Stewart Jackson’s Ten Minute Rule motion to curb EU free movement rights passed the first hurdle on its way to becoming law. Let’s hope no one in government seriously considers it as official policy.
Conservative MP Stewart Jackson continues his campaign against “barking mad” European Union law which supports the free movement of people across EU borders.
The motion put forward today in parliament states that EU citizens are to be allowed to enter and live in the UK only if they have a prior job offer, no criminal record, are in good health and remain barred from claiming social benefits. While Private Members’ Bills usually don’t get far in parliament, this should be seen as a bellwether for moods in government circles which are determined to place greater impediments in the way of exercising rights available to citizens under EU law.
Read the full article on the Huffington Post.
Read original story here.
This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.
What do you think of this new immigration program in Netherlands:
http://www.government.nl/government/coalition-agreement/immigration-integration-and-asylum
Farang, the question isn’t what words for YOU but actually integrates people. Do people adapt to society? If it still excludes the majority of immigrants and visible minorities from Dutch society, then this policy isn’t very effective.
I think the world “alien” in the document speaks a thousand words about the contempt that this document has for immigrants and refugees. Certainly Geert Wilders has something to do with this…
Farang
Those proposals are on the whole grotesque.
Turning people into genetic entities carries significant dangers. First, the right to family identity has NEVER before been prefaced on genetic identities. It is quite common for a child to not be genetically related to one or even both parents, either knowingly or unwittingly. Testing, quality control and even independent surveillance of DNA testing are areas that would also create concern. How are individuals in developing countries supposed to access these facilities? Also, there is likely to be increased costs in what is already an expensive process. Once you start using DNA testing routinely, is the next step to check the health of this DNA? After all, if other provisions are that immigrants do not use benefits, then the justification is already laid down to exploit DNA evidence to screen for health problems.
Section 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to a family life. Cousins have always been allowed to marry in the Netherlands. Mixing family law and immigration law would be yet another encroachment on the rights of immigrants. There is no scientific evidence to back a ban.
This contradicts the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, to which Netherlands is a signatory:
Article 31. – Refugees unlawfully in the country of refuge
1. The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.
If I understand this correctly, deportation only takes place if the prison sentence is five or more years. This would be an improvement. But in Finland, at least, as well as in the Netherlands, this kind of ‘additional penalty’ on top of normal sentencing contradicts the spirit of all citizens being equal before the law. While I understand that deportation is an ‘administrative process’ and not technically a legal process, this does nothing to change this fact.
Again, defining families as ‘biological entities’ fundamentally contradicts EU and UN human rights conventions protecting the rights of family without placing biological conditions on such a family status. (think foster children, orphans etc.)
This is both impractical and a gross violation of the rights of the child. Many countries of origin have little or no services for tracking down parents or administrative processes for accommodating children who have been separated from their parents. How this can be ‘in the interest of their own development’, I really don’t know.
This contradicts the specific advice given to the Dutch Secretary of State for Justice, Ms N. Albayrak, by the Advisory Committee on Migration Affairs: The ACVZ deems it desirable to maintain section 29, subsection 1(d) of the Aliens Act 2000, in which categorial protection is laid down. Extensive research has shown that improper use of this particular ground for asylum has so far not occurred.
In other words, it’s completely unnecessary and in fact is in danger of removing a safety net. Not only that, but it will again bring the Netherlands in conflict with article 15(c) of the Qualification Directive and article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR).
Again, contradicts the UN CRSR.
Is this supposed to appease their conscience?
This is just plain scary! First, there is no concrete description of what constitutes ‘sufficient effort’, which would seem to make the power to revoke the residence permit an arbitrary penalty. Second, that immigrants are monitored in terms of ‘integration’ without giving any definition for what constitutes ‘integration’ sounds like something the Nazis dreamt up, a form of ‘surveillance’ that covers all aspects of cultural and economic life, with the constant threat of deportation. This is not rights or equality among citizens.
Just plain old Islamaphobia. Telling people what they can wear and making their benefits dependent on it is frankly a gross violation of basic rights, including freedom of religion.
What is the point of this? Except to undermine the political enfranchisement and voice of immigrants. Again, second class citizens.
Refusing the normal safety net for immigrants will only push them into poverty. For a start, economically speaking, immigrants are often the first to lose their job as a result of economic fluctuations in companies or national economies, which will almost certainly guarantee that a generational underclass of poor and deprived communities will develop as a result of this policy.
