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Scientists Decry "Horrifying" UK Border Test Plan
cremeglace writes "Scientists are dismayed and outraged at a new project by the UK border agency to test DNA, hair, and nails to determine the nationality of asylum seekers and help decide if they can enter the UK. 'Horrifying,' 'naive,' and 'flawed' are among the words geneticists and isotope specialists have used to describe the 'Human Provenance pilot project.' The methods being used to determine ancestry include fingerprinting of mitochondrial DNA and isotope analysis of hair and nails. ScienceInsider blog notes that it is 'not clear who is conducting the DNA and isotope analyses for the Border Agency,' and that the agency has not 'cited any scientific papers that validate its DNA and isotope methods.' There is also a followup post with more information on the tests that are being used, and some reactions from experts in genetic forensic analysis. This story was first reported in The Observer on Sunday."
Take away all the immigrants (especially the highly skilled ones) and the UK economy will collapse. The technological centers of innovation in UK, e.g. Cambridge, will shrink or simply disappear without an influx of foreign workers. London will grind to a halt if you remove the foreign workers (they keep the place together, clean and in functioning order). Note that ex-Imperial colony immigrants have to jump through exactly the same hoops as other people to obtain the right to stay in the UK.
Imperialism might have ended 50 years ago, but the effect of imperialism will be felt for a long time to come, especially in Africa. All the artificial borders that the imperialist rule imposed on regions (notice all the straight artificial borders on the map in Africa), have to be corrected. Usually this comes in the form of civil war, Sudan being an excellent example of this. I refer you to Parag Khanna's TED talk. I'm not saying the UK should throw open its borders for ex-imperialist colony immigrants, but do realize that the effect of imperialism is still felt in regions of the world today.
A picture is worth exactly 1024 words.
The big difference was that the indigenous population at the time of those invasions didn't have the politically correct brigade stopping them from resisting.
We ended up with *winners* immigrating. This is a good thing.
This is in marked contrast to today where we seem set to let all the *losers* into the country which is a bad thing.
So your point must be that we are allowed, indeed required, to take up arms and violently resist these invaders, and only if they win should they be able to stay?
I could live with that.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I'm sure there are lots of people like your next door neighbour who we would want to come to the UK but equally there are many people who aren't like your neighbour that we don't particulary want to come here and there does have to be some sort of system to sort out one from the other.
This proposed system clearly isn't going to work and the current system is probably not very efficient, partly no doubt to the number of people it needs to process and the amount of money available to do the processing.
There's clearly a massive difference between people moving from Yorkshire to Lancashire and people moving from Tajikistan to the UK. Those moving from Yorkshire to Lancashire are already British citizens whereas people from Tajikistan probably aren't and people from Yorkshire have an excellent understanding of British cultural values and behaviour ( excepting maybe those of Londoners ) whereas people from Tajikistan could conceivably have a much harder fitting in and getting themselves a job.
In an ideal world people would be free to go where they would but this isn't an ideal world and people do have a natural inclination to hold on to their own cultural values no matter how misaligned they may be with those of their host country, people do tend to stick together and form insular communities and mistrust those from other communities and people do want to have an easy a life as possible even if someone else is picking up the bill.
This is our country and we should have the right, and the mechanisms, to decide who we want to come and join us living here.
Right yes, Saddam was a fan of Stalin whether you know/like the fact or not. He was reputed to have a lot of books about Stalin translated into Arabic.
The thing about letting in absolutely anyone is that it doesn't protect the benefits of exclusivity. It also doesn't reinforce the cultural and social preferences of those people a country belongs to.
With culture comes religious and political baggage. For example, Muslims tend to bring Islam with them when they arrive in a Western country. Religion is bad, primitive religion is worse, and there is every reason for Westerners who value personal freedom to keep out religious enemies just as they would reject political enemies (religion is merely superstitious politics).
It's a bit of a wrench when people raised on simplistic, very blind idealism find that other people can use their naive ideals against them. To the extent that you allow a population of social primitives into your home, they will make it over in the image of the societies they left, especially when their religion is predatory. People cherish the idea that their ideals will magically protect them (rather a secular religion IMO) but are coming up against reality.
Europe belongs to Europeans. They should decide if there is a moral obligation to turn it into Arabia and Africa, or not. I would think they suffered enough getting Christianity off their backs, but it appears Euros don't remember history any better than Yanks.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Decrying an unpleasant situation is insufficient, when the alternatives are worse.
