Flood of Tunisians headed for Britain
A flood of refugees from war in Tunisia has arrived in Italy, and Italy has now decided what to do with them, as we see below. Italy will give them permits that will allow them to go anywhere within the Schengen area. Guess one place that is in the Schengen area? Calais! The rest follows. Britain might even accept them legally. Good for Britain's Mosques but not much else in Britain
Italy and Tunisia have signed an accord on handling the immigration emergency. The accord was signed in Tunis by Interior Minister Maroni after lengthy negotiations with the local authorities. Maroni explained that this was "a bilateral technical cooperation accord to counter illegal immigration and to strengthen collaboration between the two countries' police forces; repatiations are also envisaged".
In order to monitor application of the accord, the government has set up an interministerial contact group, which includes, in addition to the Presidency of the Council, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, the Interior, Defence, Infrastructure and Transport, Economic Development and Labour and Social Policies, with coordination by the Office of the Diplomatic Advisor to the President of the Council.
The accord was illustrated by Berlusconi and Maroni today at Palazzo Chigi in a meeting of the "director's booth" set up by the government, regions and local bodies, at which a government strategy was drafted for the difficult management of the 25,800 persons thus far landed, of which 2,300 are actually refugees fleeing Libya, and the reminder Tunisians.
Reporting to the Lower House, Maroni said that a decree would be signed today on temporary permits for immigrants arriving in Italy that would allow them to circulate throughout the Schengen area. The Interior Minister will be meeting tomorrow with his French counterpart to outline a common intervention system, and will be in Brussels on Monday to request activation of the provisions of EU Directive 55/2001 on temporary protection, which would allow any willing Union Member to take in a share of the immigrants, even after their arrival in Italy.
The theme of immigration will be among the items on the agenda of a summit meeting on 26 April in Rome between Silvio Berlusconi and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
SOURCE
French interior minister calls for less immigration
French Interior Minister Claude Guéant says the government intends to reduce the number of immigrants allowed to enter the country legally, in statements evoking a divisive and little-understood aspect of contemporary French society.
“I have asked that we reduce the number of people admitted under work immigration visas,” Guéant told the conservative Figaro Magazine in an interview to be published on Friday. “We also continue to reduce the number of foreigners coming to France for family reunification,” he said.
Some 20,000 people are allowed to enter France on work visas and another 15,000 for family reasons each year, according to the Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for immigration.
Guéant also said he would not exclude changes to France’s policy on asylum seekers, suggesting a cap on asylum visas was also on the table.
The opposition Socialist Party and the organization SOS Racism have already condemned Guéant’s statement as a “provocation”.
Socialist MP Sandrine Mazetier said cutbacks to family reunification visas violated “fundamental rights” and accused the government of exploiting the issue of immigration to divert attention away from the country’s unemployment.
Guéant had already enraged rights groups earlier in the week by saying that the “increase in the number” of Muslims in France posed “a problem”.
His statements come amid widening divisions within President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, where conservatives embrace a hard line against immigration that party centrists reject.
Missing statistics
According to Mirna Safi, a sociologist and research director with the Paris Institute of Political Studies, France’s policy of restricting immigration has remained relatively consistent for the past 30 years.
The only exception has been the so called “competences and talents” visa, proposed by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2003 when he was interior minister. “It was a small and isolated recognition of a need for immigrant workers,” Safi says.
Sarkozy said at the time that the new visa would allow immigrants chosen for their professional capacities to enter France and reverse what he said was a trend of unskilled immigrants leeching on the state’s social programmes.
But the competences and talents visa did not produce a significant increase in legal and professional immigrant workers after 2003, says Xavier Thierry, who tracked immigration flows for France’s National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) until 2008.
“A stable figure of five percent of immigration for professional reasons may have increased to eight to 10 percent,” Thierry says, adding that a pronounced change in immigration flows could not be determined immediately by annual statistics.
Thierry admits that he was the only researcher at INED to study immigration flows and asked to be taken off the subject after feeling “discouraged”. No one has taken over from him, and data relative to immigration in France, legal or not, is scarce after 2008.
SOURCE
Background
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Why is "La Raza" the one Spanish term that is NEVER translated in the American mass media? Because translating it would make it a lot less respectable. It means "THE RACE" -- The mixed Hispanic "race" of Mexico. Racism is fine South of the Rio Grande only, apparently.
The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:
1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.
2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.
3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.
4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.
5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: Before the pandemic, you usually COULD buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.
6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.
I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.
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