Immigration in the balance

(N.B. I am The Devil's Kitchen, and I am incredibly pissed off.)

As you know, I do not support what everyone on this blog writes: in particular, I disagree with Martin's piece below, filled, as it is, with rather poor sophistry. Let us take this, for instance:

How is 'a better life' defined? By the ability to earn more money here than in Lithuania?

Or by the right to be slaughtered in a flat in Brechin?

She came to the UK seeking 'a better life'—pity she didn't find it.

Well, if we are going to measure "a better life" by the ability to make more money, it is pretty certain that she did: after all, the detective involved in the case is quoted as saying that the men were...

...blinded by a callous determination to rob her of her hard-earned savings.

If her life was so bad, how on earth did she have savings?

It is, in any case, rather immaterial as to how we define "a better life"; what is important is how she defined a better life and, apparently, she decided that she could have a better life here than in Lithuania.

That she was a victim of a murderer is unlucky, but if we are to follow Martin's reasoning, we should all emigrate to another country just in case we, too, get murdered: the reason that we don't all fuck off to Lithuania, for instance, is because most of us believe—whether erroneously or not—that we have a better life here.

In any debate on immigration, you will hear British people who say that they run businesses, and that they prefer foreign labour because British workers are lazy, greedy, unbiddable, and stupid. These people must be forced to confront the brutal reality of their preferences - that they prefer serfs to employees; and if one serf kills another, well, there's plenty more where they came from. Then it's back to business as usual.

Your prefences helped bring about Jolanta Bledaite's slaughter - Jolanta Bledaite's blood is on your hands, not mine. You are guilty of using serf labour for your own gain. You are guilty. You, not me. You. You did this. You have to live with it. Count your profit now, and remember that you can't take it with you. I don't know if that phrase translates into Lithuanian - Miss Bledaite is no longer alive to tell us. She had hers taken from her under torture.

I fail to see how any employer can be held responsible for Miss Bledaite's murder: she believed that she had a better life here, and presumably her employer thought that she was worth the wages that he was paying her.

That one of her countrymen murdered her is absolutely fucking irrelevant. What if he had murdered her in Lithuania, Martin? Would that be easier for you—out of sight and out of mind? Or would you now be writing an article asking the employers of Lithuanuia to "count your profit now, and remember that you can't take it with you"?

What if Miss Bledaite had been murdered by an Englishman? Would you still be writing this article? Would you still be accusing her employers of murdering her? Do you not think that she had value to her employer? (Oh, and the answer is yes, she did. That is why her employer paid her.)

Or do you perhaps think that her employer should have organised and paid for 24 hour, 7 days a week armed protection for her? What would she have made of that?—do you think that she's like to be followed around everywhere, her every contact scrutinised? I think not.

The people that you should be blaming are the murderers themselves. And if you want to flail around for a secondary scapegoat, then I suggest that you turn to the European Union and the politicians that enact its laws. It is they who have signed away the right to control our borders—yes, even to the extent that we cannot stop those who have committed serious crimes from entering the country.

Because it is that one simple measure that would have stopped this crime: the ability to check on convictions, and stop those with serious crimes in their past from entering this country. Such a simple and, I think most would agree, common sense solution; for all that I am a believer in the free movement of people, even I wouldnot let foreign murderers into this country.

Because, Martin, there is a flip-side to your protectionist policy. Yesterday, a good friend of mine, an American, was told that—because of the new point-based immigration system—she will lose her teaching job at the end of this year because the institution that employs her is unable to justify her employment.

Despite the fact that she has been here for years and wants to stay here, speaks English and is, as far as I can tell, good at her job, she will lose that post because of the government's pandering to idiots like you and the BNP. And because of their dog-whistle policy, she has no chance of getting another job either: so, at the end of this year, with no work-visa (which both she and her employer have paid the British government for) and thus no right to remain, she will be packed off back to the US and be, effectively, barred from living here forever.

And why? She wanted to live here, she has lived here for years, hasn't committed any crime and has supported herself throughout her time here; but because that fucking cunt, Gordon cunting Brown, and his bastard NuLabour bastard cronies have to respond to stupid, protectionist fuckwits, she is out and with no appeal.

(We have, at my company, a South African who is in a similar position, although it is rather easier for our company to justify his employment.)

