Express  article 17 December 2007

PAID FOR BY YOUR TAXES: AN OSTRICH FARM IN IRAN AND AN ALBANIAN VINEYARD

Monday December 17,2007

TAXPAYERS are funding thousands of businesses around the world set up by failed asylum seekers who were paid up to £4,000 to go home.

More than 23,000 migrants have pocketed £36million so far.

They are now the proud owners of businesses including hotels, factories, beauty parlours and vineyards as far afield as Iran, Albania, Colombia and Zimbabwe.

The immigrants, who had no legal right to remain here, were given free flights, handed £1,000 in cash at the airport and then paid a further £3,000 to set up businesses in their homelands.

Critics yesterday condemned the handouts as “bribes”, and claimed they would only attract more immigrants to this country.

Ministers say paying failed asylum seekers to leave is cheaper than forcibly deporting them.

But Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said the scheme was an insult to British citizens.

“Giving failed asylum seekers business grants smacks of rewarding criminality and sends out completely the wrong message to people contemplating illegal entry into the UK,” he said.

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Observer Guardian article 25 November 2007

Teachers: help us cope with migrants

Schools under strain, say heads

'Sudden influx stretches resources'

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday November 25, 2007

The Observer

The debate over immigrant children in Britain's schools was reignited this weekend after the country's leading headteachers told The Observer that rising numbers of foreign pupils are putting some schools near breaking point because they do not have the resources to cope.

Members of the highly respected National Association of Headteachers will this week tell Parliament that the issue is starting to change the culture of some schools. Some heads said the issue was 'out of control'.

While praising the ability of the new pupils, many of them from eastern Europe, and emphasising that they should be welcomed into schools, headteachers are concerned they do not have the amount of money needed to cope with the issue.

'There is a feeling among some of our members that this is out of control and unpredictable,' said Mick Brookes, general secretary of the NAHT. Brookes, who will give evidence this week to a Parliamentary inquiry investigating the impact of immigration on British society, added: 'Some schools just don't know how many migrant children they will have to admit.'

He said that while schools could absorb one or two foreign pupils, some were struggling with the sudden large increase in the numbers of children from overseas: 'If you get a sudden influx not only will it strain or even break the resources of the school, it will also change the culture of that school.'

Clarissa Williams, head of Tolworth Girls' School in Kingston upon Thames, south London, said she received £1,300 a year from the government to cover the costs of teaching English to foreign pupils but was having to spend £30,000 of her own budget to keep pace.

'These children just appear from nowhere,' Williams said. 'They turn up on your doorstep and if you have space you have to make the necessary arrangements. It places a significant additional strain on budgets.'

On Tuesday the association will tell the House of Lords economic affairs committee that education budgets have not kept pace with the increase in the number of pupils for whom English is a second language, or not spoken at all, who have

entered Britain since the European Union expanded three years ago.

The ethnic minority achievement grant, the main funding stream for schools, has increased marginally from around £160m to just under £180m since 2005, when countries from the former eastern bloc joined the EU. But over the past three years, hundreds of thousands more migrant children have entered Britain's education system.+
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NEW MIGRANT JOBS MADNESS

Friday November 23,2007
By Tom Whitehead
Have your say(28)

Employers will break race relations laws if they refuse to consider foreigners for jobs, even if the candidates do not speak English, the Home Office warned yesterday.

And any job applicant, including British candidates, will be treated as a potential illegal immigrant and have to prove they have a right to work in the UK.
 

The warnings came as ministers announced that employers who hire illegal immigrants will face £10,000 fines for every unauthorised worker.

Critics fear that the penalties will hit small firms and families who employ nannies and do not have the experience to spot fake documents.

The warnings were contained in race relations guidance issued yesterday alongside the Government’s new offensive to tackle illegal workers.
 

It comes two weeks after it emerged that 5,000 illegal migrants had been cleared to work as security guards.
 

The Home Office document said: “Indirect discrimination means imposing a condition or requirement which applies equally to everyone, but is harder for people from particular racial groups to satisfy and which cannot be justified.

“For example, it would be discriminatory to ask for a very high standard of English when the job does not require this, or to reject an applicant who has an unfamiliar accent.”

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03 November 2007 BBC

BBC article

National Trust against homes plan 

The National Trust is to set itself up in direct opposition to the government's house-building programme.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged to build three million more homes by 2020 to tackle the housing crisis.

But the chairman of the National Trust will tell the organisation's AGM later this would destroy the countryside.

Sir William Proby will suggest the Trust intervenes in planning inquiries and buys greenfield land to protect it from house building.

The government insists green-belt land is safe.

It says the boom in house building would take place on brownfield sites and areas owned by the public sector.

Planning system

Sir William told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We're not saying no development ever on the greenbelt. Far from it.

02 November 2007 Express

Express article

MIGRANTS TAKE ALL NEW JOBS IN BRITAIN

Friday November 2,2007

By Tom Whitehead

Foreign workers have taken every new job in Britain for the past four years, astonishing figures show.

The total of migrant employees since 2003 has soared by 740,000, while the number of Britons in work has gone into reverse and dropped by 120,000. This means that foreign workers filled all the extra 620,000 jobs which were created during those four years.

The revelation is a severe embarrassment for Gordon Brown and makes a mockery of his recent pledge to create “British jobs for British workers”. The Prime Minister’s discomfort deepened when an investigation was launched into how white Britons are being left behind in the housing queue.

The damaging figures emerged just three days after ministers twice had to revise statistics on the number of foreign workers and jobs created under Labour. Communities Secretary Hazel Blears yesterday made the Government’s third blunder of the week as she tried to shift the blame for the first errors on to the Office for National Statistics.

She referred to the body or its figures as “independent” on four occasions – but it is a department of the Treasury and answers to a minister.

She also angered many town hall leaders when, referring to the impact of immigration, she said: “There are lots of parts of Britain that are not populated hardly at all. I think the sense that we are full indicates we have absolutely no room left.”+
 

Full Express article

Teletext news

Suspected illegal immigrants have been retaining clearance to work in sensitive jobs - even after being banned from acting as security guards.

Full Teletext news item

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