The Great Debate on Immigration

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  • I agree, Stevlin. Character is rather important too, but I'm not sure how that would be judged.

    We can say we want x amount of foreign doctors or engineers, but beyond screening out those with a criminal record, I'm not sure how our immigration officials could make judgements on character.

    By the way, I was just looking at my list of members and I realised that you've been a member here since almost from the beginning of this forum. I thought you joined in June, but my records say much earlier.

    Thanks for sticking with this site (including through a little "blip";)) and hopefully the site will grow in the future.:)8)

  • I agree, Stevlin. Character is rather important too, but I'm not sure how that would be judged.

    We can say we want x amount of foreign doctors or engineers, but beyond screening out those with a criminal record, I'm not sure how our immigration officials could make judgements on character.

    By the way, I was just looking at my list of members and I realised that you've been a member here since almost from the beginning of this forum. I thought you joined in June, but my records say much earlier.

    Thanks for sticking with this site (including through a little "blip";)) and hopefully the site will grow in the future.:)8)

    Well by 'character', I mean 'upstanding' citizen....i.e no police record for instance - not absolute, but certainly better than nothing......we already have enough home grown and migrant criminals in the UK - and the upstanding character reference should be researched by the agency clearing the visa or permit granted to the applicant . The UK customs, as we all know being rather short on numbers, can only rely upon the computerised information available to them - but obviously, not all migrant criminals in the UK are EU citizens.....even if the number of EU citizens is significant - so is the number of non-EU citizens. ;o)

  • One in six people placed on the UK government's intensive de-radicalisation scheme refuse to co-operate, Home Office figures show.

    Some 63 people withdrew from the scheme, known as Channel, in 2015-16 - despite concerns about their ideology.

    If people don't wish to cooperate they should be invited to live elsewhere.

  • Inspectors will question girls who wear hijabs in primary school to find out why they do so, head of Ofsted Amanda Spielman has said.

    She said creating an environment where Muslim children are expected to wear the headscarf "could be interpreted as sexualisation of young girls".

    Not sure I agree with this at all.

    I think we need to reassert British traditions and culture, but is this simply a form of bullying, racist bullying at that?

    What about the orthodox Jews and Sikhs, will those children have to remove their things from their heads too?

    If we're not careful we'll go down the road that France has gone down and ban items of clothing. Remember those pictures from a French beach where male police officers were making a Muslim lady take off her nikab. Disgusting, or perhaps you think otherwise.

    Should Muslim primary school girls be forced to remove their hijabs?

  • This bull has also caused indigenous Christians to have to take off their crosses. I agree with you that fascism is not the way to go. Those who brought Islam in (and castigated everyone who protested) are now asking Islam to go, but the people to stay.

    Can anyone give me any kind of an answer that makes sense to this mad state of affairs?

  • Not sure I agree with this at all.

    I think we need to reassert British traditions and culture, but is this simply a form of bullying, racist bullying at that?

    What about the orthodox Jews and Sikhs, will those children have to remove their things from their heads too?

    If we're not careful we'll go down the road that France has gone down and ban items of clothing. Remember those pictures from a French beach where male police officers were making a Muslim lady take off her nikab. Disgusting, or perhaps you think otherwise.

    Should Muslim primary school girls be forced to remove their hijabs?

    British procrastination when facing hard decisions all too often resorts to the thin-end-of-the-wedge argument or the highlighting of an inconsistency, which supposedly nullifies the proposal. We seem to be unable or unwilling to know where to draw the line or to own up that there can be exceptions based on a long established de facto standard.

    Personally, I would be in favour of a banning in public places of all items of apparel or accessories which highlight a religious identity or which can arguably be misconstrued as such. Failing that I would certainly impose such a ban in state schools. The only exception would be private fee-paying schools and here I don't think we can or should legislate against those parents who want to send their non-Muslim, non-Jewish, non-Indian child into a sea of hijabs or burkas or turbans or skullcaps.

