On British news all I seem to be hearing about are the effects of the (and I grit my teeth as I type this because of its overuse) … economic downturn … when applied to the middle class who (Boo-hoo!) can’t afford to pay their credit card debt or buy a new 4 bedroom house with fitted kitchen and 2 reception rooms. [see the Times Money Problem Page or The Mirror’s Money Advice page – the Mirror is being particularly ridiculous as its demographic shows the largest percent of readers to be poor]
I, however, don’t live in the world of new cars and credit reports. I’m pretty much at the bottom of the UK financial barrel. So, hands-up who wants to know what going on at this level? Well it’s a bit of a different story.
It all seems to be talk about immigration, when you go into the pubs and on the streets. I’m very concerned. It is now at least a monthly occurrence – getting caught up in an hour long argument with someone who I’ve always thought was a good and decent person, over foreigners – because I can’t let people think as negatively as they are now. See the following stories, some of which were presented to me in anger, others in desperation:
I’ve been on the waiting list for a council house for over two years. I sort-of live in a small 3-bedroom house that is what they call “overcrowded” i.e. there are 6 people living there including a baby who will soon be a toddler. I say sort-of because I’m actually homeless, staying with friends. I only stay at my family house as a last resort. Round the corner there is a whole street of council houses reserved for foreigners. How am I supposed to feel?
I’ll explain this. The waiting list for housing in our town, like most, works on a priority system. Those who are pregnant, disabled, or in a “high risk” group (which does not include those who are homeless) get houses first. Then comes everybody else based on a first-come, first-served basis, regardless of whether or not they are already housed. I don’t know if asylum seekers are included in the high risk group, but those who have been in contact with the service and told that the waiting time for a house is currently 5 years certainly believe they are second-class citizens.
I’m out of work because I was denied a decent education. Nobody will employ me because there’s always someone more qualified than me. I’m trying to get on courses but there is no funding available and limited spaces. Asylum seekers come here, get given a house, benefits, and training for work! Why am I less important?
The jobcentre is where the unemployed in the UK go, once a fortnight, to prove to somebody sat behind a desk that they’ve been looking for work. Technically, the “advisors” (which would probably be more suitably called “officers”), are supposed to help you look for a job, and find training. In practise, they challenge you to show that you deserve your measly £47 a week. “So what have you done to look for a job?” Then they sign your dole-book and send you away. If you have been on benefits for a long time, you are offered a “course” called New Deal. It is supposed to increase your employability through developing key skills like using a computer. A lot of my close friends have been on this 5-days-a-week course and have reported that either the teacher hasn’t shown up, they watched movies with the teacher all day, or just continued their job search. No new skills are being learned – these people are just being kept off the street during the day and being paid no more than their usual £47 a week.
It’s all them bloody immigrants! They get everything! I can’t afford my rent because the b******s have stopped my benefits and I can’t afford clothes that fit my growing child. Meanwhile some f****** p*ki is in the council house that I deserve, living it up and getting everything he needs from the government.
Shocking language – but not uncommon. This person is not fit to work on a permanent contract because of bronchitis, which leaves her bedridden for the cold months (i.e. most of the year). When her son turned 13 she no longer qualified for income support which allowed her to stay at home to look after him. Her incapacity application was refused because she can work in summer. In debt with rent, council tax and loans companies, it’s no wonder she is lashing out for somebody to blame.
How unfortunate that everybody seems to blame the wrong party. These people, at the core, are good people who are generous and hardworking. It’s easy to brand them racist and maybe some of them are – but where I live we have a strong Asian community, and it’s hard to find anybody who doesn’t have friends or family from a different ethnic background.
So these words – foreigners, immigrants and asylum seekers – can’t mean real people can they? Is everyone referring to some larger entity?
So let’s see where the real blame lies. Who is in charge of the jobcentre? Who is in charge of housing? Benefits? Tax? Education funding? Could it be?