Residence permits should not be ‘partner-dependent’ full stop. And of course, those immigrants are so much more violent that this needs its own special provision, right? Discrimination!
Protecting the rights of women against violence is clearly important, but this should be national legislation that applies to all citizens equally. By making this kind of issue a part of immigration legislation, in institutionalises racism and prejudice against immigrants as having a higher tendency towards violence.
This contradicts absolutely fundamental human rights, which say that people will not be discriminated against because of their national identity. It is implicit in this that if someone does not speak Dutch adequately, then it is because of their primary national identity, not to mention the fact that some people may genuinely strugggle to learn a foreign language, for all sorts of reasons.
On the whole, this group of suggestions will take the Netherlands closer and closer towards a two-tier citizenship society in which immigrants are clearly an underclass, with less rights, less social protections, and greater restrictions on their religious and cultural freedom.
Scary. I really cannot believe that Europe has gone so far down this road towards fascism once again.
You mentioned several times that “XXX is violation of YYY” etc.
What does that matter? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Every country, if they will, can set any kind of legistlation that they find suitable.
A country could even set a law that doesn’t allow any foreigners to enter.
The point you fail to see is here: The country sets the rules and then it’s up to the immigrant to decide if he/she wants to move to that kind of country. Nobody is forcing any immigrant to move to Netherlands.
Farang
Yep, what is 60 years of human rights legislation?
I think you’ll find it’s a little more complicated than that, Farang, as the Netherlands has already begun to find out, as it’s signed up to several pieces of EU legislation that are contravened by these proposals.
Of course, it is the right of every democratic country’s elected officials to withdraw from international agreements, but when those agreements are aimed at securing the welfare, well-being, dignity and humane treatment of all citizens, then clearly we can start to label Netherlands the North Korea of Europe.
I guess that is also a road you want to take Finland down?
The priority of country A is to take care of the human rights of citizens of country A. Everyone else is and should be lower priority. Why? Because nobody else is thinking about the best of people A, the only one who should think the best of people A is the country A.
As soon as any country stops keeping it’s own citizens as priority, that society starts to weaken itself.
Yes, exactly. But I’d rather use word up instead of down 🙂
Farang
This is fascism, Farang. Since the second world war, the world has worked steadily towards UNIVERSAL human rights, but perhaps you have simply failed to understand the significance of the world ‘universal’. It means that they are rights that all humans have, regardless of nationality, citizenship status, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. If you start to undermine this universal principle, then you no longer have the right to call them ‘human’ rights. They become effectively Finnish first-class citizen rights, with others being given something clearly less, that we might call ‘second-class citizen rights’.
Now while this sounds all fine and dandy to you, it nevertheless takes us back to the political ideology that sought to overthrow all other ideologies in the 1940s. This is fascism, Farang.
Farang, this issue is not about ‘priorities’. Human rights issues are not issues of priorities, where some people have priority and some people have ‘no priority’, or whatever you intend this to mean, either second-class rights or simply no rights. The point of human rights is that they are considered universal, rights that you have because you are human. There’s a big clue in there, Farang, in the word ‘human’.
It can’t be a human right of every human to just go to some country and start living off welfare on that country’s expense. That right should be reserved for the citizens of that country only. If that is fascism, then I am a fascist with capital F. (And proud of it, with capital P)
But if we think human rights as they should be, then there is absolutely nothing in the Netherlands government immigration program that violates human rights. Period.
Farang
There are two things in your point – 1) the right to go to a country, and 2) the right to live off welfare.
Let’s deal with the first point. The right to enter a country or to stay in a country is decided by the host country. The issue of universal human rights relates to how those people are treated while they are being processed and once they have been granted leave to stay or residency. At each point in the process, human rights apply, meaning that the right to family, the right to religious identity, the right to humane treatment are or should be guaranteed in law. Indeed, that is the case in Finland.
On the second point, the issue of whether an immigrant or an assylum seeker has the right to welfare should be equal to the rights of citizens. In fact, in favour of speedy integration, one would expect additional welfare support. This indeed is what we see in Finland. This is normal humane treatment. What the Netherlands are proposing and what PS appears to support for Finland too is to dismantle this rights framework and to reduce immigrants to second class citizens to such an extend that they contravene fundamental human rights frameworks of both the UN and the EU. In other words, to turn the clock back on human rights in Europe.
