4 ms·

Without commenting on the policy I think you're missing the maths. I can earn $x here or $(x - y) to be in the uk. In the UK I get healthcare on the NHS. I mov

by harry8 5y ago

Without commenting on the policy I think you're missing the maths. I can earn $x here or $(x - y) to be in the uk. In the UK I get healthcare on the NHS. I move. I quit / am fired / co goes (creatively?) broke. And I keep the healthcare on the NHS and have time to start a family before deportation etc. Think about large values of y or indeed kickbacks. Does the firm really want /me/? Or do they just want cash which they get by paying very low (or taking a fee from me) as I get an end run around the immigration system to get healthcare without making the contribution, queue jumping better qualified, harder working, more civic minded people with greater compassionate grounds for being accepted? As ever there's a continuum. "Clearly this person is legitimately... ...then the unexpected thing happened." ends up being harder and quite expensive to identify and enforce fairly and equitably with a public service doing so. I say nothing of the UK's policy here or its implementation as I'm ignorant. Assuming entrepreneurs won't spring up to arbitrage any system hole they can is naive. Immigration is super-emotive at the best of times especially arbitrarily unfair treatment and those who feel like they're losing from it (rightly or wrongly). That's the general case being made. Immigration policy is super hard and you kind of have to willfully fortify your compassion as well. More than 700 million people on this planet have no safe drinking water and would want to migrate to any wealthy country under almost any circumstance. Plenty are literally dying to do it. How can we not feel for them? Being compassionate reduces to deciding how many people your country can take easily, with effort, or the level in which society collapses. 700m immigrating in a year will probably achieve collapse. "What then must we do?" I haven't got a good answer or indeed a better one than fight corruption everywhere and anywhere under all circumstances.