So I desperately try to ask these questions to the disenchanted lower classes. Problem is, they don’t read the news, vote or care. Canvassers don’t bother with council estates because they contain a high percentage of people who aren’t on the electoral register [statistics.gov.uk seems to be unavailable at the moment – will provide edit asap]. Newspapers that “cater” for the poor include The Sun (boobs and the armed services), The Mirror (celebs and sport), News of the World (celebs! Boobs!) and The People (celebs, celebs, celebs…). Dare I say that these publications might lead stories that encourage the idea of the British person being swindled by the foreigns? (Not purposefully, of course..).
Meanwhile, it’s the rich person’s fault that none of us have any housing because they can’t afford the mortgage, and the poor people’s fault that none of us can get any credit because they’re lazy and leeching off the system!!! Oh and watch out for young people with knives, dealers selling drugs to your children and nearby smokers who are destroying their tiny lungs.
Anyway. The Divide and Conquer strategy seems to be working a charm here. Poor vs. Rich, White vs. Brown, Old vs. Young, Smokers vs. Non-Smokers, Drug-Users vs. Straight-edge… Have I missed any? Everybody hates each other so much that we can’t work together towards sorting it out.
I’d very much like to know how the ‘salt of the earth’ are approaching similar situations in other countries – so please do comment! I was reading this in the EUObserver about France’s immigration problem and the vox pops seemed to echo what I’m hearing here in the UK.
(25 votes, average: 4.56 out of 5)
Loading ...
This all reminds me of the “Dey took our jerbs!” South Park episode…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goobacks
dey took our jerbbbsss!
I agree on most post. The jocentre in england is painfully rubbish, and does little at all to actualy help people.
I’ve heard too much about the immigrant issue, whenever someone brings it up i just agree whilst stabbing them in the eyes in my head.
You can’t usually change any opinions with those kind of people, so the arguement is more or less just a waste when all they are spouting is racist garbage.
That’s exactly what I kept thinking when I was writing this haha, couldn’t get it out of my head!
Scott, I know what you mean about it being a waste of time but if I can make just a handful of people see that it’s not that asylum seekers want to take anything from us, then I’ll feel like I did something.
Is it ironic that it’s probably the fault of the kind of people that are complaining? Because they aren’t doing anything about it? Because they aren’t focusing on the illness, just the symptoms!
I thought it was a maturity thing that when you got older you realised that just shouting statements and using obscene language won’t win you an argument but sadly as I get older I realise that the majority of the population still expect people to listen when they won’t listen themselves. I don’t care if people like that have a valid opinion, i just switch off and lose all respect for them! I really value your opinions Helena.
I know
I am really saddened by it all. Thanks Olivia.
Although it must be understood that the people who provided the statements are in hopeless situations and we have to empathise. I have been in the same kind of place and it’s very easy to become angry at people who’s fault it isn’t (e.g. the receptionist at a council building - I’m guilty of this kind of thing and I think it’s just as bad as blaming it on asylum seekers).
… woried about the perfect score so far hahaha come on guys I’m sure it’s not 5-star stuff!
Helena Is right to be perfectly honest everyone is to blame because im currently out of a job and searching everyday and i dont blame anyone but myself for not trying hard enough. everyone should just try and get along with eachother instead or pressing our moral views in other peoples face
It may not be perfect, but it’s pretty good! Another fact you could remind the complainers of is that there are millions of British people living and working in scores of other countries all over the world. In fact hundreds of thousands have retired to France and Spain where they take advantage of better health services and lower taxes. So if Briton’s have the freedom to travel and live abroad, it works the other way too, doesn’t it?
In Ireland we are reminded that miliions of Irish emigrated to Britain, the USA and other parts of the world when there were no jobs or opportunities at home. So we can hardly complain when Eastern Europeans come to live and work here as they did in large numbers (10% of total workforce) during the Celtic Tiger years.
Now that our economy is in free fall and thousands are losing their jobs we have to remember that these same Eastern Europeans contributed a great deal to our economy in the good times, and are now as entitled to our social benefits as anyone else.
Yes Frank I try to say the same thing if the issue comes up - but its actually asylum seekers that the blame is placed on - because they are claiming benefits and social housing.