Straw man. Fascism is not opposing immigrants arriving with no controls to only live off welfare. Fascism is pretending that that is the case when it clearly is not only to drum up fear and loathing and to gain political advantage, while all the while working to undermine the fundamental rights of immigrants to function on an equal footing with other citizens of their newly adopted country. That is fascism, though I really doubt you have the honesty or the intellectual ability to try to understand that.
Again, you might wish that were true, but that does not make it true, period! The fact is that the Dutch government is already at loggerheads with the EU over these proposals and the legal requirements of the Dutch government to meet those commitments in various EU rights conventions and treaties, as mentioned above.
Your attitude to these issues appears to be ‘it’s not a problem because I say it isn’t a problem…got it!’. Typical Nazi jackboot!
And that is a bad thing because?
That is good thing to the citizens of the country and bad thing for the welfare shoppers. And why should we support welfare shoppers?
But I can see your point. You are an immigrant, therefore you want to support things that are beneficial to immigrants and negative to the host country. That is called selfishness.
Farang
You arrogant pup, you actually don’t have a clue about society, do you?
I see. And what about the ‘weflare shoppers’ inside Finland? They are okay, because they are Finns? By the way, your childish nicknames for immigrants that receive welfare support only shows you up for what you are, a school yard bully trying to pretend that the world needs you to defend it, when all the while, you are the kind of people that society needs to be protected from, not ‘welfare shoppers’.
You are talking to someone who has never been unemployed in Finland. But let’s get this straight, the idea is not to see immigrants benefit either more or at the expense of Finns. Where that is the case, it should be addressed. The issue is one of basic equality, and recognising that all human beings deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. Calling people ‘welfare shoppers’ for no other reason than they are supported by the host country in their intergration is just plain sick. You might as well refer to people who receive cancer treatment as ‘health care leeches’, or people with disabilities as ‘wheelchair parasites’. That’s the size of it. You can take any vulnerable group in society and turn their weakness into a stick to beat them with. But that is not the action of a decent individual. It’s not even about being soft, it’s about being true to principles of decency and fairness.
Now if I was selfish, why would I seek to help people in a way that benefits me in now way whatsoever and never has?
You are honestly saying that EVERY people in the world should have equal right to come to Finland to live on our expense. That is exactly what you try to say above.
And what is difference between finnish welfare people and immigrant welfare people? Exactly, others are finns, others are not. Country should take care of it’s own. Think of this like a family. Mother and father will take care of their own children, but not of their neighbours chidren. With you logic above, all the children of the whole city should be moving under the roof of this one family and they should be taken care of, in the expese that their own kids would not have enough food anymore.
Farang
I see. And where did I say that exactly? How on earth do you get that out of what I wrote? I talk about being treated with dignity.
Actually, people should take care of people, not simply Finns taking care of Finns. That is a principle that is much more likely to yield a world of peace and prosperity. That’s common sense, Farang.
I’m well aware that you push immigrants ‘out of the family’. And yes, I do think of it like a family. Remember, I’m the foreigner here who is the outsider in the family, and I exactly how it feels. I am accepted, but it’s not easy being an outsider for many reasons, even if the response is generally positive. When the response becomes distinctly negative and defaming, then it’s an absolutely horrible feeling. It’s this basic emotional reality for immigrants that you have no clue about.
Well, that’s a straw man argument. However, it is important to take from your example the idea that actually society does protect the rights of children who live in the city. If they arrive on your doorstep, you have a duty of care, even if the final outcome is to reunite that child with its parents.
However, my guess is that if people like you wring the immigration debate for every ounce of grievance, then eventually you would turn against your own, just as you have in the other thread, where you talk about forcibly sterilising people who fall into drug addiction or alcoholism. See, that’s what happens with the fascists – it starts out being an attack on people you don’t know and don’t really identify with, and little by little, the attacks come closer to home.
Make no bounds about this, but this talk of sterilisations of society’s ‘degenerates’ and people being ‘inferior’, and bigotry as just ‘telling the truth about the inferiority of particular social groups’ is just Nazism revisited. This isn’t overreaction. This isn’t calling someone who is worried about national identity remaining strong in a multicultural society a Nazi, this is talking about eugenics and particular groupings as being ‘inferior’. This is an altogether different kind of evil that is more than worthy of the terms fascism and Nazism.
Of course, there have been Nazis always, closeted away, in political movements or in society. But today in Finland, they have been emboldened by the public support that appears for the likes of Allah-oho. Yet for the thousands of votes that he receives, we never get to see how many millions of votes that would be cast in rejection of his ideas. That’s an unfortunate side-effect of the election system.