Politics: Migration
As common stewards of a shared world, we bear a responsibility to preserve and enhance its bounties for ourselves, for each other and for future generations.
Work and Labour
- “I'd love to work, but I'm not allowed” - BBC - The author has been personally acquainted with many people in this position - asylum seekers who can't work (because of a stupid law) but want to earn their own money, pay tax and contribute to the society they live in. Instead the government forces them to live on other peoples money, and sometimes imprisons them and forces them to spend ALL their time doing nothing but justify their existence and fight for their freedom. It really is dehumanising...
The truth of the matter is that even in the deepest crisis, there is a limitless supply of meaningful work for us to do. Consider that:
- As the national/ world population grows, so grows the amount of work required to service that population with sanitation, education, healthcare etc.
- The deeper the crisis, the more work needs to be done to resolve it.
- As a race, we have many unmet needs and many unresolved problems. For example:
- Children and other vulnerable people with tears unwiped from their eyes.
- Land left fallow, devoid of productivity, decoration or biodiversity.
- Disease uncured and unprevented, with no effective means of vaccination.
- Education that is never completed, so long as we may live.
- Corners of the universe, and principles of the physical world around us, left unexplored.
- Even when others do not have the confidence to employ us, we may find the confidence to employ ourselves.
Of course, it's not so simple in practise to resolve these problems as merely to recognise them. Something must be done to preserve our individual liberties and protect our society for becoming a part of the turf for rival Somali warlords/ gangs who might come here pretending to be “asylum seekers”. We don't want our streets to become their battle-ground, or the latest outpost of tribal Pakistani politics. And we don't want economic migration by people who don't believe in our way of life, and who don't support the freedoms our ancestors fought, bled and died for us to have... Why should those people who don't believe in the societal freedoms that give us our economic edge, who will never sacrifice anything to preserve these hard-won rights; benefit from the positive economic environment that results from these same freedoms?
How might the balance be struck between allowing into our country the people who shouldn't be here, and turning away people who value our culture whom ought to protect?
Further issues to consider:
- How can we arrange diplomatic and military affairs to enable people to return to peaceful native homelands? Should we get immigrants to sign a contract committing to return once certain measurable standards of human rights are implemented in their home country? What about their children?
- How can we prevent people from sending British money to the Taleban, MEND, FARC or the Tamil Tigers? How might we best educate naive people who donate to “charities” that are actually a fund-raising front for terror groups?
- How can we mitigate the kind of economic migration that destablises countries and suppresses development, e.g. by medical doctors who travel to rich countries to work in virtual slave-labour for a pittance that they send home for their family to buy a mansion (and to employ other folks in their home country as servants etc., who might otherwise have developed in some more generally beneficial profession?)
- Should the economic playing-field be levelled? Should currency exchange-rates and spending-power be equalised somehow? Would such a move provide an incentive or a disincentive for political development and equitable distribution of the wealth? To what extent is it within the power of Western nations to equalize spending-power with poorer countries without depriving their own people of the economic power to meet their needs? To what extent would this help resolve the problems associated with migration?
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