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April 24, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
17:58
#Bristol Debates： The Immigration System's Problems
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Right, what's your name, Joe?
Joe.
Joe, let's begin.
And what's your question?
So UKIP, kind of, I get this feeling from UKIP, and particularly with the rhetoric and even the policy documents, it's take, take, take with immigration.
It's cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
But I've been through immigration.
My girlfriend is a permanent resident of Australia through a spousal visa.
She's English.
And then we got dragged through courts here because of a small error and they didn't even show up to court.
They're just wasting taxpayers' money.
It's take, take, take, cut, cut, cut.
And there's no appreciation of the different circumstances.
It's the crossover between, I guess, mail order brides and myself.
You know, that kind of crossover between, oh, we want to crack down on this, but then it just bleeds out.
And, yeah.
Right, okay.
So what exactly are you asking me?
With UKIP, you now being a candidate, what's the concessions for immigration?
What's going to be added?
Not the cut, but what's going to be added to the portfolio of immigration?
That's a really good question.
I mean, I'm not responsible for any UKIP policies.
All of these were set before I joined the party or anything like that.
And they didn't, you know, like sit there and say, right, as far as I'm aware, they don't have a party whip.
So I'm not being told to say anything.
So everything I say is completely my own opinion.
From you, yes.
And it may well not be representative of the party if I say something similar.
Or Germany.
But I think that the way we look at immigration has to be sort of fundamentally rethought because I think that our immigration policies are actually doing damage to the countries from which people are immigrating as well as causing problems in this country and other countries as well.
And it's nothing to do with the individual immigrant themselves because they're not responsible for anyone else's coming into the country and they obviously want, you know, I'm probably sure they are more likely to act in a sort of civil law-abiding manner.
Because I mean, why wouldn't you?
If anyone went to another country, you definitely want to follow.
And your statutory rights if you're not a citizen of that.
Exactly.
They've obviously got all the same rights as any other legal citizen.
No, not for deportation, permanent residence.
If you go to jail or if you can be prized.
I'm not necessarily against that.
No, no, no.
But I think that conceptually the way we think about it should probably change because it seems to be kind of a lazy dependence on the expertise of other countries that I think is a real disservice.
It's a very pessimistic way of looking at our own country.
So I really think that we can do all of the things that we need to do.
So the thing that you hear all the time is, oh, well, the NHS will collapse without immigration.
Yeah, the NHS will collapse without immigration.
It's like, well, I mean, really?
Are we really not capable of managing our own health system in the sixth richest country in the world?
You know, with all the human capital we have here, I find that hard to believe.
But not only that, if we're poaching doctors from India, then we are effectively saying, right, India, you will breed and raise these people.
You will educate them at your expense and at your cost, and then we will just offer them more than you can offer them because we're in a more privileged position on the world stage.
And we have taken yet another doctor from India where there are probably many Indians who need that guy more than we do.
And so it looks like a country.
So you're taking away the individual's rights to better their life.
That's the problem with this.
So me as a skilled mechatronic engineer, there's no, because of how narrow band the exceptional individuals is, and it's mainly just sportsmen that, I'm not into sports, contribute far little in terms of a broader society than maybe just, you know, their day in the light.
So there's such a narrow band and you're saying, oh, well, globally, we have to look at India and how it's affecting them.
But it's up to the individual, particularly if there's ties already with familial relationships.
It is, it is.
But the thing is, it seems rather colonial to me to offer these kind of high incentives for us to take their best and brightest.
It's worse for America, though.
Yeah, I know, but I'm not saying it doesn't work.
It's very good, in fact, I think it's...
Thank you.
I hate the sound of my voice.
Yeah, me too.
It sounds like I'm in an 18th century church.
Yeah, me too.
But the problem is, it's really rather colonial because what we're doing there is we're extracting resources and human capital from third world countries that are trying to develop.
But we're taking all that energetic.
We're all in the same boat.
in the same boat in australia so i've been through the ringer because of these but what i mean in the context of like an anglosphere country it's different because australia is a third world It's not trying to develop that.
But the problem is with Nigeria, India, places like that.
We're taking their smart and able people that they've educated at their own expense.
And then we're saying, right, we're going to just offer them more than you can offer them.
And then they're ours now.
And if you look at it like that, then it seems rather colonial.
And it seems kind of predatory.
And it seems that we're keeping these countries down under our boots still.
And I really don't like that.
And so when you add that to the...
Do you know how many British leave the UK?
Yeah.
Yeah, well, I know.
I know the EU, I don't know about India.
No, no, no, just globally British people.
Not all retirement age, believe it or not.
There's quite a few skilled people moving across.
They're not matching it.
And there's no ability to match it.
So they push me.
I have to go to a newport court somewhere.
When you say they're not matching it, I assume you mean there are fewer British people emigrating than foreign people immigrating.
No, no, in terms of the skill, they don't match skill to skill or broad categories of skills.
Right, yeah.
You missed us, by the way.
Try again.
Those civilized ones.
Thank you.
Thank you to the police.
We really appreciate that.
We're trying to have a dialogue here.
Throwing soft missiles.