Assuming we really do buy rare elements only from Africa and not also from China, Russia and Argentina which have a lot of them as well. Our alternatives then would be:
A) We don't buy rare earth elements from Africa:
Western standard of living: lower, prices for goods are higher, some goods are infeasible.
African standards of living: less exports, less jobs for average Joes, less warlord financing, probably more diverse criminal activity and stability. Example: cell phones are available only for the very top of society in Africa, prices are too high for everyone else.
B) We pay "fair trade" prices for rare elements from Africa: (assuming someone can properly the "fair" price of anything)
Western standard of living: lower, prices for goods are higher, some goods are infeasible. Example: Cell phones are expensive
African standards of living: less exports, less jobs for average Joes, probably equal warlord financing, criminal activity and stability remains constant. Cell phones become expensive that new models are only available to a smaller percentage of African people.
C) We pay whatever the market price for rare earth elements is:
Western standard of living: as high as the market prices allow
African standards of living: more exports, more jobs for average Joes, more financing for warlords, a broader middle class, less diverse criminal activity, more stability. Cell phones are an ubiquitous commodity for a large part of the population.
Trade benefits both parties or it's not trade. Trade between totally unequal partners can benefit both. Economics 101. Do your research.
Re your last paragraph, that's exactly what we used to do, but not at a county level, a *parish* level. To leave and settle in another parish, you needed a piece of paper called a testificat, signed by your minister, stating your good character. I'm not sure if it's ever been formally abolished, either.
[FUCK BETA]
Do you also want the system like Canada where doctors end up working as janitors?
Note: I'm a Briton who emmigrated to Canada in 1996, and now hold a passport there. I returned to the UK a couple of months ago. I think you're wrong about immigration. Your comments are bigotted - this country needs a culture of acceptance, like Canada has.
No, but they will pay enough tax in their working lives to more than counterbalance what they cost in retirement. Yes we probably get the same demographic problem when they/their descendants slow down their reproduction, but better to have it in a few centuries than a few decades - we are getting richer as a nation all the time so will be better equipped to deal with it the later it happens.
You are going to have a long fucking wait. There are now, and always have been, plenty of the jobs that immigrants go for. Good fucking luck getting our home-grown underclass to take them.
As I see it the economic benefits of immigration are pretty much unanswerable. The problems (and they are real problems) are social, not economic.
This sig all sigs devours
I have a friend in DHS who actually had to deny a greencard to someone because of a failed paternity test. This guy thought he had gotten a girl pregnant on a trip to Latin America, had been sending her money for 8 years to raise the child and then tried to bring them all to the US only to find out he wasn't daddy. I'll bet he was pissed.
So these immigrants stay young for ever?
No but they will pay for peoples pensions.
It's just putting off the problem.
Perhaps when the country isn't economically fucked we can look for a long term solution, but for now this workaround is fine!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
That's complete nonesense.
You've fallen for the line that there is some abstract entity called 'country' which can benefit from an influx of these so-called intelligent 'immigrants'.
When it comes to considering whether to allow immigration the question should be: does it benefit citizens IN THE LONG TERM. If the answer is no then they shouldn't be let in.
Let's look at the three main arguments for allow immigrants:
1) highly skilled.
Firstly, what's the chance that Bonga-Bonga land is going to produce anyone that's highly skilled? Secondly if they could, why would they come here? And thirdly if we need them INVEST IN OUR PEOPLE!
In fact you could argue that by letting them come here we're depriving their homeland of their expertise.
2) Immigrants will help pay the pensions
Immigrants get old as well. So all you do is push the problem back. And that assumes they don't just stick their snouts in the benefits trough.
3) Immigrants will do jobs that we (citizens) don't want to do.
Firstly, immigrants don't stick with doing the crappy under-paid jobs. Next generation they too will be declining to do them. So unless you're willing to make them a slave-race that isn't going to work for long. And supply and demand: increase wages to a level that attracts people who want those jobs, don't import foreigners.
There is literally no good reason for a rich country like the UK to allow immigration from the third world.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
>>>they will pay enough tax in their working lives to more than counterbalance what they cost in retirement.