It’s such a multi-sided argument that however much sense I make, people will still hold onto their beliefs about asylum seekers
I Finland the discussion about immigrants has came louder recently. Today in internet there is many hard line facebook groups which officially are making “critical discussion” on immigration but in fact have racist attitude (one group has a photo about Finn pointing you with machine gun and the slogan is “let us help our Somali brothers return to Somalia). So the debate is concentrated mainly to colored people, white Europeans mostly are welcome or better to say tolerated if they are not Russians (taking our men and land),Turks (taking our women)or gypsies from Romania (begging aggressively on our streets).
The other line of Finnish discussion is “russophobia”. Earlier the problem seemed to be that Finnish men found beautiful young girls from Russia, had them as mistress in Russia or brought them to Finland for marriage. When Russians started to get wealth Finns started to be worried that they are buying all the good lakeside land for their second home in Finland. Today some Finns are complaining that Russian businessmen are buying land near communication link masts so that this could be thread to Finnish defense (no joke, they discuss this even in Finnish Parliament).
Before economical crisis immigration related to work was widely accepted, who else would do heavy jobs for elderly population. Now when job cuts are everyday no-news the attitude is changing more reserved. The whole time of course there has been arguments that immigrants - in this case mostly non-white - can have better social benefits than native Finns.
One part of polemic as also been the development policy. There has been more demands that Finnish development Aid should bring more benefits to Finnish export industry. Also there has been proposals that the costs of Finnish participation to civil crisis management missions should be taken from these development funds.
So here some highlights from the country which probably has one of the lowest number of immigrants in EU.
Excellent post, Helena.
Foreign labourers are definitely an issue all around Europe, but asylum seekers tend to be a problem either in border states, like Cyprus or Malta, or in former imperial metropolies. The UK gets masses of asylum seekers because of its guilt over the British Empire, making immigration easy for people from their former colonies. Same with France and North Africa. I imagine the UK suffers particularly through a combination of factors - an extensive welfare system that allows people to survive (however miserably) on benefits, traditional housing patterns mixed with a very high population density… of course, as a New European free-market fanboy I’m strongly tempted to write off the issue on too much socialism: get rid of long-term unemployment benefits and the problem will eventually sort itself out.
So are there any UK MEPs from the BNP or other extremist parties? It seems like there’s a ripe audience for them.
Great story Helena, and great contributions from Ari and Andrei. I think it is important that we keep the issues of economic migrations - free movement of labour (eventually!) within the EU, and Political asylum, which is a system which was originally supposed to protect foreign democratic or friendly leaders from persecution in their own countries.
In Ireland we currently have a high profile Asylum case where a Nigeria women claims Asylum on the basis that her daughters would be at risk of female circumcision if she were forced to return to Nigeria.
Female circumcision is a terrible crime against humanity, in my view, but it is widely practices in Muslem countries, and if we allowed all women in those countries to claim political asylum in Ireland we wouldn’t have any room or jobs left for our own population!
So the question is whether it would not be a better policy to seek to make female circumcision (or genital mutilation) illegal under international law and to educate people in other countries to accept this point of view. Would that not create a greater good for a greater number.
That was the Nigerian Asylum seeker in Ireland would not have to live separately from her husband and son (in Nigeria) and the whole system of Asylum would not be overburdened with trying to address problems it was never designed to address in the first place.
(For the record, the Nigerian Government denies there is any risk to her daughters, and she has just admitted that documents relating to an elder daughter who allegedly died due to female circumcision were forged).
However we must also keep this whole problem in perspective. In most countries the number of asylum seekers is tiny compared to the degree of legitimate economic migration which is taking place in any case.
whether it would not be a better policy to seek to make female circumcision (or genital mutilation) illegal under international law
It’s a general rule of thumb to not pass laws which you cannot enforce. Remember the Danish cartoons - plenty of countries seem to have problems comprehending freedom of speech, let alone gender equality and protection from gross bodily harm…
@Helena, indeed congrats for the entry
@Frank - my wild guess is that the case of the Nigerian lady is rather isolated in the whole complex surrounding of asylum seekers; at the same time, you cannot argue the case of making female genital mutilation illegal under international - I mean, of course you can and, as an European, there are high chances you would, but at the same time, anybody who has the slighest awareness on international law will confirm that “changing international law”, especially with regard to this practice poses enormous practical issues.