    This has little or nothing to do with bullying, racist or otherwise. Granted,such a ban, whether in just state schools or all public places, would be an obstacle to multi-faith tolerance and assimilation. On the other hand, it takes two to tango, and those who insist on parading their cultural and religious identity are demonstrating a reluctance or unwillingness to assimilate with the majority of their host country's citizenry. This stand-off accelerates into resentment in line with the increased percentage of conspicuous non-atheists, non-agnostics, non-Christians and non-Catholics in Britain, as a direct consequence of a significantly above-average birthrate (your fault) and lax border control of immigrants (our fault).

    For those with a religious belief, my deal is this: I won't put my beliefs in your face and I don't expect you to put yours in mine. I don't want to convert you and I sure don't want you to convert me (or if I do, then don't call me, I'll call you). Or to put it another way: let's both keep our religious values and beliefs to ourselves. And if none of that chimes, then just show some respect for the traditions or mores of your host country, just as we would if visiting or living in your country of origin of you (or that of your parents or grandparents).

  • Why would it be right for the ban in state schools and not private schools?

    How are they imposing their cultural beliefs on us by wearing hijabs? I've no desire to be a Muslim and seeing a child wearing a hijab will not convert me.

    Lastly, how could you ban such things in public places as a whole which would include streets and shopping centres, you need a army of police?

    This stand-off accelerates into resentment in line with the increased percentage of conspicuous non-atheists, non-agnostics, non-Christians and non-Catholics in Britain, as a direct consequence of a significantly above-average birthrate (your fault) and lax border control of immigrants (our fault).

    I agree with that.

  • This bull has also caused indigenous Christians to have to take off their crosses. I agree with you that fascism is not the way to go. Those who brought Islam in (and castigated everyone who protested) are now asking Islam to go, but the people to stay.

    Can anyone give me any kind of an answer that makes sense to this mad state of affairs?

    It's a total mess, but I wouldn't want to go down the road of telling people how to dress or what clothes their girls should be dressed in when sent to school. That's very oppressive and not what Britain is about.

  • Why would it be right for the ban in state schools and not private schools?

    How are they imposing their cultural beliefs on us by wearing hijabs? I've no desire to be a Muslim and seeing a child wearing a hijab will not convert me.

    Lastly, how could you ban such things in public places as a whole which would include streets and shopping centres, you need a army of police?


    I agree with that.

    The reason it would be right for the ban to be in state schools and not private schools is that a private faith school would be 90%+ homogeneous for that faith. Since there is no law against being unwilling to assimilate or subscribe wholeheartedly to British cultural values, it is only fair that if such people should be allowed to pay for private schooling, provided that school meets Government educational standards.

    You ask how they are imposing their cultural beliefs on us by wearing hijabs? I never said they were. I said they were parading their cultural beliefs (or their parents were, by proxy). I then went on to explain the deleterious effect of doing that, to which you expressed agreement. I never thought for one moment you could be converted from exposure to a hijab or burkah, otherwise I'd be wondering what kind of Forum I've signed up to!

    You ask how I would ban such things in public places streets and shopping centres. As you say, it would take an unrealistic amount of policing and be pretty odious. I don't think it would feasible. That's why I said at the outset that this was a personal preference and that is why I continued by saying "failing that ....." and went to propose what I felt would be desirable and feasible.

  • True. It's the birth rate that is going to be the problem, whether people go round in head scarves and black bags or not.

    Personally I think the assimilation problem is to do with religious apparel and accessories rather than who they are beneath a non-religious outward appearance

    I admit to making a distinction between an impression of being willing to assimilate and a deep down down desire to do so. The latter segment could just as easily as the former segment contain people who want to bomb or shoot infidels in a public place.