Yeah, and that wouldn't have even hurt if it had hit us.
It's a path.
So yeah, yeah.
Throwing stones.
Yeah, so I just want to make you aware of how dysfunctional the immigration system is from a case basis.
I went on all the forums, we went through the legal proceedings.
It is a quagmire where the immigration will take you by default.
They will reject by default.
And they don't even show up to court.
So I walk in, there's a judge there, and he goes, oh, they didn't show up.
State your case.
And I'm like, well, this is my girlfriend.
She's got a permanent residency in Australia as part of a spousal visa.
We're trying to get the same visa here.
And he's like, well, they didn't show up.
Well done.
So that's me under essentially UK arrest for a year and a half.
So I cannot leave this country without not being let in this country until it's all said and done for one and a half years.
So business, everything, fucked.
Jesus.
So the problem with these bigger blah blah or net immigration, look at these massive numbers, it doesn't show the modularity, the low down.
And all you have to do if you want to educate yourself is go on the UK immigration forums.
Right?
I'm spousal visa.
I've done this.
Right?
Australia, we had a case officer.
So we made a small mistake.
They rang us up and said, oh, you want to rectify this mistake?
We did so.
Here, that started it.
To the court, where it finally finished up a year and a half later.
So a small mistake, no case officer, outright reject.
You've got 14 days to leave the country or file an appeal.
Now, when you file an appeal, now you're on a track to the court.
File appeal, da da da da da da da da.
Year and a half later, lots of stress.
So what's missing in a lot of these immigration conversations is the modularity.
And no one cares to actually look under the hood and say, What is this?
And I'm telling you right now, as a UKIP representative, you need to get on top of this and stop talking, oh, 600,000 this and 400,000 that, because it doesn't show from an engineering standpoint, the absolute endurance lives.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It should be that if you're from a country where you're a recognized country, say Australia or the US, and you've got to spouse a visa that's led to a permanent residency, your immigration contacts Australia and goes, Does this fellow's girlfriend have that permanent residency?
Yes, done.
Right?
That will get rid of it all because the conditions are the same, if not harder.
Right, okay.
Right?
So, any country that has the same, if not harder, right, then just prove that link and done.
But there's no talk of this, it's all inefficient crap leading one way to a random business district in Newport where the busters don't even show up.
They don't even, I actually wanted them to show up because we had the perfect case.
Because then a legitimate case, and then it's like then you've had the argument aired in court and it's actually on record then.
Yes, it's a precedent.
Yes, yes.
That's brilliant.
So these people are all in one office in London and they are just going through the motions.
The wooden spoon, you know about the wooden spoon thing?
No, no.
So the person that could do the most default deportations where it's just like rejecting outright and non-appeal gets the wood the least in the office gets the wooden spoon.
Really?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So do you think in the home office?
Do you think it's this kind of attitude that ended up causing the Windrush scandal?
Oh, absolutely.
These people, the incompetence and the amount of money that we paid them, it was just out of whack completely.
Australia cost about 20% more, but we got our own case officer, XYZ.
The process went smoothly.
It was not nice because it costs a shit ton of money and lots of evidence.
You have to basically pour all of your personal information to the government, which I hate.
Well, obviously.
But it was done.
Here, this big talk is just devolves from the modularity of the actual thing.
So hopefully, going forward, you can look into the specificity and stop kind of generalising because I think the gender-based part of that as well, this generalization and not just the core tenets of respect and efficiency and decency.
You're talking about the poor procedure of the institution, aren't you?
Yes, and no one's looking at that.
That's a great point.
Everyone's looking at numbers here, numbers there, old May with his flag.
Stop this, stop that.
No, we're not actually doing that, but we're not, you know, not like that.
But no, I appreciate your point.
I take your point.
So the other thing I wanted to talk to you about is that travelling around this country on holidays and whatever, and in the local pub, there's UKIP has in those pubs.
I'm just hearing, you know, just not nice shit.
You know what I mean?
And it's not your fault, and it's not some people that I agree with most of their policies in UKIP, but there is an undercurrent.
Yeah, how do you deal with that?
There are some dirty, dirty smear merchants out there.
And I figure that the best we can do is literally just come down and let you speak your mind to it.
And then we can give you what we think, or at least in my respect, I can give you what I think.
I can take on board what you've said.
Because, I mean, I think you're absolutely right.
And again, it goes down to the corruption of our institutions at this point.
I want them to be neutral and efficient.
And you're describing the exact opposite.
So this falls precisely within the remit of the things that I want to talk about.
Because this is a real and deep-seated problem in our country.
Which brings us to Brexit.
Well, it does.
Oh, God, man.
I'm very interested.
So Optimus me is pro-Brexit purely because you don't, one, the sovereign currency, you don't want to be coupling economically because, you know, basically macroeconomics and that slides and falls.
You want to, yes, there's the pound, but there's so much coupling that it creates a non-movement within a volatile future market.
So that's optimist means like you want to stay away from that.
Then there's the coupling of all the basically sovereign rights regulations and the coupling of immigration.
So maybe even if you understood the specificity of the trials and tribulations of the UK Immigration Forum, even if you understood that, would you be able to enact that?