@Helena - perhaps you could point out where the EU and EU policies in general stand in relationship to this whole conversation that’s going on in the media about it. are people/ the media blaming the EU for the issue? or are they not aware of the role the EU could play in this problematic?
Hi Andrei and Corina,
Most “human rights” were wildly impractical and totally unenforceable in many countries when they were first promulgated. They begin by having some moral force only, and then gradually become more and more enforceable in many parts of the world.
Not so long ago the USA still seemed to think it was acceptable to practice torture against many people picked up almost at random or for a bounty in places like Iraq or Afghanistan.
After a while they realised how much damage this did to their international reputation, how much more difficult it made their search for allies, and how much easier it made it for their enemies to recruit more terrorists. Allied to that the torture yielded virtually no useful intelligence and many false leads.
Social change is possible - even in Islamic or under-developed countries - and to suggest otherwise is to suggest that some cultures are incapable of growth or development.
Changes in international law - by the signing of a convention against female genital mutilation by more and more countries - is the best way of moving this process of change forward. Political asylum is not an appropriate process in this case - it merely entrenches current divisions.
Thank you everyone for your well-thought contributions
I feel terrible for the Nigerian lady
It’s such a catch 22, I wouldn’t know where to begin with this case other than to let her stay - but I know others wouldn’t see eye to eye with me.
A common perspective in Britain is that other EU countries should be helping us out more with asylum seekers - but I don’t know enough about the topic to have a viewpoint myself.
@Frank we don’t have any extremist parties in seats in the England regions, but there are a lot of Conservatives. I don’t think that’s the answer though. Benefits are wholly necessary with the education system and job market we currently have. Without the benefits system exactly as it is, I wouldn’t have gone to university, I wouldn’t have my house and I would still be living with my father (which for personal reasons, wouldn’t be a good thing). Even with the system as it is, as a 17 year old girl I was left homeless for a month and then in a bedsit with somebody who stole from me for 5 months. This is what my post was about - our government not looking after us!
OK, again, this will seem harsh, but…
Your government is not meant to be looking after you.
Your government is meant to be providing you with an opportunity to look after yourself, and removing as many obstacles as practically possible. In a more right-wing European country, it might just mean antitrust legislation so utility companies don’t jack up your heating and water bills unreasonably. In more left-wing countries it might mean rent control. But a mentality of expecting the state to provide you with a place to live and money to spend is, to misquote a very good British writer, a reality disfunction.
oh well then lets chuck everyone onto the street? In fact lets throw our our jobless into camps where they can work for scraps?
The only way I have been able to progress to the point where I can look after myself and then go onto improving my quality of life is through the benefits service.
Right now, as I don’t rely on benefits, my rent and utility bills are my biggest setback, financially, but I’m fine.
But as a homeless 17 year old I was completely unemployable. By the time I got my first home, my CV was impeccable for someone in my age group. I haven’t stopped looking for jobs since. I got one job in early 2008 but had to leave it a month later because I was being asked to lift double the legal maximum for a man. In a month I’d developed severe tendon damage and was an inch away from leg braces.
I ask you where I would be without the system.
And what about those who left school with less than A’s like me?
What would your opinion, if implemented, leave our country with?
I am now a taxpayer and I expect the state to provide for people.
Hi Helena,
In a mature and civilised social democracy people are provided with their basic health care, educational, housing and social welfare needs and there health and safety is also protected by employment protection legislation.
These are provided at a cost to the taxpayer, and the degree to which they can be provided is also dependent on the wealth and productivity of the society.
However providing for peoples basic employment, educational and healthcare needs also improves their productivity and the ability of their society to support increasingly advanced forms of industry and the “knowledge economy”.
Thus France, with high social services and low hours of work has a comparable level of wealth and productivity (and a higher quality of life) than the US with much lower social provision and longer hours of work.
So while recipients of social benefits are often stigmatised as “spongers”, such benefits are often also necessary at particular stages of their lives to enable them to become more productive and contributing members of society.
Critics of social systems often criticise them for creating “dependency”, and this can happen particularly if they lead to “poverty traps” where you are better off not working than working. However, few people do not want to be positive working members of society, and more often than not such social supports helps people to get over a rough patch and contribute much more to society at a later stage.
