111–120 of 233 posts
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That analogy might work for the Falklands, but with Taiwan it would be more like "a poor family that abused the daughter". Anyway, I dislike analogies for political discourse because they over simplify the issues at hand.
That analogy doesn't work for the Falklands neither, the only people ever living there are British. There never was a native nor an Argentinian population there.
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It sounds perfectly reasonable. Barring exceptional circumstances, presumably the employer takes the decision to recruit externally for cost-cutting reasons; it's important then that the hidden costs of healthcare etc are not passed on to the tax payer.
But both the employer and employee are tax payers! There's nothing uniquely expensive about taxpaying employees that happen to be born overseas. I'm guessing the prepaid contribution refers to the "NHS surcharge": https://www.freemovement.org.uk/what-is-the-immigration-heal... (while Americans are probably going "hey that looks cheap at £624 a year compared to my insurance", note that it's not insurance and you still…
Though it is kind of dumb.
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Falklands is much closer to Argentina though - they should belong to Argentina by right of proximity.
There's no such right and even if there was, it would lead to perverse situations such as Britain getting to claim Calais which is closer to London than Paris (94 miles versus 147!).
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Falklands is much closer to Argentina though - they should belong to Argentina by right of proximity.
France is closer to the UK than the Falklands are to Argentina (35km vs almost 500km). Should France belong to the UK?
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But both the employer and employee are tax payers! There's nothing uniquely expensive about taxpaying employees that happen to be born overseas. I'm guessing the prepaid contribution refers to the "NHS surcharge": https://www.freemovement.org.uk/what-is-the-immigration-heal... (while Americans are probably going "hey that looks cheap at £624 a year compared to my insurance", note that it's not insurance and you still…
Without commenting on the policy I think you're missing the maths. I can earn $x here or $(x - y) to be in the uk. In the UK I get healthcare on the NHS. I move. I quit / am fired / co goes (creatively?) broke. And I keep the healthcare on the NHS and have time to start a family before deportation etc. Think about large values of y or indeed kickbacks. Does the firm really want /me/? Or do they just want cash which t…
If they all go to the same destination, sure, but there’s no reason to even expect that collective behaviour and plenty of examples to doubt it (most people go short distances, e.g. 80% of the Syrian refugees went to the countries that share a land border with Syria).
Though I absolutely agree with the point that immigration is super-emotive even at the best of times, and likewise I don’t have a good answer to the troubles which cause a need for asylum (very separate in nature from other causes of migration but often blurred together politically) — best I’ve got is seeing that things are getting less bad, so more of what’s currently happening in aggregate is probably good even though we can clearly see specific examples of places and groups where that’s not good enough, like Afghanistan, Syria, Darfur, the Uyghurs, the Rohingya, and the Yazidi.
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> queue jumping There is no queue. I mean that: there is no requirement for cases to be processed in any kind of order, if at all, and nor is there a quota (except in the minds of Home Office managers). > I get an end run around the immigration system to get healthcare Hardly anyone does this, or at least there's no evidence of this. If you have money which you wish to trade for healthcare, there are usually better w…
> There is no queue. Any country that has a number of people who would like to immigrate of whom it will not accept all and will chose who to reject has a queue. How that queue is implemented, orderly, disorderly, corruptly, unjustly, ridiculously, incompetently or at various times all of the above. Some get in, some don't, it's a queue. It may not be a fantasy of an orderly queue where everyone is served in order in…
You cannot sensibly call this a "queue". No programmer would accept "random order" when they expected "in order".
Moreover, decisions are independent. The number of people already accepted is not a factor in individual immigration decisions! Someone else getting accepted cannot affect the outcome of your own decision.
> You will reject people whose stories break your heart. You don't get a choice about that.
Why? Who is "you" here? Who's holding a gun to "your" head? You absolutely do get a choice, and moreover if you reject someone who is subsequently killed in the way they warned you about then you, personally - the immigration agent responsible for the decision - are an accomplice in their death.
It's just that this is more apparent when it's the people clearing the runway for the last C130 out of Kabul at gunpoint than when someone's doing it with a pen.
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But both the employer and employee are tax payers! There's nothing uniquely expensive about taxpaying employees that happen to be born overseas. I'm guessing the prepaid contribution refers to the "NHS surcharge": https://www.freemovement.org.uk/what-is-the-immigration-heal... (while Americans are probably going "hey that looks cheap at £624 a year compared to my insurance", note that it's not insurance and you still…
I think the difference is that as a UK citizen, I have been paying into the social security and health system for my entire working life, as opposed to the brief time someone was here to work. Though it is kind of dumb.
(Obviously not, that's nonsense, but that's the conclusion that would follow from the false premise of predicating healthcare on length of payments. It's pensions that are dependent on payins of National Insurance.)
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I’m from in the US and am naïve, but what is bizarre about that system?
The US is actually bizarre, anyone born in the US automatically gets US nationality. This leads to amusing birth tourism. Iirc it is the only country that does this.
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As colonial power, they can issue passports for oversea citizens, it does not mean anything. When returning to China, citizens are given a choice to take whichever passport they choose. To fix a colonial problem, you need to have the power to confront them, British left Hong Kong, and Portuguese left Macau not because those details, because they couldn't hold on to it As in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh, British still owns…
For clarity (1) "As colonial power, they can issue passports for oversea citizens, it does not mean anything." -- French folks living in any Overseas Territories are French-French, EU citizens free to live anywhere in the EU or Metropolitan France. This is not true of for instance folks born in British Overseas Territories. So YMMV. Depends on the nation. Your take is more a reflection of UK policy than colonial poli…
My young friend went on contract for a year, doing fishery research. After a few months they said "We aren't going to pay you any more. You can't leave because the boat won't come back until {whenever}. And if you say anything, we won't give you the recommendation you need as a young researcher doing a PhD."
She had to stay for months working for nothing. It's slavery, and they know it, and that's how it works.
Don't go.