    When I'm travelling in London by tube, I don't any longer notice the proportion of whites, browns, yellows or blacks (or whether a guy has a Jewish nose, Sephardic eyes or excessive shrugging). The statistician in me says it's about two thirds non-white. When Josh White sang "free and equal blues" he was talking simply about skin colour, not religious apparel which discourages or challenges assimilation. It was decades ago that I first heard his song and I have never deviated from a heartfelt belief in every line of it.

    https://www.flashlyrics.com/lyrics/josh-wh…-equal-blues-68

  • I think the so-called "racial debate" is fraught with ideas rather than facts, although facts will be in there too, as it's virtually impossible to deny them although it's easy to pretend the moon is a balloon and "humans are just one big happy family".

    One has to ask, if some day, when we are all connected to our virtual devices, pouring unreality and propaganda into our minds, what is going to distinguish us from lab rats?

    Cultures, beliefs and civilizations are the products of various kinds of human. These can differ greatly from one another or marginally, depending on how these groups have adapted to their particular environments through social and biological evolution. But, there is the added dimension of conversion. If one group, say the pagan Europeans, is converted to a belief system that teaches the Biblical "fact" that one group of humans has been chosen by a creator God as special and placed above the rest, how will this affect the extant beliefs of that group? How will it have affected, say, ancient Incas or Aztecs or north American native nations? How would it affect the Asians or Orientals? In attempting to make all of the converts believe a myth, connected to any other Biblical "facts" in this creed, how will the destiny of millions be altered? What kind of power does the mind have over biology and observable reality?

    I think only a few researchers may have been brave enough to explore this in the past, and after the debacle of the nazis I don't think anyone is permitted to research anything that isn't twinned with a presumed evil connected with race or biology and a presumed good connected to universal consummation and beatification in being "not nazi".

    This appears to have developed into a sort of psychosis among liberals who, in their present manifestation, have taken on the irresistible idea of supremacy (the chosen group) and are using a moral supremacy ethic attached to this in the form of "humanism", to convert everyone to a new dispensation grounded in a skewed idea of better than thou.

    I see no difference in all of these sects connected to this myth of the chosen people and their somewhat idiosyncratic and often almightily wrathful God. They seem able to dispense with their deity and function quite happily on the honey of a belief in humanity and the State (and lots of draconian legislation powered by a new invention they have named "political correctness"). God and his hapless son have been useful, but now liberals are powering forth into the unexplored reaches of fascism for all. It's very creepy and should be resisted but no one can resist as anyone who does is labelled a nazi or a racist and prospects of employment, or losing this, hangs over them like a sword of Damocles. You will be a bad, bad, human who needs reprogramming to become a good humanist and a saint. Anyone who sacrifices themselves upon the alter of the new system is considered to be some sort of martyr and saint bound up into one. The perfect giver as well as the ultimate destroyer, of any older belief in folk and fold. (You don't need a long period of time to effect this transformation to human beatitude. You just need a couple of generations of constant guilt and adaptive behaviour and hey presto, tulips.)

    Apparently, after the pain of separation from one's own group and assimilation into a new artificially created superhuman group, one will be cleansed of the sin of identity and the door of heaven on earth will open and shine its light upon the multitudes. Yea, it is written in the Book of Liberty that extinguishing yourself, and especially your history, heritage and ancestors (spit), your memory and any remnants of recognisable bio-tags, you will become a new human, a better human, a more peaceful human, and you will never think about the past before you went to dwell in the Garden of Humanist Delights, far from the Land of Nodd, east of Eden, where your ancestors were foolish and misguided enough once to reside.

    Every time I have ever written this, some jumped up troll with a glimmering badge of do-goodiness from the Institute of Harmony and Benevolence in Obedience and Piety, has shrieked like a mandrake root that I am a fiend. There is one of these planted in almost every forum garden and when nothing is done about them, they proliferate, lie about those who say the emperor is not only naked but is also a stupid vegetable that needs firing out of a circus cannon, and don't let go until it's away with you and back to the usual low-browed burbling that keep pots from coming to the boil and humans from thinking about their sad lot as acolytes of a truly evil and oppressive system of mind bending, indoctrination and social engineering. Instead of considering any kind of alternative, all eyes will turn venomously upon you, the little boy who mentioned the emperor's condition and you will have to go and live in the land of Nodd, east of Eden, along with Cain who displeased God.

