XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, misc.immigration.usa, sac.politics
XPost: talk.politics.guns

"RKBA! RKBA! NRA! NRA!" <nowomr@protonmail.com> wrote in news:uffoc0$36pgm$6@dont-email.me:

Issue all citizens AR-15 rifles and send them to the border to repel invaders. Any American citizen who refuses to do their duty will be
shot and stacked at the border as a lesson to others.

Since the 1960s it has become quite unfashionable to admit to a desire
to see net immigration reduced. The smear of racism quickly becomes
attached to anyone who is intolerant enough to believe that the
country’s resources are finite and that mass inward migration can only
put more pressure on homes, schools, the NHS and other services.

Such an outlook has been successfully “othered” by the political
establishment over decades, in a similar fashion to the hatchet job that
was carried out on those who voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum:
there are simply some views that should not be given breathing space in
polite company.

Today, as annual net immigration soars to a new record high over
600,000, we will mark an important milestone in the campaign to educate
Britons on what topics they are allowed to be angry about. Yes, the net
number of arrivals on our shores each year is equivalent to the
population of Manchester, but if you think that all that extra diversity
and culture isn’t adequate compensation for more crowded cities, well,
maybe you’re the problem, eh?

In a deliciously counter-intuitive way, Brexit has made our politicians’
job harder when it comes to controlling immigration. Before our
departure from the trade bloc in 2020, ministers of either main party
could point to EU freedom of movement and, entirely justifiably, claim
they had little control over who came to this country (at least from the
EU27).

Having ended freedom of movement, and leaving aside the continuing
problem of illegal immigration on our south coast, the government has at
last all the levers it needs to control our borders. That old promise of
David Cameron’s and Theresa May’s to lower immigration to below 100,000
was pretty much unattainable while we were in the EU; the fact that it
has reached record levels now that we are no longer subject to EU rules
is down to one reason only: deliberate government policy.

We are enduring record high immigration because of the policy choices
this government has made.

There is no one else to blame. Rishi Sunak has a majority of nearly 80
seats; if he wanted to change the immigration rules to bring numbers
down to a sensible level, he could do so. Certainly there would be
economic consequences: immigration brings with it much-needed skills and
tax revenue. So why not say so? Why continue to echo the rhetoric of low immigration while deliberately refusing to use any of the levers that
would achieve that aim? Why not explain to the public that a radical restructuring of our border controls would have an impact on the
economy, on our places of higher education, on our workplaces and
service sector?

Thanks to the chilling effect that prevents opponents of uncontrolled immigration (and what we are experiencing is indeed uncontrolled) from
speaking too loudly about their concerns, criticism of the government
and of these figures will be unnaturally muted today, perhaps even
giving the impression that the general populace isn’t particularly
concerned about them.

Perhaps they’re not. Or perhaps they prefer not to be smeared with the
tiresome label of “racist” and will keep their own counsel until the
next opportunity arrives at which they can express a democratic opinion
about this government.

Meanwhile, Labour seems to be benefiting from its advantageous position
of not being in government, with polls suggesting it is now more trusted
on immigration than the Conservatives. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, gave an excoriating response to the immigration figures in
the Commons today, rightly decrying a situation where foreign workers,
rather than Britons, are routinely used to address skills shortages.

We must wait for a while yet to see whether Labour in government will do
what the Conservatives have refused to do, and use the powers available
to them to reduce migration to a manageable and sustainable level. The
signs, to be fair, are not encouraging. It is not difficult to find
Labour MPs who bemoan the end of EU freedom of movement or who are happy
to sign petitions demanding that even those illegal immigrants guilty of
the most heinous crimes should not be forcibly removed.

But why shouldn’t they get the chance to prove they can do better than
this government? Why shouldn’t they be given a chance to make the hard
choices that the current batch of ministers have avoided? Who knows?
Perhaps one day we’ll even get a government that sets out in plain terms
the trade-offs we as a nation would have to make if we were serious
about reducing net immigration.

That would surely be preferable to a government that demanded all the
necessary levers to control immigration, and then refused to use them.

https://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-trumps-violent-thugs-222600975.html

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