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News Articles for January 2004
January 23, 2004
MigrationWatch win first public debate on immigration…
January 19, 2004
Book Review: Human Visas
Human Rights Challenges Arranged Marriages
January 15, 2004
Government claim over Scottish migration challenged
January 13, 2004
Balkans migration should act as 'wake-up' call on EU enlargment…
January 5, 2004
The government was today accused of issuing a "dodgy dossier" on the economic contribution of immigrants.
Full Text of Press Release : January 2004
MigrationWatch win first public debate on immigration…
The first public debate on immigration resulted in a decisive rejection of the motion that "Britain needs more immigrants". A vote taken before the debate began showed a majority for the motion of 44 with 115 abstentions. At the end of the debate this was reversed. The motion was defeated by 98 votes with 33 abstentions. This was one of the largest swings ever recorded.
The debate pitted Barbara Roche, a former Immigration Minister supported by Dr Heaven Crawley of the Institute for Public Policy Research, who spoke for the motion, against the Chairman of Migrationwatch, Sir Andrew Green, supported by Professor Bob Rowthorn, Professor of Economics at Cambridge University. It was one of a series of debates organised by Intelligence Squared and sponsored by the Evening Standard.
Commenting, Sir Andrew Green said 'It is a breakthrough that we can now have a public debate on this sensitive issue. And I am glad to see that once the facts are set out, common sense prevails.'
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Book Review: Human Visas Human Rights Challenges Arranged Marriages
The Norwegian based Human Rights Service has published a book, entitled "Human Visas", on the use of arranged marriages to avoid immigration controls in Europe . It is valuable research into the marriage patterns of immigrant communities in Europe .
The book considers Norway , Sweden , Denmark , the UK and Germany . It shows that most first generation immigrants marry spouses from the homeland or from the same national background who already live in Europe . Well over 90% of first generation women from Turkey , Morocco , Somalia , Sri Lanka , India , Iraq and Pakistan married men from their country of origin or of the same national background, already settled in Norway . The pattern for first generation men was similar. Even in the second generation, some 96% of both men and women married a spouse of the same national background.
The effect of this is brought out in a research study conducted in Denmark during the period 1969 - 1989. A report by E Vesselbo focused on 145 Turkish men who had arrived in Denmark as guest workers. By the year 2000 the size of this group had increased by a factor of 20 to 2813 persons ranging from the first to the fourth generation.
The book goes on to describe revisions to Denmark 's immigration policy in relation to family reunification. The two cohabitants must now have reached the age of 24 (irrespective of their ethnic origins) before they can qualify for family re-union. This and a number of other changes have resulted in a substantial reduction in applications for family reunification.
"Human Visas" goes on to examine the suffering of women forced into marriage and to make recommendations for the revision of criminal and immigration law.
For anyone concerned about the Human Rights of women in immigrant communities, this book is required reading.
The book can be purchased at www.kolofon.com ISBN 82-300-0038-7Back to top
Government claim over Scottish migration challenged
The Home Secretary's case that Scotland, with its skills gaps and ageing population, is a reason why the United Kingdom needs large-scale inwards migration has been challenged in a paper from Migrationwatch.
The paper says it is unclear why a low birth rate and loss of population in a relatively small part of the United Kingdom with only 8.5% of its population should prove the need for heavy immigration into the UK, which overall has a very dense and growing population.
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Balkans migration should act as 'wake-up' call on EU enlargment…
Large scale migration from the Balkan countries should be tackled in the countries themselves. EU resources should be more effectively targeted to underpin their economies and social structure rather than being spent on 'grandiose' schemes.
That is the view of Professor James Pettifer, Professor and Research Associate at the Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy, UK and a leading authority on the Balkans in a paper just published today on the Migrationwatch website.
He says that Western policy is partly responsible for the current instability in the region and that the Balkans have suffered severely from the secondary effects of several EU economic policies. The crisis in agriculture, the drift to towns and the lack of employment, are crucial factors behind economic migration.
'EU aid is now essential to restore stability to the region. It should focus on re-building the traditional social structures by providing a sufficient transitional period for small scale agriculture and industry. Improvements in transport should favour this rather than be devoted to grandiose schemes. A government's success in reducing population movement should be a key factor in allocating economic aid. Furthermore, accession should be linked to effective policies to encourage their citizens to remain in their communities,' said
Professor Pettifer.
He said that there was a growing recognition that asylum and immigration to Western Europe can only be tackled if conditions in sending countries are also addressed. His paper outlines the historical and cultural background of emigration from the Balkans and suggests ways in which some of the present difficulties could be ameliorated
'Tightening restrictions in receiving countries is only half the picture. Professor Pettifer's paper is an important contribution to the debate and he provides an incisive analysis of the conditions in sending countries. While he particularly addresses the problems in the Balkans his comments are also relevant to a number of the countries who will join the EU in May this year,' said Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migrationwatch.
'A number of the 10 accession countries have some of the same problems he has identified in the Balkans. As they have a total population of some 72 million - all eligible to work in the UK and claim benefits from May 1- his paper should act as a wake-up call to our Government who
are risking a massive immigration from Eastern Europe, apparently before any serious attempt to address the economic difficulties of
those countries.'
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The government was today accused of issuing a "dodgy dossier" on the economic contribution of immigrants.
The paper, from think-tank Migrationwatch, shows that the basic premise on which the Home Secretary is basing his case for massive immigration is highly suspect.
Mr Blunkett claims that immigrants contribute a net £2.5 billion more in tax than they cost in benefits. The Migrationwatch paper challenges this. Read Report
Said Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch: 'The parallels with the "dodgy dossier" on Iraq are fascinating. An apparently useful fact was plucked out of a lengthy document, shorn of its necessary qualifications, placed in a prominent position in the Executive Summary, and then repeated endlessly. This is a classic example of the art of spin doctoring.'
The paper explains that the government's dossier is unreliable because:
- it omits the careful qualifications in the original research paper, including the fact that some studies have found the overall fiscal effect of immigration to be negative
- in the year chosen, 1999/2000, the budget was in surplus so everybody
contributed more than they cost in benefits.
- the cost of the extra infrastructure required for this addition to our
population is ignored
-it fails to address the key measure which is whether immigration adds to GDP per head. Most serious studies have found this to be very small. The Economist magazine put it at 1/8% per head per year - or about 50 pence per head a week.; A major study by the National Research Council in the US put it at about 1/10 of 1% per year but his took no account of the extra costs of congestion. These are even more important in England which is twelve times as crowded as the US.
'The Government's calculation is clearly thoroughly unsound,' said Sir Andrew. Yet it goes on repeating this claim, presumably in the hope that it will be accepted as a 'fact'. This is not about individuals, many of whom contribute positively to our national life, but, overall, any economic benefit is very small compared to the impact of massive levels of immigration on our quality of life. As one of the main justifications for the present policy of massive immigration it is astonishingly thin.'
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