[semihere]

Lettie... you could possibly ask them what their skills are? How they came to bee in Britain?

My brother-in-law who comes from China was here legally - as a computer programmer. When he first arrived he only spoke a little English, by the time he was deported he spoke fairly fluently. His precarious situation (requiring him to remain in constant employment) made it possible for his employers to abuse their position forcing him to work very long hours for very little pay (he daren't tell them to shove it), eventually laying him off without warning which forced him into a situation of living without ANY income for a couple of months before finally being deported to Hong Kong.

I'm taking, given your references to healthcare, that you work in the NHS. And I always thought that people in the caring professions were keen to help people regardless of circumstance. Would you deny somebody healthcare because of the nationality of their origins? You're also assuming that these couples were in receipt of state benefits without any rights to them (but couldn't be bothered to find out more). They may well have been working here... or do you know that they weren't for sure?

With regards to the question of language - many Brits working abroad do not speak the local language (in fact, Hong Kong is a classsic example where the local language is Cantonese). We just assume everyone else will speak English and if all else fails, stick to enclaves where other Brits live. Why should someone from China think they should learn English when they already speak a language (Mandarin) used by more people than even ours!?!?

In fact, why is it that ours is the ONLY species of animal that deems it fit to impose boundaries on the limit of each others travel? Every other creature on this planet roams to where the sources of food are abundant. None of them draw artificial lines across the earth and say 'you can't come to this bit of the planet, it's ours, you're not partaking of OUR good fortune'. And fortune is exactly what it is - why should ANY of us have more right to the standards of living we enjoy in this country, whilst denying the majority world access to those standards? Purely because we won the lottery of having parents who bore us here? We don't even have a personal say in the matter of where we'll be born, so why should any of us be expected to abide by borders imposed on us in this way?

IMO we should scrap borders or limitations, let everyone flow freely.

Perhaps the birthrate IS increasing in this town, but it's one town out of many. The increasing birthrate may well have something to do with the general growth of the town's population with more people moving in from other areas (have you noticed all the newbuild housing?), and maybe it's a combination of these factors. Overall though, with people waiting longer before they start a family, I'd say that the population as a whole (without immigrants) is most likely in decline. I know that by the time my Dad was my age he was a father 3 times over, and I've yet to have any children. I have 3 siblings - if you take into account that all 4 of us have a partner all of whom have brothers and sisters, amongst 15 people we have produced 3 children in my family/spouses families alone. That's only 20% the size of the preceding generation. If you were to look across the country I'm sure you'd see this pattern repeating time and again. Just a hypothesis, but I'm sure there's some statistical evidence out there (the health service may have more details on the overall birth/mortality records than is available to the general public) which would clarify one way or the other.

The trouble with people's views of immigrants is that they're based on jingoistic, bigoted and outright fascist stereotypes developed in the mythical world of mainstream media coverage of the situation. Politicians play up to this racist stereotype, and play ON it as well to try and justify killing these same people in their homelands in the name of >insert this week's excuse here<... all of it false, all of it for imperial greed, oil, money, personal wealth. These are humans we're talking about after all, same as you and me. If you go and have a look at the detention centres that some illegal immigrants are held in, you'll see the parallels between the British people's treatment of foreign nationals and the way we factory farm - I'm guessing that intensive pig farming was merely a test to see if it's possible for an animal to survive under those conditions as a precursor to developing these detention centres. You doubt? Let's remember which nation invented the concentration camp!

Anyway, I'm ranting!! hehe