Jaw Jaw Jaw

Been arguing here are some bits ...
….migration was in balance until the mid eighties the net inflow then increased to 50,000 a year. Since 1997 British emigration multiplied by four . Net foreign immigration tripled from 107,000 in 1997 to 333,000 in 2007 .It is therefore cobblers to suggest that ”tendencies” under any Conservative Government can be used to demonstrate anything all about the last ten years .

….amongst the Conservatives who wanted ties with the Commonwealth strengthened as a post Empire free trade area was one Enoch Powell. Your logic then would require you to believe had Enoch Powell been running immigration Policy it would have made no difference to the last ten years . ..These are the specific policy measures you feel Enoch Powell would have trundled on with….
Embarkation controls abolished -The Primary Purpose Rule - ended - ( it imposed a requirement that the applicant should show "that the marriage was not entered into primarily to obtain admission to the United Kingdom". Immigration by spouses has increased by 50% since 1997.) ..The number of work permits issued has trebled since 1997. ….Eastern Europe 50,000 migrants could have been expected in the first four years. Only wrong by a factor of ten …
….Globally, the percentage of world population who are international migrants has only increased from 2.5% in 1960 to 3.0 percent in 2005 if you are interested . Without immigration, Germany, Italy and Spain would decline sharply in numbers.

……Mr Blunkett, 2002."I have doubled the number of work permits this year to 150,000. We have opened up new immigration routes ….In other words, there is a massive social as well as economic agenda. But to sell it to the British people and to avoid the fear of change and flux which always creates tension and the danger of racists exploiting it, we need to do that effectively and legally. We need to have integration programmes that work."
Mr Blunkett 2003 that there was "no obvious upper limit" to the number of immigrants who could settle in the UK. This was the period Andrew Neather was talking about …