quinta-feira, 5 de dezembro de 2013

Portugueses, Espanhóis e Italianos ... ainda bem-vindos ?

A Grã Bretanha fecha-se sobre si mesma.
Prelúdio anunciador de futura Europa dividida em “castas” determinadas pelo PIB ?
Início do fim do Sonho Europeu baseado numa unidade Cultural e de Solidariedade entre os Povos? A eclosão de Nacionalismos separatistas baseados em ressentimentos e temores excitados por populismos, assimilados pelos Partidos “Clássicos”?
A Europa Social e Humanista  não acompanhou a Europa Económica.
A Obsessão financeira/contabilista, e a sua reduçào da muito mais vasta Ciência Económica a um especialismo Neo-Liberal, está a destruir o tecido social e o sonhado Projecto Europeu.
O Voo do Corvo publica o artigo original do tablóide populista inglês, em que o Jornal I baseia o seu artigo, além de um artigo de opinião de um jornalista da CNN.
Ver também o Vídeo em baixo

The number of Europeans who have moved to better off countries in the north to find work has doubled since the economic crises first hit four years ago, with Britain and Germany topping the list of choices
Portugueses, Espanhóis e Italianos ... ainda bem-vindos ?

UK's message to immigrants: Stay out By Ruben Navarrette, CNN Contributor

Editor's note: Ruben Navarrette is a CNN contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. Follow him on Twitter @rubennavarrette.

San Diego (CNN) -- Just this summer, the British government was directly targeting illegal immigrants with a campaign that turned heads, and, in many cases, turned stomachs.

In an initiative designed to persuade illegal immigrants to pack up and voluntarily return to their home countries, officials deployed two trucks to drive around London for a week. Each vehicle carried a large billboard with the message: "In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest." Then it offered instructions to text the word "home" to a government-run number for "free advice and help with travel documents."

What was the free advice? Sounded like "Get the hell out!" Not exactly the Welcome Wagon, was it? The campaign stirred up so much public outcry that the government backtracked and decided to keep the trucks in the garage.

But there's more, and it's still happening. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, the Conservative Party of Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to reduce annual net migration to the United Kingdom. For the British, the problem is Eastern Europeans. The annual figure of newcomers is about 200,000. The conservatives want to bring it down to the tens of thousands.

This is just plain foolish. Just who does the British government think is going to swoop in and take over the jobs that are left behind if immigrants are run off? British citizens? Not blooming likely. By now, several generations of British citizens have grown up thinking of these kinds of jobs as beneath them and themselves as entitled to better. They're not going to miraculously change their way of thinking and find their way back to this kind of work just because the immigrants are gone.

European countries -- Great Britain, France, Germany, etc. -- don't have the best track record of dealing with racial and ethnic differences. Besides, it's not every day that a country puts up a "no vacancy" sign to keep out even those immigrants who come legally. Most countries like to at least maintain the pretense that they only have a problem with illegal entrants. If nothing else, this approach is refreshingly honest.

It seems that Americans haven't exactly cornered the market on bigotry and xenophobia.

Sure, we have our own peculiar issues with the foreign-born. It's not easy being a nation of immigrants that has, in reality, always despised immigrants. It's tough being a country that boasts about its diversity, and then does everything it can to boil it away in the fabled melting pot.

But we Americans are not alone in our narrow-mindedness. Just about every industrialized country on the globe vacillates between needing immigrants to do jobs that natives won't do and resenting the changes that immigrants bring with them.

Parts of the immigration debate playing out on the national and international stage are complicated. And yet this part is simple: Countries that encourage legal immigration, and make the process easier, will thrive. Those that pull up the drawbridge and put up barriers to keep out even immigrants who try to enter legally will founder.

Who says? Economists say so. Life experience says so. U.S. history says so. World history says so.

This is true of legal immigrants whether they come from China, Vietnam, India, Brazil or any other country.

Yet it is also the case with illegal immigrants, as former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan made clear in April 2009 when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security.

Greenspan said illegal immigration make a "significant" contribution to U.S. economic growth by providing a flexible workforce and that illegal immigrants act as a "safety valve" for the economy since demand for workers goes up and down.

