" seems pretty rife. Regarding the first point, this seems to reinforce the inability of socialised planning to cope with population growth. Taken literally, Britain is *not* full. I live 30 minutes outside Central London, and am surrounded by beautiful countryside. Last time I caught a train from Euston to Liverpool, I timed how long it took until I couldn't see a house. 9 minutes. I'd wage that in less than a quarter of an hour out of London, in any direction, you're in open fields. What I think people mean when they say "Britain is full" is either:
- Public services are already operating beyond capacity
- I don't want people building houses in the lovely countryside
Just note that 1 is a failure of public service delivery (no-one's arguing that there aren't enough supermarkets, gymnasiums, or restaurants), whilst 2 is just narrow self-interest.
My problem with this debate though is that it all feels fairly moot. I think most people acknowledge a difference between economic migrants and asylum seekers, and certainly in my experience it's the latter that get all the flak. But how many are there? Where are they from? Why do they come here?
My understanding was that the main origins of asylum seekers are countries that we're bombing. This is why I don't have a problem with them: they have a moral right to live hear, and if we didn't want them we should just stop the war.
The Economist recently printed some data, and it supports my intuition. In 2009 Britain received under 30,000 asylum applications. In a population of 60,000,000 that doesn't seem a lot to me. If public services can't cope with that (and the fact that vacancy chains tend to make them more concentrated should make it easier to plan around them), then we should all agree that we need to rethink public service delivery. I assume this is less than endogenous population growth, and few people are advocating mass sterilization.
But the article also says:
More asylum- seekers came from Iraq than from any other country during 2008. But last year Iraqis were outnumbered by Afghans, 26,800 of whom sought asylum in rich countries, 45% more than during 2008
If anyone has the actual numbers I'd be grateful, but I'm taking it that a sizable majority of those 30,000 are from Iraq or (this year) Afghanistan. Let me repeat - we're at war and bombing their country. I'd suggest that a bare minimum humanitarian concession should be "if we decide to bomb your country, you have the right to seek haven in ours". But doesn't this just imply that if we stopped the war the whole issue of asylum seekers would become moot?
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Posted by: cheap jerseys | September 02, 2011 at 09:32 AM