immigration and deportation

In the US it's a Day without Immigrants - here, I suspect some people would like to have just such a day in order to get rid of some immigrants that aren't really contributing to the advancement of UK society.

The UK Labour government is having its own immigration problems. It's standard practice that immigrants who break the law serve their time in a country where they were committed, and then when the sentence is up - they are politely (or perhaps not so politely) shown the door. But due to administrative failures, nearly 1000 immigrants were released back into the UK community, largely untracked. The current Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, is ultimately responsible for this mess and has been making a right hash of it for many months. He's not resigning yet, but the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and many Labour MPs are saying his position is untenable.

What's been interesting to me is that a number of English commentators have been saying that the reaction of the Lib Dems and Conservatives is xenophobic, racist even - and that immigrants are no more likely to reoffend than a UK citizen.

I'm not sure I believe that. Released prisoners with close ties to their local communities are less likely to reoffend. Criminally minded, rootless immigrants may well be at a higher risk for reoffending. But that's not the point. Your own criminal citizens you have to put up with, but someone else's? No thanks.

(And no I don't think that breaking immigration law is in the same class as breaking criminal law.)

There are some interesting blog posts on this issue by Rachel in North London (a 7/7 bomb survivor). And the Tony from Cynical Chatter from the Underworld has been tracking this issue.

Technorati: immigration, deportation