Open borders

[cromwell]

I think we are at the front end of a massive movement of people. The overpopulation in Africa, made worse by climate change and wars is driving people to illegally move to Europe. The thing is, because of the scale of the overpopulation, it is going to get worse as time goes on; it can't not do. More people make even more people.

Meanwhile, there is an idea growing among the political classes that open borders is a wonderful idea.

Sometimes I just want to put my head in my hands, I really do. At a time when the future looks like it means that robots will take millions of jobs, these morons in Parliament think it's a great idea to let millions upon millions just walk into the country. Where will they live? How will they get their living? How many more hospitals, schools, GP surgeries etc will we need? How will we pay for all this? It is madness, pure and simple.

[manxie]

This is the main reason I had to support leaving the EU it was your thoughts exactly.

The whole system would be overloaded unless the UK which is honestly an small island compared to the rest of the worlds countries brings in real and solid border control.

There should also be a fair and tolerant view towards all the current workers from the EU already settled here and in the EU.

My thoughts would be to add the possibility of dual citizenship between the UK and the EU countries for their permenant residents not for those of refugee status, unless something is done to stem the flow of people from other countries to both the EU and UK your predictions will all become reality.

Don't get me wrong I do admire those who wish to better themselves but should they not try and do it in the countries they are leaving??

To my knowledge most of the african continent has great mineral reserves and other viable assets and above all land that could be managed better to provide food for their populations.

As for those leaving the middle east I do think all the VERY wealthy arab countries should come together settle their traditional differences and provide a stable situation in all the middle east countries share the wealth they all have to help the countries with less to become better off.

Sadly most of the "civilised" developed countries like to sell arms and weapons to perpetuate these countries with differences to continue their inter tribal wars,.......This is the main cause of all the current refugee problems in the EU and UK at present.

Maybe a step outside the current box of political thinking is needed and many changes made both here and worldwide by the many other vast countries like China, Russia, South America, Canada, Australia, and the USA, all these coutries are huge and by comparison to the UK have the capacity to provide work and land and incomes for those less well off.

One other option it that all countries in the world give more aid and trade and technical knowledge to help those who are much more in need.

It would also help if all the conflicts around these places was brought to an end by intervention and diplomatic efforts, by saying that I don't mean the same methods as taken in Lybia and Iraq which we are also now paying a price for all due to a lack of foresight.

Manxie xx

[Suff]

To my knowledge most of the african continent has great mineral reserves and other viable assets and above all land that could be managed better to provide food for their populations.

Yep and to my knowledge almost all of them have either a dictator or a totally corrupt government in power and those which have dictators have totally corrupt underlings.

It was not a mistake when one of the senior African government officials stated that Africa was better run under the UK.

As for those leaving the middle east I do think all the VERY wealthy arab countries should come together settle their traditional differences and provide a stable situation in all the middle east countries share the wealth they all have to help the countries with less to become better off.

The problem is that the VERY wealthy Arab countries are essentially monarchies or dictatorships. The second it even looks like moving to democracy, the religious factions take over and wars begin. The main tenet in the Middle East is intolerance. The best thing to do with them is close the borders, throw the press out and let them get on with it till they have come to a resolution. Then we can either negotiate with the religious autocracy or secular dictatorship which emerges.

Of course this won't happen so we have some few hundred years of rolling disaster until something finally happens to solve it. Probably Climate Change.

Climate Change will, eventually, put such pressures on borders that wars will become commonplace. If we want to survive, now that we've failed to curb Climate Change, we have to learn how to protect ourselves and that is going to start with strong borders.

We have nearly 11 million people not working. Of which some 6 million could be working. Our challenge is to get our own people to work and stop filling the country up with others who are very grateful for the money but very transient in nature.

[AliasAggers]

In my opinion, most of the African countries who are now having such awful problems,
would have been much better off if they had remained colonies of European countries.

[Workingman]

We, the UK, do not have open borders. When will it sink in?

