Israel extends ban on immigration through marriage

Israel on Sunday extended for six months a ban preventing Palestinians married to Israelis to immigrate to the Jewish state, the premier's office said in a statement.

"The ministerial committee for security affairs decided tonight (Sunday) to extend for six months a text on family unification, which expired December 31," said a statement from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

That extension until June 30 denies Palestinians the right to acquire Israeli citizenship or resident status through marriage.

The so-called Family Unification provision has been the subject of an outcry from leftist movements and groups representing the country's Arab minority, who charge the ban is "inhumane" and "racist."

The ministerial committee also asked the justice minister "to work towards early finalisation of a law on family unification, which will meet the national security and long-term interests of the government of Israel," the statement added.

The Israeli government is concerned that uncontrolled immigration could slowly erode the state's Jewish identity. Israeli Arabs currently number some 1.4 million, or 20 percent of the population.

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Britain: An empty promise on immigration

Another year begins with another Big Lie exposed. I wonder how many voters foolishly supported David Cameron’s Unconservative Party last May because of his loud claims that he would do something about immigration.

Yet a report from a Left-wing think tank, the IPPR, shows that Mr Cameron must have known perfectly well that his pledge could not be kept. Immigration will not fall this year and may even rise. EU citizens can come and go as they please. Lithuanians and Latvians, and many of our Irish neighbours, will arrive in thousands in search of work, keeping wages low.

We will continue to host hundreds of thousands of overseas students and large numbers of alleged refugees. ‘Family reunions’ will allow many others through supposedly closed doors, from all the parts of the world which have already supplied so many of our new citizens.

Mr Cameron’s vaunted cap on economic migrants from outside the EU will indeed begin to operate, but this will affect no more than two or three per cent of the immigration total.

So why this gap between claim and reality? First, Mr Cameron could be fairly sure that most voters wouldn’t notice the small print in his pledges. Secondly, we are not considered grown-up enough to discuss the greatest political issue of our time – the steady takeover of our once-independent country by the EU and the colossal implications of this. And no major political party will offer us an exit.

But third, the modernised Tory Party, just like its New Labour twin, actively favours large-scale migration. Rich young careerists in pleasant parts of London – who form the core of all our establishment parties – couldn’t function without the cheap servants and cheap restaurants that immigration brings.

Not for them the other side of immigration – the transformation of familiar neighbourhoods into foreign territory. Not for them the schools where many pupils cannot speak English, and the overloaded public services. Not for them the mosque and the madrassa where the church and the pub used to be. Not that they mind that so much. These people have no special loyalty to this country, nor much love for it.

They are not significantly different from the Blairite apparatchik Andrew Neather, who last year unwisely said openly what such people have long thought privately.

Let me remind you that he spoke of ‘a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the UK Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural’.

And that he recalled coming away from high-level discussions ‘with a clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main -purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date’.

Well, doesn’t Mr Cameron also like to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date? I think he does. And of course anyone who complained could be (and always will be) smeared as a ‘bigot’. In fact, the issue long ago ceased having anything to do with skin colour. We have many black and brown Britons who have, over time, become as British as I am – though alas this is less and less the case because the curse of multiculturalism has prevented proper integration, as has the huge size of the recent influx.

And we have many people here with pale northern skins who do not speak our language or share our culture.

Our wealthy urban elite are actively pleased by these changes because they did not like Britain as it was, conservative, Christian, restrained and self-disciplined. They like it as it is, and as it will become. But what about the rest of us?

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