pjc50 5y ago
> queue jumping There is no queue. I mean that: there is no requirement for cases to be processed in any kind of order, if at all, and nor is there a quota (except in the minds of Home Office managers). > I get an end run around the immigration system to get healthcare Hardly anyone does this, or at least there's no evidence of this. If you have money which you wish to trade for healthcare, there are usually better ways than bribing a firm to give you a fake job in the UK? > Plenty are literally dying to do it. See Afghanistan. It was, allegedly, important enough to invade and spend billions on, as well as a number of Westerner lives; however, it is also a policy preference that these people die rather than reach the UK, which puts a rather hard upper bound on what they should have expected from us. This is being played out in real time as the UK decides how many of the people who the Taliban will execute as our collaborators it should allow to be rescued. (asylum and the refugee system is technically separate from immigration in international law, but this is a distinction few people seem to care about. And this is also separate as nobody should realistically expect an Afghan translator for the British Army to find £650 to save their life) I wonder how many Afghans we could safely relocate to the Falklands?
- harry8 5y ago
  > There is no queue. Any country that has a number of people who would like to immigrate of whom it will not accept all and will chose who to reject has a queue. How that queue is implemented, orderly, disorderly, corruptly, unjustly, ridiculously, incompetently or at various times all of the above. Some get in, some don't, it's a queue. It may not be a fantasy of an orderly queue where everyone is served in order in good time and without knowing about it, it does not surprise me to hear you say it is emphatically not that. Think of a priority queue if you must with priority being given by a random number generator tempered with both nonsense and corruption. You jump places in the queue by being designated higher priority. Have you jumped forward enough to be accepted and if not what can you do about it - this is the only question for those trying to get in. Who are you taking vs who are you rejecting? That's if you're already in. You can't take everyone. The world is a nasty place and this is one of the emotional sharp edge of it. You will reject people whose stories break your heart. You don't get a choice about that.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    > priority queue if you must with priority being given by a random number generator tempered with both nonsense You cannot sensibly call this a "queue". No programmer would accept "random order" when they expected "in order". Moreover, decisions are independent. The number of people already accepted is not a factor in individual immigration decisions! Someone else getting accepted cannot affect the outcome of your own decision. > You will reject people whose stories break your heart. You don't get a choice about that. Why? Who is "you" here? Who's holding a gun to "your" head? You absolutely do get a choice, and moreover if you reject someone who is subsequently killed in the way they warned you about then you, personally - the immigration agent responsible for the decision - are an accomplice in their death. It's just that this is more apparent when it's the people clearing the runway for the last C130 out of Kabul at gunpoint than when someone's doing it with a pen.
    - harry8 5y ago
      Obviously the priority is /meant/ to be sensibly arrived at. The rest was commentary on how sensible it is likely to actually be in practice, with a nod to your assertions about it which seem at least plausible. I simply don't believe decisions are entirely independent. I strongly doubt the public servants making those decisions have it in the power to increase the rate of immigration tenfold based on individuals meeting criteria without political support. The process is inherently a rate limiting thing. >Why? Who is "you" here? "You" is anyone putting themselves in the shoes of coming up with an immigration policy. Spare a thought for any decent human being who actually has to get their hands properly dirty and do it. I may not be a decent human because I think I would run from that opportunity without hesitation. I doubt I have the psychological strength to try for a least worse policy that will bring about misery. There is no stroke of my pen where I wouldn't be seeing millions of people dying any one of whom I could have saved with a different stroke. I'm not sure I can live with that. But I can't really absolve myself of the responsibility for what happens as a voting eligible person in a democracy. On that basis I have to at least consider what current policies are and competing ones that might be somehow a little less horrific. They will all be horrific on a personal level in people's lives. A large number of people. There are 700 million people on this planet who do not have access to safe drinking water. One would think all of them would happily relocate to any wealthy country where their children have a better chance of a reasonable future. The number who would want to relocate to the UK is probably considerably north of that number as you don't have to be on the lowest rung on the ladder of this planet to see the wealth of the UK and think that's worth moving to. There are people with clean drinking water who are utterly desperate. Have any immigration policy at all - imagine your decree is law and implemented with resources and vigor. If the one decided on involves a scale of migration measured in hundreds of millions in a year societal collapse seems very likely. If one accepts that then one embraces the necessity of rejecting worthy people with heartbreaking stories. By the million. Who to reject? How many to reject? There is no good answer in my opinion. What is your estimate of the number of people on the planet who will die if you reject them? Know they are being rejected. A tiny fraction of utterly desperate people on this planet will be accepted as immigrants in all the rich countries combined. I say /nothing/ about Afghanistan and refugees. I say literally nothing because I don't know about it. I point out if the immigration policy arrived at is to take everyone from Afghanistan who wants to move and that policy works (hurrah!) and has manageable costs (again hurrah! and again I have no clue), it's not the end of it. There are literally hundreds of millions more people in dire straits for whom moving their family to any rich country would save them. It's f&^king horrible. Every bit as horrible as scenes being televised. This is not an argument I'm making for rejecting any refugees from any country including Afghanistan. As soon as anyone with any kind of heart starts looking at a rich countries immigration policy and its results it is heartbreaking and horrible with no good answers, only ones you hate and loathe slightly less than others. Again this is not an excuse for being as evil as possible or eschewing all compassion or anything of the sort. "No more horrific than necessary" is a reasonable goal because immigration policy, any policy, whatever it is, will be horrific. It sucks.
ben_w 5y ago
> 700m immigrating in a year will probably achieve collapse. If they all go to the same destination, sure, but there’s no reason to even expect that collective behaviour and plenty of examples to doubt it (most people go short distances, e.g. 80% of the Syrian refugees went to the countries that share a land border with Syria). Though I absolutely agree with the point that immigration is super-emotive even at the best of times, and likewise I don’t have a good answer to the troubles which cause a need for asylum (very separate in nature from other causes of migration but often blurred together politically) — best I’ve got is seeing that things are getting less bad, so more of what’s currently happening in aggregate is probably good even though we can clearly see specific examples of places and groups where that’s not good enough, like Afghanistan, Syria, Darfur, the Uyghurs, the Rohingya, and the Yazidi.

by harry8 5y ago

pjc50 5y ago

> queue jumping There is no queue. I mean that: there is no requirement for cases to be processed in any kind of order, if at all, and nor is there a quota (except in the minds of Home Office managers). > I get an end run around the immigration system to get healthcare Hardly anyone does this, or at least there's no evidence of this. If you have money which you wish to trade for healthcare, there are usually better ways than bribing a firm to give you a fake job in the UK? > Plenty are literally dying to do it. See Afghanistan. It was, allegedly, important enough to invade and spend billions on, as well as a number of Westerner lives; however, it is also a policy preference that these people die rather than reach the UK, which puts a rather hard upper bound on what they should have expected from us. This is being played out in real time as the UK decides how many of the people who the Taliban will execute as our collaborators it should allow to be rescued. (asylum and the refugee system is technically separate from immigration in international law, but this is a distinction few people seem to care about. And this is also separate as nobody should realistically expect an Afghan translator for the British Army to find £650 to save their life) I wonder how many Afghans we could safely relocate to the Falklands?