We can stop migrants from anywhere in the world outside of the EU entering the country, now, this minute. There is not a thing in International Law to stop us. When it comes to those from the EU we can also stop them entering, en masse, using existing EU laws, get that, EU laws. Other EU countries apply those laws, we do not.

So, ask yourselves why? If us 'ordinary' people do not want them, then who does? Who lobbies to let them in. Who allows them in?

And if anyone thinks things will change greatly after Brexit: think again.

[TheOstrich]

You're perfectly correct, WM, and we could do a lot more to make our borders less open deterring people we don't want. Beef up the border control workforce; visas required for entry into the country; immediate deportation of undesirables. Remember the hoops you had to jump through back in the 1970's to get a visa to visit the USA? I don't know what it's like now. Currently EU citizens have unencumbered visa-less entry; if there was a will, this could be changed after Brexit - and that is not aimed at those who want to work and contribute, but those who palpably don't, and come here merely to sponge benefits.

But as you say, will there be a will? Globalisation and international business may be a blessing to some, but they are also in many ways a curse. All the talk of an "outward-looking UK" after Brexit concerns me. I think there's a huge danger we'll just be replacing Europeans with South-East Asians and Chinese .... We must get back control of our infrastructure and our industry from global corporations.

[Suff]

if there was a will, this could be changed after Brexit

This is very tue and if you read the Labour manifesto very carefully and then go back to the statements of Juncker and Tusk, then Labour want to keep our borders open to the EU post Brexit. If you follow the currency then you will see there is a clear path, when Labour climbs in the polls the £ declines. Labour are within 5 points now and it takes 6 points for the Tories to win because of Blair and Brown's boundary changes, which May did not wait for completion in before going to election. A significant risk. This injects significant uncertainty into the Brexit negotiations and the £ has dropped like a stone. Don't listen to the 0.2% growth stuff the press is presenting, it is almost entirely about the strength of Labour and their stance on Brexit.

We must get back control of our infrastructure and our industry from global corporations.

Well as Global corporations approach valuations which are larger than the UK GDP, that's going to be quite difficult. The only way we're really going to do that is to hugely increase the UK GDP and to do that we need to exit the EU cleanly because every time we try to do that the EU blocks us.

[cromwell]

But as you say, will there be a will? Globalisation and international business may be a blessing to some, but they are also in many ways a curse. All the talk of an "outward-looking UK" after Brexit concerns me. I think there's a huge danger we'll just be replacing Europeans with South-East Asians and Chinese .... We must get back control of our infrastructure and our industry from global corporations.

I agree with all that Os, and would go further. We need to take control of our politicians back from global corporations. It was very noticable that Nissan put a marker down, saying that borders should not be an obstacle to the movement of goods, or words to that effect.

All our mainstream parties are edging towards open borders, they just daren't say it quite yet.

It would be an unmitigated disaster for us. Who wants to go to some poor third world hell hole? Nobody. Who wants to come to a rich country where you will be fed, housed and given money? A hell of a lot more people!

There are a lot more poor people and poor countries in the world than there are rich ones. Open borders would just see the rich countries overwhelmed by a never ending tidal wave of the poor.

[Suff]

[quote="cromwell"]We need to take control of our politicians back from global corporations.quote]

Good luck with that. Now they can't expense exorbitant sums, they need to get their "slush money" from somewhere...

[Workingman]

Quite!

And they sell it to us on the back of the claim from businesses that they need to have access to the brightest and most talented people the world can offer. Fine! No problem! The sad fact is that due to the dumbing down of education there are sectors within the economy which need the brightest and most talented from overseas. The question then has to be : "How many?"

If the brightest and most talented made up just 1% of the workforce we would need 320,000 of them. That is not far off the figure for migrants as things stand, but it is a false figure.

Only about 10% of the total workforce falls into the 'brightest and most talented' category, 3,200,000 or so, and 90% of them are British. That leaves a shortfall of around 32,000, which we could stretch to 40,000 to keep things simple.

40,000 is manageable, and in many different ways. One way, if there really, really is a dearth of the brightest and most talented people, would be to allow them in as expatriate workers paid for by the businesses that say they are so desperate for these workers - a win-win..