And because our politicians have signed away the right to control immigration from the EU—resulting in a flood of people who don't speak our language and don't share our culture—in response to the politics of the BNP, they have decided to clamp down and make it almost impossible for those who speak our language and share our Common Law culture to remain here, even though they are supporting themselves and demanding nothing from the British state.

In other words, in order to pander to the EU's crap, NuLabour have decided to make every effort to chuck out and screw over those who have come here from the Commonwealth and the general Anglosphere.

This is why, via A Very British Dude, Hague's idea that we should expand the Commonwealth is slack-balled posturing.

The Commonwealth should take on more members to increase its influence, shadow foreign secretary William Hague has said in a speech in London.

The organisation can act as a "bridge across divides of religion, ethnicity, culture and wealth, to the benefit of common humanity", he added.

Mr Hague also accused Labour of neglecting the Commonwealth.

A Conservative government would give it "unwavering support" as a foreign policy tool, he promised.

That slap-headed cunt is in absolutely no position to do fuck-all about the Commonwealth: we sold our former colleagues and colonies down the fucking river when we joined the EU. If I were a member of the Commonwealth, I would send a letter to that fucking slap-head, telling him that if the Tories wanted to use the Commonwealth as "a foreign policy tool" then they should have given their "unwavering support" in 1972, rather than fucking said countries over—and thus effectively abdicating from Commonwealth leadership—by joining the EU.

So screw you, Hague, you fucking hypocritical cunt. And fucking screw you Gordon, you thrice-cursed, one-eyed Scottish idiot. I loathe you and your disgusting BNP-style "British jobs for British workers". Most of all, I loathe the hypocrisy of you all: you would destroy the jobs of those who want to work, whilst allowing in hordes of people who don't.

And now I shall retire because I am so fucking, ragingly angry that I can barely type. Because what your stance means, Martin, is that people like Bella can have their livelihoods removed, their relationships and friendships ripped apart, and their lives uprooted because you think that one murder means that our borders should be closed.

Fuck you and the fucking politicos: fuck you all.

UPDATE: Bella has elaborated on the position...

In October 2008, the UK Home Office changed its immigration policy vis a vis overseas nationals. They could not, of course, do anything about immigration from within the EU. Previously, visa and work-permit applications were reviewed on a case-by-case basis (with, you understand, the payment of accompanying fees), and under that system, renewing my own work-permit and leave to remain was quite easy. I teach; teaching is a shortage occupation; my criminal record is clean; end of story.

The new system is points-based and extraordinarily complex. My background and qualifications (or lack thereof; see here) do not add up to the requisite number of points. The essential problem comes from my lack of formal teaching qualification, and this has always been a bit of a catch-22: I cannot work without the PGCE, but I cannot afford to do the PGCE unless I work. There are ways around that lack of paper-qualification, which I was going to undertake in the 2009-2010 school year.

Under the old system, while all secondary-education teaching was considered a shortage occupation, my employers did not have to prove that they could not find a British or EU national to employ to do my job. Under the new system, only the teaching of maths and sciences is considered shortage, and I teach neither. If the school wished to continue employing me, it would first have to advertise the position, interview candidates, then prove conclusively that, despite my lack of a PGCE, I am still more qualified than the native candidates. (My having worked in the post for the past two years does not, unfortunately, count toward that proof.)
...

Restrictions on immigration are something that have never particularly appealed to me, a libertarian. I support the free movement of labour, although I realise that on a tiny island like Great Britain, that’s not a terribly good policy. Restrictions may be necessary because space and housing are at a premium. But I cannot support any policy that puts me, and people like me, out of a job. Under the old system, I was a tax-paying asset to the common weal; under the new system, I am a dirty foreigner stealing a British job from a British worker. And yet the only thing that has changed is the system—not me.

And so to keep anti-immigration fucknuts happy, and to compensate for its inability to restrict immigration from EU countries, the British government is going to throw me out of my job and my home, and the British people will give their assent without a murmur.

Our politicians are cunts but so, unfortunately, are very many of the British people. There are 3 million households in the UK in which not one person works: we would be a fuck sight better off if we kept people like Bella and deported those three million households to a fucking rock in the ocean.

Cunts.