New Imigration Reform

[Taem]

Found two interesting articles while reading Google News the other day:

Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants in UK

LONDON: A political party in the UK has called for long-term illegal immigrants to be offered an amnesty and the chance to gain British citizenship.

According to a proposal adopted at the Liberal Democrats' party conference, nearly 600,000 people living in "a perpetual twilight world" could get a chance to regularise their status after ten years, report said on Wednesday.

"The issue of immigration has become the dog-pit of British politics. That (amnesty) is the only sensible way to persuade the public that this is a measured, pragmatic way of proceeding," the party's home affairs spokesperson Nick Clegg said.

More than 560,000 people have been arriving in the UK with the intention of staying more than a year, say government figures. Insisting that immigration into Britain was "not too high", he said, "If you have an immigration system where you have large numbers of people coming..., the system is not competent and you don't plan for the consequences, and you don't work to integrate people, then of course the numbers can seem too high."

But both the ruling Labour Party and the Tories have opposed the move. "An amnesty is unnecessary and would simply create a strong pull for waves of illegal migration," Liam Byrne, the UK immigration minister said.

That last comment really caught my attention because of the discussion kandrathe and I were having about the possibility of giving amnesty to those illegals here in the US who for whatever reason "deserve" citizenship, but read on...

New Immigration Reform in UK

Associated Press
Brown Says UK Will Rank Immigrants
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER 09.24.07, 2:38 PM ET




BOURNEMOUTH, England -

Britain will rank potential immigrants according to what they offer the country, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday, promising to streamline his country's clunky immigration system.

Britain has been trying to find a way to keep its doors open to the foreign doctors, nurses, engineers and technology workers it needs while keeping a firm hand on which individuals are admitted. Earlier this year, Britain announced plans to adopt a system similar to Australia's point-based plan, which gives the highest priority to immigrants with the most badly needed skills.

"Britain will continue to benefit from skilled workers abroad and they will understand their responsibilities to earn the right to settle," Brown said in his speech to the Labour Party conference.

The new program assigns points to immigrants for the skills they possess. That would offer an advantage to workers with higher degrees. The least skilled workers would find it tougher to stay in Britain.

The new system is expected to come into force in the middle of next year and will apply to citizens of countries outside the European Union, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. It will not apply to refugees or asylum cases.

Advocates say the system is simpler, cleaner and easier to enforce than the current rules governing foreigners. Participants in more than 80 different work and study programs will now be ranked by skills and put into five different groups.

Scientists or entrepreneurs will comprise the top group and be able to come to Britain without a job offer. Next come nurses and teachers, who can stay if they are sponsored. The third group will be temporary workers, who can come to fill labor shortages. Students make up the fourth group while working vacationers or touring artists such as musicians make up the fifth.

Each would have different rights and different prospects for being allowed to stay in the country - and eventually earn British citizenship.

That bothers immigration advocacy groups, who say the process effectively makes it impossible for unskilled workers to stay in the country long term or acquire citizenship and all the rights that come with it.

"Unskilled workers, when you really limit their rights, you really are saying that they can't come here," said Rhian Beynon, a spokeswoman for Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. "There may be a utilitarian argument, but then you ignore the human rights argument."

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

If the US only accepted "educated" Mexicans as citizens, wouldn't that be interesting? I can't even begin to imagine what would happen. It's actually quite the opposite here, where we accept only the most uneducated so that they can take on the most piss-poor jobs that no American wants for minimum wage. It seems to me America has a very symbiotic relationship with Mexico that no other country truly has.