I personally don’t want to live in a society where people don’t get the basic education, healthcare and housing they need. It demeans all of us. Those of us who are well off also managed to earn our wealth because of the social stability which our society provides for us. We also owe it to society that our fellow human beings get the same chance.
I’m glad to hear you got over your rough patch and society is now better off for your contribution and potential.
Thankyou Frank I was hoping I wasn’t the only one! My brother-in-law is having his rough patch at the moment, he has no grades and no experience in a job. But he is a kind individual who wants a job more than anything.
Who can say that our education system hasn’t failed him? The state owes him. There’s no simpler way of putting it.
Those who go to rich high schools with stable funding and good teachers will most often go straight into further education or a job. Those with caring, financially stable parents will do the same.
Everyone else will probably claim benefits at some point.
oh well then lets chuck everyone onto the street?
At some point - yes. State housing is fine as a holdover measure, for people who have lost their homes in natural disasters, foster children who have turned 18, etc. If it’s being used as any form of permanent solution, then yes, chuck them out.
In fact lets throw our our jobless into camps where they can work for scraps?
I don’t want them to work for scraps. I want them to work for a very good wage, as skilled labour, producing value and tax revenue.
But as a homeless 17 year old I was completely unemployable.
I’ll tell you what I did by the time I was 17. I’d sold postcards to tourists on the street. I’d delivered junk mail. I’d spent a lot of time working for very little money to get good at translating. At 18 I went off to university (with tuition provided by the state, because I chose a subject that I had good grades in). I worked all throughout that time, in fact at one point my tax returns would have shown four different employers simultaneously (not to mention odd jobs), ranging from translation and writing menial entertainment blurbs for a small newspaper to running eBay auctions. I am now 24, earning enough to have a mortgage and decent savings. I have never, not once, taken any welfare benefit money (other than short-term sick leave). My parents supported me somewhat in college, but not substantially.
But I was born in the Soviet Union, grew up in a Russian ghetto, and learned to take care of myself in a country where unemployment is not an option. I dare say I had less opportunities initially than you, a citizen of one of the world’s biggest economic powers.
I got one job in early 2008 but had to leave it a month later because I was being asked to lift double the legal maximum for a man.
Now that - that is exactly the sort of case where the government is supposed to step in.
And what about those who left school with less than A’s like me?
School grades are very nearly irrelevant in the real world, and certainly do not correlate directly to marketable skills.
What would your opinion, if implemented, leave our country with?
An industrial base.
more often than not such social supports helps people to get over a rough patch and contribute much more to society at a later stage.
Agreed. I’m actually all for state programs to help people increase their qualifications, and I’m on record as supporting a new labour bill here that increases benefit payouts, at the state’s cost. But there have to be strict limits; the system must be designed so as not to allow poverty traps. This is especially true of countries with significant numbers of economic immigrants: they come in search of a better life, and have low expectations, so the living standards afforded by welfare are seen by them to be sufficient. In theory this gets alleviated with a generation shift, the immigrants’ children being more integrated into society and striving for a better position; but for that you need national unity, and the UK barely has any sense of nationhood at all. Insular groups will severely block social mobility, as we’ve discussed in posts dealing with the Roma. When productivity and income gains are being restricted by politics, the barriers are broken by an application of economic force.
I personally don’t want to live in a society where people don’t get the basic education, healthcare and housing they need.
Neither do I, it’s just that I have a slightly more visceral understanding of what happens when socialism becomes an end, not a means.
Who can say that our education system hasn’t failed him? The state owes him. There’s no simpler way of putting it.
You’re wrong. There’s no simpler way of putting it.
My former boss, who got promoted and is now a corporate executive, has no college degree and no school grades to speak of (he wanted to go back to uni to finish his degree, but found the entry demands had risen and his grades were not good enough for him to be admitted). He’s not the only one.
A good education makes success a lot easier, granted. And yes, education should be universally available. But to say that a student’s bad grades mean that the state has failed him is a fundamental misunderstanding of how a healthy society works - and how a responsible individual works, for that matter.