"There is little doubt that unauthorized, that is, illegal, immigration has made a significant contribution to the growth of our economy," Greenspan said in calling for an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws.

We can assume Cameron's government didn't get the news.

After those trucks drove around six areas of London, humanitarian organizations, opposition parties and labor groups in the United Kingdom complained that the tactics were offensive and heavy-handed. They said they harked back to an ugly time in British history when nativist groups had much greater sway in the halls of government.

What a shame that this is what has become of a once-great nation and one of the world's great superpowers. Now the United Kingdom is in a defensive stance, trying to ward off invaders and hold on to what it has.

Contrast all this with what is happening in Israel. Consider the diversity of the tech corridor in Tel Aviv, where some of Silicon Valley's most successful companies come to poach workers and invest venture capital. Everywhere you go, you're reminded that Israel is one of the most diverse nations in the world and one with a proud immigrant tradition.

Israeli officials will tell you, without hesitation, that much of what has been accomplished in the country's lifespan of only 65 years can be attributed to the fact that this tiny country benefits from immigrants and draws the best and brightest from around the world.

Of course, no nation is perfect. The Israelis have their own problems with immigration. They struggle with the challenge of assimilation of refugees from Sudan and Ethiopia. But still, they understand the restorative power of immigration.

Meanwhile, at least the United Kingdom's government realized the error of its ways when it shelved the billboards. Government officials acknowledged that the message was too blunt and the results unconvincing.

Score one for decency and common sense. Don't you just love it when old Europe learns a new way of thinking?

Grã-Bretanha teme crise devastadora nos serviços sociais
Por Diogo Vaz Pinto
publicado em 5 Dez 2013/ in (jornal) i online

Relatório secreto do Ministério do Interior traça prognóstico catastrófico
O aumento em massa da imigração esperado para o próximo ano poderá desencadear uma crise devastadora para o sistema escolar e para os programas de habitação e segurança social britânicos, segundo um documento secreto divulgado pelo jornal "The Mail".
O relatório revela que todos os departamentos governamentais receberam instruções para elaborar planos de emergência comportando muitos milhões de libras depois de ser avisado de que os seus serviços públicos poderiam ser precipitados numa situação de catástrofe em resultado da chegada de centenas de milhares de cidadãos da Europa de Leste ao Reino Unido. O documento alerta para uma possível "mudança radical" nos números da migração no ano que vem e como isto pode causar grande instabilidade social, provocando uma reacção de ódio em todo o país.
A revelação foi feita no mesmo dia em que o jornal desenvolveu a questão da migração, explicando que a perspectiva de abandono está a causar conflitos sociais tanto nos países de Leste como na Grã-Bretanha. As reportagens entretanto publicadas falam em casos de polacos que estão a abandonar crianças em lares de adopção para se libertarem e poderem partir para o Reino Unido. Algumas destas crianças terão mesmo chegado a suicidar-se depois de serem deixadas para trás.
Quanto ao relatório secreto, escrito pela ministra do Interior Joan Ryan, em claro contraste com as repetidas garantias do governo de que a questão da migração está sob controlo, multiplica-se em alertas e detecta uma série de áreas que poderão enfrentar desafios tremendos no esforço para integrar uma hipotética vaga reforçada de estrangeiros em busca de trabalho e melhores condições de vida.
Da necessidade de contratar um exército de professores de Inglês para ensinar um crescente número de crianças de Leste ao risco de os migrantes com vidas mais duras se tornarem bêbados e agirem de forma violenta, inundando os albergues para os sem-abrigo, ao perigo de o influxo de mão-de-obra barata forçar os trabalhadores britânicos a aceitarem cortes salariais - o que, por sua vez, tem "implicações graves" em termos de tensão social -, o documento faz um prognóstico ominoso do impacto da migração no Reino Unido ao longo do próximo ano.

Secret report warns of migration meltdown in Britain


A massive rise in immigration next year could trigger a devastating crisis in Britain's schools, housing and welfare services, according to a secret Government report leaked to The Mail on Sunday.