So that's the optimist, that's the pessimist.
That's the aim of what we're trying to do, is to be absolutely repatriate these powers.
But I am against Brexit because I'm a pessimist.
And I look at these incompetent 70% through two schools lawyers trying to enact.
And I don't see any groundswell because you've got with the European Union, you've got the ossification, just like with gender identity through times, the ossification of cultures that concrete and trying to unpack that is not so quickly is not pessimistic.
It's going to require like a radical audit of these institutions.
That's the problem.
Yeah, but I'm not a radical.
No, I know.
I go middle of the road.
The middle of the road is anti-Brexit.
I didn't think I was a radical either, but it turns out that I am.
So I'm obviously pro-Brexit.
But I agree with you that these institutions need to be severely audited by someone with an eye to try and restore the neutrality of them.
I'm probably being wildly optimistic.
It's probably just not possible given the political.
That's I think it's not possible.
Yeah, it probably isn't.
But I think that we should try and push for the good either way.
What about the economics that's being spelt out with the currency fluctuations?
I'm well aware of them because I trade in Australian and US dollar all the time.
What do you think about another vote?
Just because people now kind of understand the economics, that Grecian holiday, that two weeks a year that that family gets to have in Greece, that resets the valve to get hard work for the new year.
You know what I mean?
Now everyone kind of feels the it's democratic, no?
Well, I don't think that we'll be not able to holiday in Greece if we leave the EU.
I don't think that's going to happen because Greece's economy is mostly tourism.
Yes, absolutely.
And I've been on holiday to Greece many times myself.
I actually got married in Crete.
Yep.
It was beautiful.
I loved it.
There's an economic tipping point, though, for people's ability and what you call it, fiscal.
There is, but the thing about the second vote is that, I mean, it seems that most regions of the country at this point want no Brexit rather than any other option.
Yes.
No deal, sorry, apart from any other option, apart from London, which is no Brexit.
So I'm actually with Diane Abbott on this one when she said on question time, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
a second referendum might not go that way it might be even worse so and but not only that it really does like it reduces negotiation power as well it's exactly absolutely So if it goes the other way, it's even worse.
Exactly.
But also, I always have to bring this back to the principle of the thing, but I really do think the principle of the thing is important.
Like, implicit in every time we cast a vote is the understanding that we will abide by the result.
Because otherwise, why are you casting it in the first place?
You must.
And since the result was to leave by a clear margin of over a million people, that's not disputable.
Yes.
We have a moral obligation to honour that vote.
Now, in five years' time afterwards or something, you can say, look, this has been a bad idea.
Maybe we should see if we want to rejoin.
We'll have a vote and see if we want to join, whatever.
We can do all that as a second thing.
But I really think we have to honour the first vote first before we do anything else.
Otherwise, we are kind of living a sham.
And that's one of the problems with the EU.
Look at making the Irish and the Danes and whoever re-vote on various treaties until they're given the answer they want.
Direct democracy, Switzerland has lots of loggerheads.
Yeah, yeah, they have to clear those loggerheads.
Exactly.
It's not how democracy should work.
The powers that be demand you re-vote on every damn thing that you voted against that way they wanted.
So pessimist you.
Pessimist you before the referendum was even called, would you have wanted it?
Because I can't find much on your talking about the referendum in the first place.
A binary without giving outcomes.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because at the end of the day, it's such a complicated process.
You can't sit there and say, right, we've got this plan to leave the EU because it's contingent on the EU itself cooperating with the plan anyway, which we've seen they're not going to do.
It has to be done in bulk.
It can't be segmented off.
Exactly.
It has to be like, are we going to leave or are we going to stay?
And then the conversation, the negotiation begins from that point.
And that's what we did.
We voted leave.
It was unambiguous.
So we should leave even if it hurts.
and it will be a lesson to us, you know.
But I think that we are actually...
And again, I think this comes down to the lack of optimism about the country.
Yeah.
I think that we're quite diligent people.
We work hard.
We pay our taxes.
You're too optimistic.
I don't think I am.
I don't think I am.
Whoever voted to leave is pretty optimistic.
Yeah, but we are optimistic, but that's the thing.
I think that there's just too much pessimism.
I think that everyone's too afraid.
I think we're not.
There's not too much pessimism.
It was in.
It was in.
I think there's too much pessimism.
Well, look, I mean among the great and good.
Among the elite classes.
They're like, oh, God, this will be awful.
And then they're worried that they're going to be held to account.
And it's like, well, okay, even if it goes terribly, what's the worst that anyone can say of you?
The worst that anyone can say is, well, we followed the mandate of the people.
You voted, we implemented it to the best of our ability.
So at the end of the day, you know.
It's a shame they're also in red.
Well, you look at where they come from and the social circles they come.
There's no difference.
All I'm saying is...
Australia has the Senate, which is a preferential system.
And you've got the Shooters and Fishers party in there, the Bobcatter party.
Well, all I'm saying is prove him wrong.
You needed the preferential system before Brexit.
And then you would get at least some wildcards in there kind of tipping the balance.
But thank you very much.
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