Make an effort, be smart about your choices, and you will succeed. Don’t, and… well, McDonalds is always hiring.
And how many people like you did it not work out for?
Maybe you are getting at the income disparity? How there are those who swap between minimum wage and benefits, and those who earn a disgusting salary and so can afford to look after the rest of us through taxes?
But what do you suggest - turn our backs on our fellow citizens? There will always be someone out of work who won’t be able to look after themselves. You can’t ignore it and let them starve.
The more in poverty a jobless person gets, the less enthusiastic they are about looking for a job.
What harm is it doing for everyone else anyway? Our local governments seem to have plenty of money to flush down the toilets!
You are a rude narrow-minded man and your comment about my brother-in-law is completely unfounded and downright foolish.
The difference in the quality of teaching from school to school in the North West is not the fault of its pupils. I have experienced the difference firsthand and would have left with D’s and E’s had I stayed at one school.
How dare you accuse him of being lazy and stupid, knowing nothing about his life.
You can spout success stories all you like - you and your former boss were not just driven and smart. You were LUCKY as well. Get over your “I worked hard, why can’t they” bull. Go and tell people in the jobcentre who’s parents were heroin-addicts and who’s teachers told them they had no future, to their faces that they should try harder. Because these people aren’t in short supply and aren’t imaginary, they are my friends and relatives.
There are exceptional people in every walk of life, but most wealth is either inherited, or the consequence of peculiarly fortuitous market or societal conditions.
Nevertheless the degree to which a society can afford social benefits depends on its level of economic development and many African and some asian and Latin American societies can afford few social services or benefits indeed.
Poverty and social deprivation can also be self-reinforcing, leading to crime, addiction, social conflict, corruption, and further economic and social dysfunction. In those situations it can take exceptional skills, integrity and just plain luck to survive.
However poverty and social deprivation can also be hugely destructive to human potential resulting in many people becoming permanently incapable of looking after themselves or functioning in a productive way.
Ultimately it is all about a power struggle between the successful - who already have much of the wealth and power - wanting to keep others in their place and avoid them also enjoying some of the benefits of a successful society. It is easier for them to maintain their position of relative power if the less successful are desperately just trying ton survive and are much more easy to control and manipulate.
Brilliantly said. Now how do we fix it? (opens can of worms)
People are too stuck in arrogance and ego to be willing to realise that many things are circumstantial, they also fail to realise what works for one person does not alwways work for another, but hey, it’s how it is.
Just be thankfull you actualy know what’s right instead of unrealistic statements about stuff you obviously know naught about. You’re making sweeping generalizations that grades often mean that is person is not trying, it is not always the case.
To quote Andrei tuch “OK, again, this will seem harsh, but…
Your government is not meant to be looking after you.
Your government is meant to be providing you with an opportunity to look after yourself, and removing as many obstacles as practically possible. In a more right-wing European country, it might just mean antitrust legislation so utility companies don’t jack up your heating and water bills unreasonably. In more left-wing countries it might mean rent control. But a mentality of expecting the state to provide you with a place to live and money to spend is, to misquote a very good British writer, a reality disfunction.”
Im sorry to disagree with you but due to the current economic state, unemployment in Britain and all over the world is on a steep rise, picture this , a man or woman (whoever is the main income earner for a household) has worked in their job for most of their life and specifically honed their trade/skill, they have small children and then suddenly they lose their job, now you mean to tell me that given the current situation this family should not receive aid ??? To think so is naive and immature , you also contradict yourself with regards to “providing an opertunity to help yourself”, is the benefits system not an adequate example of this ?? The benefits system provides a safety net for thousands of families to ensure minimal poverty in a civilised society. Also you breifly touched upon the topic of further education ,im not going to quote you but i will say how can persons from less fortunate families or even estranged from their families attend further education with lack of funds? How is anybody supposed to better themselves in a country that does not directly support students with financial aid? In a full time course (5 days a week)many students in Britain struggle to make ends meet by not being able to work enough to see them through the week with the two days that are left, even with supplemented benefits, you mean to say that these people that are struggling to better themselves should not receive supplemented benefits ie housing benefit and council tax benefit. You my friend havnt really thought through what you are saying, maybe reconsider what you are saying.