Yes but when the oil drought hits the fan circa 2020 or 2030, causing rampant shortages in food supplies, having *fewer* hungry people will be an advantage. It's easier to feed 10 million than 50 million, so it's wiser to close the doors now rather than later. (Even if we come-up with alternative solar power, the transition from oil will be easier with a smaller population.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Jamaican drug gangs and knife-wielding gangs of black kids
I lived in London for years, i only got attacked once that was by a gang of white kids!
Muslim bus-bombers
Fail, there was only one Muslim bus-bomber, but hey I'm going to assume you either can't count to one and/or don't have a grasp of basic English, so you probably got your information from the daily mail! What i do find interesting is you didn't leave when bombings were much more common, like during the early 90s!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
You are failing to make the distinction between a state founded as an ethnic and national project, as many European and East Asian countries are, as opposed to countries that are not, e.g. Australia, United States, Canada.
While I am by no means a UKIP/BNP voter, I think that in any given country, the concerns of the ethnic majority, about having their way of life disrupted, and their culture diluted by people from poor countries who don't respect their hosts, is justified.
East Asia, by and large, are doing a very good job at avoiding cultural suicide, by severely restricting mass immigration from poor countries, or countries with lesser-developed cultures. Europe, OTOH, has failed, and with the ghettoization of its inner cities, has only recently woken up to that fact.
What the fuck is going on over there?
Seriously, cameras in people's homes to make sure their kids are being "properly parented;" testing DNA at the border to determine ethnicity (and who knows what else, because what does race have to do with nationality these days)... Branding children as future criminals at age 5 based on hyperactive or normal anti-social kid behavior....and there's more that I can't even remember now.
England is becoming some nightmare 1984/Gattaca mashup...Brave New World indeed.
That's a pretty remarkable DNA test that can tell someone's political affiliation (because, let's face it, that's what they're actually checking for - guilt by racial association). I'll bet within 6 months or so they'll even be able to tell what religion one subscribes to! In a couple of years, what ice cream flavor you prefer and (gasp!) your actual sexual orientation!!! I feel so much safer now!
What won't surprise me is if some Giant Old Man In The Sky just waves his pinky finger at this planet and demolishes it wholesale in complete frustration. Couldn't blame Him at all for that...
~Just as a thing fails if it lacks a kernel, so too it fails if it lacks a skin. ~ Rumi, Discourses
While I agree that Britain has a serious problem with over population,
Excuse me? Tens of thousands of empty council flats and houses - thousands of 2nd homes sitting empty - thousands of acres of land prime for development sitting empty. How in the hell do you think we have a problem with over population? The only people that think that, don't think of it as over population - but as too many of the wrong kind, much like GP.
Fuck it - wait till we Scots are independent and we'll take the buggers. What's left of Britain can keep the lazy, arrogant 'natives' and we'll continue to develop world class education, medical and scientific progress with the aid of our foreign friends. IF we were seriously over populated do you really think we would be encouraging all the ex-pats to come home? Or lamenting the recovery of the polish economy as their ex-pats go home?
I'm an American, and I agree with you 100%. I can barely understand the foreigners who now own all the convienience stores here, and there are places in Florida where you can't buy anything if you don't speak Spanish. If it weren't for the Mexican farm workers, farmers would have to pay a living wage.
Then you have the H1B visas for programmers an the like when there are thousands of unemployed programmers here; the employers can exploit the foreigners more easily.
my issue is that the foreigners we let in are the scum their own countries are glad to be without.
Your Cromwell kicked one of my anscestors out of Ireland. He and his sons were high ranking members of the army that kicked your asses in the American Revolution.
Free Martian Whores!
Standard rhetoric as response, that adds absolutely nothing
Not really a valid comparison, as Canada is the world's second biggest country, and could fit the population of Britian in several times over without even noticing, but Britain is way more accepting of immigration than Canada.
To move to Cananda, they require you speak English or French, preferably both, you generally need a degree, and a job. Or a lot of money. To move to the UK, you don't need anything other than directions to the welfare office. There's not much threat of being deported, it's very easy just to disappear.
Why don't you ask the primary school teachers who are seeing classes filled with kids who barely speak English, as to the benefits of unrestricted immigration. Never mind us accepting them, why don't immigrants to Britain accept us? Why don't they learn the language and secure employment before getting on the plain?
We have millions unemployed, we don't need any immigrants to work as janitors.