harry8 5y ago
> There is no queue. Any country that has a number of people who would like to immigrate of whom it will not accept all and will chose who to reject has a queue. How that queue is implemented, orderly, disorderly, corruptly, unjustly, ridiculously, incompetently or at various times all of the above. Some get in, some don't, it's a queue. It may not be a fantasy of an orderly queue where everyone is served in order in good time and without knowing about it, it does not surprise me to hear you say it is emphatically not that. Think of a priority queue if you must with priority being given by a random number generator tempered with both nonsense and corruption. You jump places in the queue by being designated higher priority. Have you jumped forward enough to be accepted and if not what can you do about it - this is the only question for those trying to get in. Who are you taking vs who are you rejecting? That's if you're already in. You can't take everyone. The world is a nasty place and this is one of the emotional sharp edge of it. You will reject people whose stories break your heart. You don't get a choice about that.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > priority queue if you must with priority being given by a random number generator tempered with both nonsense You cannot sensibly call this a "queue". No programmer would accept "random order" when they expected "in order". Moreover, decisions are independent. The number of people already accepted is not a factor in individual immigration decisions! Someone else getting accepted cannot affect the outcome of your own decision. > You will reject people whose stories break your heart. You don't get a choice about that. Why? Who is "you" here? Who's holding a gun to "your" head? You absolutely do get a choice, and moreover if you reject someone who is subsequently killed in the way they warned you about then you, personally - the immigration agent responsible for the decision - are an accomplice in their death. It's just that this is more apparent when it's the people clearing the runway for the last C130 out of Kabul at gunpoint than when someone's doing it with a pen.
  - harry8 5y ago
    Obviously the priority is /meant/ to be sensibly arrived at. The rest was commentary on how sensible it is likely to actually be in practice, with a nod to your assertions about it which seem at least plausible. I simply don't believe decisions are entirely independent. I strongly doubt the public servants making those decisions have it in the power to increase the rate of immigration tenfold based on individuals meeting criteria without political support. The process is inherently a rate limiting thing. >Why? Who is "you" here? "You" is anyone putting themselves in the shoes of coming up with an immigration policy. Spare a thought for any decent human being who actually has to get their hands properly dirty and do it. I may not be a decent human because I think I would run from that opportunity without hesitation. I doubt I have the psychological strength to try for a least worse policy that will bring about misery. There is no stroke of my pen where I wouldn't be seeing millions of people dying any one of whom I could have saved with a different stroke. I'm not sure I can live with that. But I can't really absolve myself of the responsibility for what happens as a voting eligible person in a democracy. On that basis I have to at least consider what current policies are and competing ones that might be somehow a little less horrific. They will all be horrific on a personal level in people's lives. A large number of people. There are 700 million people on this planet who do not have access to safe drinking water. One would think all of them would happily relocate to any wealthy country where their children have a better chance of a reasonable future. The number who would want to relocate to the UK is probably considerably north of that number as you don't have to be on the lowest rung on the ladder of this planet to see the wealth of the UK and think that's worth moving to. There are people with clean drinking water who are utterly desperate. Have any immigration policy at all - imagine your decree is law and implemented with resources and vigor. If the one decided on involves a scale of migration measured in hundreds of millions in a year societal collapse seems very likely. If one accepts that then one embraces the necessity of rejecting worthy people with heartbreaking stories. By the million. Who to reject? How many to reject? There is no good answer in my opinion. What is your estimate of the number of people on the planet who will die if you reject them? Know they are being rejected. A tiny fraction of utterly desperate people on this planet will be accepted as immigrants in all the rich countries combined. I say /nothing/ about Afghanistan and refugees. I say literally nothing because I don't know about it. I point out if the immigration policy arrived at is to take everyone from Afghanistan who wants to move and that policy works (hurrah!) and has manageable costs (again hurrah! and again I have no clue), it's not the end of it. There are literally hundreds of millions more people in dire straits for whom moving their family to any rich country would save them. It's f&^king horrible. Every bit as horrible as scenes being televised. This is not an argument I'm making for rejecting any refugees from any country including Afghanistan. As soon as anyone with any kind of heart starts looking at a rich countries immigration policy and its results it is heartbreaking and horrible with no good answers, only ones you hate and loathe slightly less than others. Again this is not an excuse for being as evil as possible or eschewing all compassion or anything of the sort. "No more horrific than necessary" is a reasonable goal because immigration policy, any policy, whatever it is, will be horrific. It sucks.

ben_w 5y ago

> 700m immigrating in a year will probably achieve collapse. If they all go to the same destination, sure, but there’s no reason to even expect that collective behaviour and plenty of examples to doubt it (most people go short distances, e.g. 80% of the Syrian refugees went to the countries that share a land border with Syria). Though I absolutely agree with the point that immigration is super-emotive even at the best of times, and likewise I don’t have a good answer to the troubles which cause a need for asylum (very separate in nature from other causes of migration but often blurred together politically) — best I’ve got is seeing that things are getting less bad, so more of what’s currently happening in aggregate is probably good even though we can clearly see specific examples of places and groups where that’s not good enough, like Afghanistan, Syria, Darfur, the Uyghurs, the Rohingya, and the Yazidi.