AEC                   The Immigration crisis

Today is Friday 19 May 2006.  Last night I listened to the BBC2 Newsnight Programme.  The topic was immigration on a global scale.  The USA is having a problem, mainly with Mexican immigrants, Spain and Italy is having a similar problem with North African immigrants, and Britain is having a problem with all sort of countries (a lot from the Black Commonwealth).  South Africa and Australia are in the firing line too.

I Britain we don't look upon South Africa as a country  that people would flock to.  But in this case, Robert Mugabe seems to be trying to destroy his own country and those people who can are flocking across the border.  As a pointer to the state of the country, Zimbabwe currently has an annual inflation rate of one thousand percent.  It doesn't require a financial wizard to see the problems that must be causing.

On the home front in the USA it seems that illegal immigration is beginning to rise above Iraq as a domestic political hot potato.

The BBC made the point that I had thought of, the English-speaking countries are the prime targets for immigrants as our language is The International Language that is taught in most progressive countries.  And even in states like Zimbabwe too.

If I were to want to flee my own country of birth because conditions were so bad at home, I'd aim for a place whose language I could speak.  English is an easy language to get-by with.  It becomes more and more difficult as one progresses to higher levels of sophistication.  But if all you want to say is "please help me", it is not very difficult.

Now to address the hard bit.  Do we let all those clamouring at the border into the country.  Of course not!.  If you are in a fully-laden lifeboat, do you let more and more unfortunate souls who are in the sea, clamber aboard and sink the boat, or do you beat those that try to clamber up the side, over the head with an oar.  I'm afraid it's as simple as that.

But I do think there is a way out.  It will have to be tough, but I can see two possible options, and I don't hold out much chance of the first one working.

1    The USA to announce to the United Nations that the developed world is going to have to effectively re-colonise the third world and force the proper running of their governments.  My expectation is that China and Russia would veto that proposal.  They are not being swamped like the West is, and a bit of trouble to the West would make them feel good.  

2    The USA and Britain (together with the the EU) make a unilateral declaration that they are going to do what I suggested above.  They would also declare that any attempted illegal immigration in the future would be very likely to end in the demise of the attempting illegal person.

Items 1 and 2 above are more or less the same.  What would stop the illegals from trying again and again.  I'll tell you.  If, for instance TV news showed a few cases of border patrols machine-gunning a group attempting to cross the border. news would soon get round.  Or you can be like the do-gooders and allow the whole world's population to simply swamp the country they want to sponge from.

Civilisation is knowing when to be gentle and caring, AND knowing when you have to be ruthless.  In the operating theatre, a surgeon presented with a patient with a gangrene leg, will amputate it.  It is not a gentle action, it is an essential action to save the patient's life.  The situation is getting close to that simile.  I have not mentioned about the probable violence that indigenous people will resort to if they become too overburdened with incomers.  That prophet Enoch Powell was given the sack by Edward Heath for stating his views on the problem a few years back.  Is it a coincidence that Ted Heath died when the subject of illegal immigration became a live issue in Britain?