Glasgow Socialist says time to cap immigration.

Is he a bigot, then, Gordon Brown?

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Sean-Clerkin-Cap-on-immigration.6250961.jp

Sean Clerkin: Cap on immigration wouldn't be racist, just common sense.

Published Date: 24 April 2010
By Sean Clerkin
THE open-door approach to immigration, which was launched by Tony Blair and Jack Straw in 2001 for economic and social reasons to drive down wages to the minimum wage level, has to be abandoned.
With the worst recession in living memory, we cannot afford to continue with it. We have hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and more than half a million EU eastern Europeans in the UK that we cannot sustain in terms of housing, education and health services.

Glasgow, one of the poorest cities in Britain, has had to absorb many thousands of economic immigrants in recent years, resulting in the growth of ghettos in Govanhill, Pollokshaws and Red Road. How can a socially deprived area such as Govanhill cope with the influx of over 3,000 Slovakians in the space of 12 months? It cannot.

Glasgow City Council education department has to provide resources to educate 14,000 children whose first language is not English. Indigenous children are held back and are denied the educational resources that they need.

Many indigenous people in Glasgow and elsewhere are naturally resentful that the massive influx of immigrants increasingly takes away from them shrinking public resources in areas such as housing, education and health. Until now, they have been afraid to speak out in case they were labelled racist by the chattering classes and those with vested interests to protect.

The rise of the British National Party has forced the issue of immigration to the fore, with the issue being one of the five most important concerns for the British people during this election campaign, and yet the main political parties continue, at their peril, to sidestep the issue, only paying brief lip service.

Indigenous people also feel strongly that their culture is being undermined by the likes of Islam, from the closure of public houses in the north of England to the threatened imposition of Sharia law, where there are increasingly high concentrations of Muslim populations.

Multiculturalism has gone far too far, and there is a clear need for more integration of ethnic minorities in our western democratic values, like the French do in that, as a great nation, it ensures that its secular democratic values, such as the freedom of expression, are never undermined.

The mainstream political parties continue to worship at the altar of multiculturalism and tiptoe around the subject of immigration and its implications for our economy and social structure. This is shown very clearly when First Minister Alex Salmond championed an illegal immigrant who faced drug charges and it can be seen how out of touch our mainstream politicians are on this issue.

A cap must be put on immigration in line with the numbers of people leaving the UK each year. This means, in effect, that there has to be zero net migration, and this would include those coming in from eastern Europe. This has been agreed by well-informed academics, and politicians such as Frank Field, MP, hardly raving racists. Such a policy is only common sense.

France and Germany have rightly tightened up on immigration and it is about time the UK did the same, as we cannot financially sustain large numbers of immigrants and would-be asylum seekers when severe financial cutbacks will take place in public services after the General Election.

• Sean Clerkin is the former chairman of the Glasgow Campaign against housing stock transfer and current chairman of the Glasgow Homeowners' Campaign. He is a non-aligned socialist."

Quite right too.

carmen wrote:Quite right too.

Yes, I agree. Cities like Glasgow really can't cope with mass immigration and it needs to be capped. This is interesting coming from a socialist.

Yes, it pains me to have to say it, but he is absolutely right. I teach in a primary school where all the doors are labelled in Arabic! That's just ridiculous and not encouraging incomers to learn English at all. When we bought our flat in Turkey, we had to pay for our own translators and an English-speaking solicitor. The Turkish Government don't provide free translation services and we don't expect them to.

I guess that makes me a bigot as well, then. Maybe we should just start up a Bigot's Party. I bet we would get a lot of support!

The Famous Grouse wrote:Yes, it pains me to have to say it, but he is absolutely right. I teach in a primary school where all the doors are labelled in Arabic! That's just ridiculous and not encouraging incomers to learn English at all. When we bought our flat in Turkey, we had to pay for our own translators and an English-speaking solicitor. The Turkish Government don't provide free translation services and we don't expect them to.

I guess that makes me a bigot as well, then. Maybe we should just start up a Bigot's Party. I bet we would get a lot of support!

I never thought I'd be saying this either TFG. As a child I used to love going to The Barras on a Sunday to help on my uncle's stall and mixing with people from all over the world. In my town, Coatbridge, a black face at that time was very unusual and there weren't people from all over Europe. I actually don't recall even one Asian person at my school. There wasn't even one person whose first language wasn't English and it was a big school. Now, all the local shops are Asian-owned in my family's part of Coatbridge.

I never thought I'd be saying that immigration needs to be seriously capped, but that's what I have come to believe. I guess it was easy to believe in unlimited immigration when there just wasn't very much and it wasn't in evidence where I lived!

AnnaEsse wrote:

carmen wrote:Quite right too.

Yes, I agree. Cities like Glasgow really can't cope with mass immigration and it needs to be capped. This is interesting coming from a socialist.

Leicester is allegedly the first British city where immigrants now outnumber the indigenous population and still our politicians, as so ably demonstrated by Mr Brown in Rochdale will not listen to what is being said.

A friend of mine, who just renounced his Israeli citizenship (he's been here legally for many years) just sat his Citizenship test and had his swearing-in ceremony. He had to go on a waiting list to get sworn in. There were about 100 people at once doing the ceremony, and they have these ceremonies every six weeks. And this is in a relatively small city (1/4 million people, and counting!) When you multiply that up over the whole country, the numbers must be frightening.

They're the genuine immigrants - and then there are the ones that "sneak" in. I was interested to read this one posted in Missing Children yesterday "Others went missing from the same venue on various dates." - a Scout Jamboree https://missingmadeleine.forumotion.net/missing-in-the-uk-f44/ossai-elvis-t10143.htm

malena stool wrote:

AnnaEsse wrote:

carmen wrote:Quite right too.

Yes, I agree. Cities like Glasgow really can't cope with mass immigration and it needs to be capped. This is interesting coming from a socialist.

Leicester is allegedly the first British city where immigrants now outnumber the indigenous population and still our politicians, as so ably demonstrated by Mr Brown in Rochdale will not listen to what is being said.

There are aspects I love about Leicester's diversity. I love going down the Melton Road and eating at the Indian vegetarian restaurants there, especially Bobby's. Diwali celebration in that area is something quite spectacular and worth experiencing. I have never felt overly vulnerable in that area and I'm happy to park in side streets to walk to Bobby's.

Then there is Highfield, where entering the area it feels like you step across an invisible border into Pakistan. I find it quite alarming to see small children, who look about 5 years old, covered from head to toe, with only the eyes showing. Highfield is an area where women should not walk around on their own at night and if driving through, keep all the car doors locked: a friend who actually lives in Highfield had a man trying to get into her car when she stopped at traffic lights. In Highfield, Somali and Pakistani gangs are at war over the drugs trade and prostitution.

My daughter's partner works at a school in Leicester where the student population is over 70% Muslim and over 80% Asian in total. Muslim girls are bullied for looking "too Christian." Many Muslim families have more than one child in the same school year, their birth dates being 9/10 months apart. My daughter's partner is what I call a "rampant socialist," but I heard him recently saying about the Muslim families, "They're breeding like rabbits." He also says that Muslim girls are disappearing from his school at an alarming rate and being taken to Pakistan for arranged marriages and no one is taking action. A notice went up in the staff room that whistle blowers would be sacked! There's more, but I daren't mention certain things even on a message board.

Things are happening in certain parts of Leicester which should have our politicians really worried. I emailed Ed Balls about a few things several weeks ago: no reply!

What you say is 100% true Anna, by ignoring what is happening here in our inner cities our politicians are leaving, if it is not already to late, a potential for disaster for future generations.