    I would advise anyone brave enough to raise a small hat above the parapet that the land of Nodd isn't as bad as they say it is and that if you have any courage left at all to believe in yourself instead of in all the mush they keep pumping into you like Soylent Green, you might take the risk of visiting the land of Nodd, where you will find kindred spirits from all over the world who have refused the spoon of dependence and taken the road out of Eden into the universe of their destiny. Wearing their own shoes, guided by the maps that are etched into their ancient souls and not looking back to become pillars of salt but instead looking at the stars.

  • It's a total mess, but I wouldn't want to go down the road of telling people how to dress or what clothes their girls should be dressed in when sent to school. That's very oppressive and not what Britain is about.

    Not as a general rule I would agree - BUT , I consider that dressing in a manner which 'hides' the face from view, ( as both the niqab and burka do), should certainly not be allowed in the UK - unless of course you believe that anyone should be able, (in normal day to day routine), go around 'masked'.

    The Hijab should satisfy the 'need' to illustrate one's religion if that is what is wished.

    The UK used to prohibit the covering or blacking of one's face, but this 'criminal act' was a decriminalised in the early 19th century ...... rightfully so, considering the penalty was the death sentence.................but maybe it should again be banned.....but without that excessive penalty.......


  • The Hihab was the one being discussed in that BBC article in post 106, not the nikab, but although I don't like the nikab and its entirely alien to Britain, I still would not ban it on the streets. As I was saying to Rob Alka, even if there was a ban, I don't see how such a thing could be enforced.


  • The Hihab was the one being discussed in that BBC article in post 106, not the nikab, but although I don't like the nikab and its entirely alien to Britain, I still would not ban it on the streets. As I was saying to Rob Alka, even if there was a ban, I don't see how such a thing could be enforced.

    Well I still disagree - it isn't a mandatory religious requirement , and going around 'masked' should not be allowed. The Hijab is certainly not a problem in a western society, but walking around in a sack with peepholes to see where one is going is out of place in a western society - and wrt 'difficulties' in enforcing it......shouldn't be a problem - ask the French how they are doing??

  • You’re talking about dumbing down and we see it everywhere, in the media, in politics and with the mass of exceedingly average citizens who has discovered “entitlement” and “popular democracy”

    As for different belief systems, be it religious, social or political), it is hardly surprising that there should be conflicts. Certainly all religious belief systems rely on a suspension of disbelief, which is irrational and highly emotional. How could it be otherwise when each faction prays that their beliefs are the ones which will give them life everlasting or the avoidance of hell or whatever it is that floats their particular boat? Even hesitant disbelievers have an intuitive understanding of the win-win of making the right Pascal’s Wager and once they have made this smart choice it is preferable for peace of mind to go the whole hog and become sincerely devout, which means disdainful, disapproving, intolerant, even hostile to those who have aligned themselves to what surely must be a counterfeit belief system.

    It is interesting that you use the term “belief systems” rather than religion per se. That enables you, quite justifiably, to throw liberals into the melting pot of warring factions all seeking to be The Right Ones, in the moral ascendancy. Even Orthodox Judaism gets a piece of the action, inasmuch as what they lack in numbers they make up for in that self-satisfied slogan plucked from the Old Testament “The Chosen Few”.

    I wouldn’t get too discouraged by excitable on-line trolls who label you as the devil incarnate for rising above today’s ever-suffocating G.A.S (Group Accepted Sentiments). More worrying are the calmer Uber-Liberals, the Useful Idiots, the meek who shall disinherit the earth from its more deserving populace.

    The only Second Coming that this world needs are some true quality leaders. But how do they get into office when it’s 1 man, 1 vote and the majority of voters are the ones who got us into this mess?

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