I imagine that Andrei might reply something along the lines of… I fully support giving benefits to those who are trying to better themselves.
So I’ll chip in before it happens: how do you make the decisions? That is what the jobcentre staff do every day. They decide that a person has genuinely tried to better themselves and then pay them.
But that’s where it ends for them.
People with lesser health, capabilities, energy, social networks, intelligence or educational attainment do not have any lesser human rights or social needs. They do, however, have lower economic opportunities.
Those who achieve great wealth do so also through the work of others, through the benefits of a state security system, through legal and regulatory frameworks - e.g. limited liability - and through the preferential use of land or natural resources. All these benefits and privileges also come with responsibilities.
The cooperative combination of these two factors results in cohesive society, democracy and mutual respect the rule of law. Without it we have political authoritarianism, social unrest and economic inefficiency.
Those societies with the greatest inequality often also have authoritarianism or unrest or both. I know which sort of society I want to live in.
In respone to a much earlier post by ari rusila who talked about racist intent within anti imigration groups i say why is racism assumed when we have opinions with regards to people of different races or colours , isnt a society where we can talk about crucial and relevant subjects freely and without this assumption of racist intent a truely tollerant one ? Just to clarify this wasnt a direct dig at ari but a question to everybody.
One aspect of immigration policy discussed in Finland is integration of asylum seekers to Finnish society. There is lot of problems in this sector - not enough language courses, long administrative process before getting status, the cold environment (both social and climate), difficulties to get job etc. And to handle these problems there is never enough money.
Recently I was reading an interesting article which proposed solution same time to first avoid many problems related to Finnish society and second increase the effectiveness of managing bigger amount of asylum seekers.
In Finland the Ministry of Interior has estimated that one asylum seeker cost 57.000 € to state per year. One expert of development policy calculated that if we could help asylum seekers near their country of origin -e.g. neighborhood regions - so with that sum we could help 200 people. If Finland nowadays takes 6.000 asylum seekers per year with this method and the same investment we could help over one million people.
In EU there has been plans to establish camps for illegal immigration just outside EU borders. From my point of view this solution is not so good than concentrate actions near countries of origin. People who have came long way to EU border have many times paid a fortune for their dangerous trip and false papers to traffickers and many times only one from family can go. If the help would be given near families, maybe villages could stay together, wait to return or start new life in environment which is so much as possible similar than place from where they had escaped.
Ari - Surely this proposed method of helping nearer their home country would be a fantastic idea! I mean, from a language and culture point of view as well - regions closer to their homes will have the same or similar language, culture, and they would probably be able to work in the same trade as they did in their home country.
I don’t understand why we are not doing this, it would benefit the asylum seekers no end, wouldn’t it?
Also if you have a link to that article online that would be really interesting for me to read
Thanks Ari
Helena,
article I mentioned was published 15.3.2009 in Finnish main daily Helsingin Sanomat. The link http://www.hs.fi/arkisto/artikkeli/Turvapaikat+l%C3%A4heisist%C3%A4+maista/HS20090315SI1MP01nj1 maybe opens it. Unfortunately the article is only in Finnish.
I think there are scammers at every level- but I think a better place to lay the blame might be with the government.
Their regulation, or lack of it meant we spent our way through the good times and didn’t save and money to fix the roof. And the expenses given to MPs are as much of an abuse of the system as anyone else.
Think Gordon’s the man you’re looking for…
sorry, and was supposed to be *any
Yep, that’s what I was saying.
who did you think I was blaming? hehe
I have no clue why google sent me over to your but I should probably I have been pretty fascinated by the blog content you have pulled together. How many week did it take this many people arriving to your site? I am pretty darn to this interenet thing.
Jodee, Do you mean me as the author of this article or the thinkaboutit.eu project in its entirety?
Thanks for the great post. Ive been keenly following the google anti-trust debate. I think with google now joining the council on foreign relations any anti-trust lawsuits on google are well and truly sunk now.
Making wealth is not a matter of chance or sheer luck but is based on both scientific law and sound financial and business principles.