How Not to Run a Country: The Immigration Special

Before you get into my blog please read the following, it will help you understand the immigration problem……. And just perhaps give you a clue on how to fix it:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

A sonnet by Emma Lazarus, inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty:

When these words were fixed to the plinth of the Statue of Liberty in 1903, the USA was
experiencing a huge surge of immigration.
Beginning in 1901, people from Southern and Eastern Europe started heading to the US,
hoping for freedom and opportunity.
Most of them arrived with no money – and no English.
By 1920, close to 15 million of them had crossed the Atlantic
They often found themselves living in desperate conditions, with housing in the cities
becoming more and more crowded.
And when a surge in unemployment after World War One led to unrest breaking out
across the country, the new arrivals became a focus of suspicion…
Workers blamed them for driving down wages and causing unemployment.
Politicians and business owners feared them for different reasons… Were the boatloads
of new arrivals full of secret revolutionaries? In Russia in 1917 a revolution had
overthrown the social order. Could this happen in the USA?
Newspaper stories ramped up the tension – creating the ‘Red Scare’…
Before 1900, almost all Europeans who’d settled in the US had been Protestants from
Northern Europe. They were known as ‘WASP’s; White, Anglo Saxon Protestants – and
the sudden arrival of so many non-Protestants made many of them anxious…
“We true Americans … don’t want our jobs and homes taken away from us by
immigrants. There are far too many people coming from southern Europe and many are
Catholic or Jewish. They are not good Protestants like us.”
When the slogan ‘America for Americans’ became more and more common, politicians
felt the pressure.
Governments responded by passing a series of laws restricting immigration.
The 1902 Chinese Exclusion Act, 1917 Immigration Act, and the 1921 Emergency Quota
Act.
But those who sailed past the Statue of Liberty in the early 20th Century changed the
USA forever.
A new, more complex racial hierarchy was formed, with WASPS at the top.
But it was also those ‘tired and poor’ immigrants who powered the nation’s economic
boom – and became part of its uniquely diverse cultural heritage

A lesson from history that our so-called leaders failed to learn.

🗳️ How Not to Run a Country: The Immigration Special

Britain’s award-winning performance in self-inflicted chaos, starring dinghies, doctors, and newspaper headlines

🛬 Welcome to Britannia Ltd.

Where immigration is a maze, not a policy

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
…but only if they’ve paid the Immigration Health Surcharge, passed 17 English language tests, and can recite the Magna Carta backwards in the rain.

Immigration remains the Great British Distraction — a Shakespearean epic where no one really understands the plot, but everyone is convinced it’s someone else’s fault. Legal, illegal, Channel-hopping or NHS-working — all are swept into the same confused narrative: a cross between Kafka, Orwell, and a bad episode of Panorama.

Let’s lift the curtain on this absurdist drama.

⚖️ Legal Immigration: Jump Through Flaming Bureaucratic Hoops

Legal migrants arrive through official doorways: work, study, family reunification — all lovingly guarded by forms, fees, and the ever-charming No Recourse to Public Funds rule.

Work visas: 241,719 granted in 2024
Study visas: 392,969 issued
Family visas: 86,940 approved

They pay handsomely for the privilege of contributing to the economy, often in sectors like care and health where domestic recruitment has failed spectacularly. And for their trouble, they’re rewarded with suspicion and headlines asking: “Are they taking your job or your doctors’ appointment?”

🚣 Illegal Immigration: The Boat People Paradox

Then come the “boat people” — those escaping conflict, chaos, or collapsing regimes (some conveniently linked to UK foreign policy). In 2024 alone:

36,816 crossed the Channel in small boats
132,000+ have done so since 2018
Top countries: Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Iran

They arrive in rubber dinghies to face rubbery policies. Branded “invaders” in the press, “victims” by NGO’s, and “political liabilities” by ministers, they are neither welcome nor properly managed. Often held in hotels, blamed for costs, and demonised in Westminster — they are used not as people but as props.

💷 The Benefits Myth: “They Get Everything!”

Ah yes — the immortal urban legend. The myth that a newly arrived migrant instantly receives:

A flat in Kensington
A lifetime supply of benefits
And possibly a free car from the Council

Here’s the truth:

Country	Immediate Benefits for Newcomers
UK	£49.18/week for asylum seekers. Legal migrants: minimal access to public funds
France	Social housing access after 3 months (EU) or 5 years (non-EU)
Germany	Housing, food, €150–€250/month for asylum seekers
Belgium	Weekly allowance in reception centres, work permitted inside

Britain isn’t too generous. It’s simply generous with bureaucracy, mean with mercy, and selectively frugal, especially when there’s a newspaper deadline approaching.

🏗️ Infrastructure: The Great Blame Game

It’s become fashionable to blame migrants for every strain on British infrastructure, as if potholes were smuggled in via Calais.

But let’s be honest:

The NHS was collapsing before the migrants came
Schools were overstretched before new arrivals
Housing shortages stem from decades of under-building, not boat crossings

The migrants didn’t break the system. They just showed up to witness the spectacular collapse.

🔍 Who Actually Benefits?

Legal migrants pay taxes, fill skill gaps, and rejuvenate ageing workforces.
Asylum seekers, meanwhile, are locked into limbo for years — neither allowed to work nor afforded dignity.
The government, however, wins votes by acting tough on both, while quietly expanding legal migration to plug labour shortages.

It’s the political equivalent of blaming the fire brigade for your arson charges.

🧠 Conclusion: How Not to Run a Country

Britain loves an underdog story — until the underdog actually arrives. Then it builds a legal labyrinth for one group, floats a barge for another, and wonders why neither integration nor border control seems to work.

The choice is ours:

Continue weaponising migration as a panic button
Or finally admit that people — whether they arrive by form or by raft — are not the threat, but often the patches keeping our frayed society stitched together

Until then, Fortress Britain will remain very good at keeping people out — and equally effective at keeping compassion in.

so, who is going to fix it? Starmer, Davey, Badenoch, or Farage?

The first three have tried and made a complete mess of it.