It's a highly highly emotive issue
and although I think there is a problem with immigration, I think the basic problem is with the welfare system not the immigrants.

We have to be aware of human rights. It really is as simple as that sometimes. Asylum-seekers sometimes have faced horrors back in their home-countries. Yes there are the liars and the spongers, but I rather feel that the old maxim of 'I'd rather let one hundred guilty men go free, than put to death one innocent' applies in this case. We can't turn away all and sundry just because we suspect some of them might not be what they seem. Yes that may make me seem like a 'liberal' (though I take that more as a badge of honour than an insult) but I think we have to be aware that xenophobia is not a good emotion to have.

Perhaps what we need to do is severely cut back on the welfare system or restrict it only to people born here, while at the same time relaxing working laws for non-citizens, and promoting integration.
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Mon 5 Apr 2010, 15:30, 1 reply)

Racists!
What worries me more than anything is that the point of view in the initial post is an increasingly common one - held by people that most others would consider otherwise entirely unremarkable.

In my opinion this view definitely ain't racism, but for f**kwits it's a short hop, skip and jump there.

What doesn't help is the automatic hue and cry of shouting `Racist!' at anyone who expresses a view on immigration and the whole thing. Do that and those people will dismiss you as a liberal facist (and in my opinion sometimes quite rightly) who preaches tolerance for everyone and their views...except if you believe that or even that.

To quote George Orwell "At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is “not done”… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."

Personally, I would allow the BNP party political broadcasts. I've give Nick Griffin a chance to appear on Question Time without bothering to make it a big deal. And when he and them slips up, treat them in the same way you treat any other twunts who spout bollocks in the media.

Shouting louder than someone else - or screaming `Racist!' at them does NOT win the argument. Showing their arguments to be flawed does.
(Audax Victor, Mon 5 Apr 2010, 15:48, closed)

Man Speaks Sense In B3ta Shocker!!!

( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Mon 5 Apr 2010, 16:04, closed)

Which is what I hope came across in my post
that I'm not racist (I despise racists) but that I think there needs to be an open and genuine debate on the welfare system rather than necessarily immigration
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Mon 5 Apr 2010, 16:07, closed)