The document reveals that every Government department has been ordered to draw up multi-million-pound emergency plans after being told public services face catastrophe as a result of the hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans pouring into Britain.

Special investigation
• Polish children dumped by parents heading for Britain

It also warns that a 'step change' in the level of immigration next year could make things even worse, triggering an angry backlash across the country.

The disclosure comes as The Mail on Sunday reveals that the new wave of immigration is causing as much social strife in Eastern Europe as it is in Britain.

Our investigation found Poles are dumping children in local care homes so they can travel to Britain. Some reportedly killed themselves after being left behind.

The leaked document, written by Home Office Minister Joan Ryan, is entitled Migration From Eastern Europe: Impact On Public Services And Community Cohesion.

In stark contrast to the Government's repeated assurances that immigration is under control, it warns:

• Ministers may be forced to abandon their refusal to grant council houses and welfare benefits to workshy new arrivals, creating what Ms Ryan describes as an extra 'pull factor' attracting further immigrants seeking handouts.

• A new army of English language teachers is required to deal with a huge rise in the number of Eastern European children since last September.

• East European immigrants living rough are becoming drunk and aggressive, and flooding homeless hostels.

• The influx of cheap labour is forcing British workers to take pay cuts with 'serious implications' for social tension.

• East European patients are 'blocking' hospital beds because they are ineligible for social care and benefits if they leave.

• Towns and cities hit hardest by the new immigration are demanding millions of pounds of extra money to cope.

The document, marked 'restricted', was written by Ms Ryan on July 19, the day after she submitted a separate report warning that 45,000 'undesirable' migrants from Romania and Bulgaria may settle in the UK when the two nations join the EU next year.

The number of immigrants to Britain since Poland and seven other East European countries joined the EU two years ago is now put at 600,000, compared with the Government's original prediction of between 5,000 and 13,000 a year. Ministers expect this number to rise by up to another 140,000 next year.

Warning of potential chaos for schools, housing and health, Ms Ryan's report says: "All departments have been asked to consider contingency plans...in case of a further step change in the number of new migrants."

One of her biggest fears is that the courts may force the Government to scrap its restrictions on East European immigrants applying for council houses or benefits. At present, they receive some benefits only if they register for work - which one in three don't do - and earn full benefit rights after they have worked for a year.

Ms Ryan says: "The legal basis for this is precarious and there is a strong risk of a successful challenge. This is a concern."

Many East European immigrants end up homeless, partly because of the welfare curbs. "This leads to antisocial behaviour, street drinking and aggressive begging' as well as 'tensions' between vagrants, the report warns. One in six places in homeless hostels in London is now taken up by Eastern Europeans, who often arrive with no plans for a job or home.

Ms Ryan says some councils are demanding an end to the ban on housing and other benefits so they can get people off the street. But the report warns that dropping the restrictions could create a new 'pull factor for people to come to the UK unprepared for work'.

Areas with the most East European arrivals - including Slough and parts of London - are demanding more cash for public services, says the report.

And schools desperately need more help following a sudden rise in the number of East European children, many of whom do not speak English. Some primary schools have accommodated up to 50 extra Polish children in one term.

Ms Ryan calls for action - and cash - to recruit extra English language teachers. "Schools often find it hard...because of large numbers of new arrivals," her report said.

The document says foreign workers have helped fill jobs other workers refused to do. But it adds: "There is anecdotal evidence, particularly from Southampton, a port of entry for Eastern Europeans, that the effect of migration...has been to depress wages for low-paid workers. If this were widely true, or that perception were to spread widely, the implications for community cohesion would be potentially serious."

There were few signs of social disorder involving Eastern European workers but they "feature increasingly in tension reports...and were a recurrent grievance in far-right extremists' material during recent (local) elections".

Some migrants are living in hospitals and mental health units because "there is no ability to provide access to benefits or housing in which on-going care duties could be met".

In conclusion Ms Ryan says: "There are areas in which strains are evident."

Despite the Government's underestimate of the number of migrants, public services had generally coped, the report concluded. But the expected influx of Romanians and Bulgarians meant that this "optimistic assessment may not continue to hold good in, say, a year's time".

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