More good news?

This is doubleplusgood good news.

Immigrants who jeer at British troops in the street or 'show disregard for UK values' will be barred from gaining citizenship.

Migrants wanting a UK passport will also have to pass a history test for the first time - an idea ministers had previously spent four years resisting.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas says that demonstrating against servicemen - as took place recently in disgraceful scenes in Luton - 'enrages' law abiding Britons, and should be a block on a foreigner obtaining citizenship

It is included in tough new rules…

But, oh-oh: look how well ‘tough new rules’ worked with benefits claims, dangerous dogs, public order offences. Singleplusgood good news, maybe.

…unveiled today to reduce the all-time record number of citizenship applications being approved by the Home Office.

Hmm: ‘the all-time record number of citizenship applications being approved…’ So maybe singlegood good news after all…

Mr Woolas said the new points-based citizenship rules would also stop the population from reaching 70million, and bring 'control' to the migration system.

This is not so good, in that I’m unable to believe it – it being a government statement and all, and about a figure no longer being reached that the self-same government had previously denied being on its way.

And, in an exclusive Daily Mail interview, he revives a previously discredited promise that the population will not be allowed to reach 70million, as is currently predicted by Whitehall statisticians.

OK, the permanent government does say the 70 million thing’s true, but there are a lot here already – what of those and what was quaintly called ‘natural increase’ in former years? Some actual kicking out retrospectively for the extreme cases of what he suggests below will reduce points awarded towards granting citizenship would be good here, but we can’t expect everything.

Mr Woolas said that increasing the UK population Migrants will still have to work legally in the UK for a fixed number of years, and pass the Life in the UK test, but will then also have to go through a new screening system.

Points will be awarded for earning potential, any special skills, qualifications, whether a person works in a shortage occupation, speaks a good standard of English and even if they are willing to live in a more remote part of the UK.

I can see the snag here, can’t you?

‘Yes, most assuredly beloved infidel official of godless Christian state, I would indeed be sincerely delighted to ply my kebab-delivering trade/ medical practice in Ross and Cromarty or better still Cornwall. Ideally, I’d like to work on the coast – perhaps close to a little-used port or sandy beach nearby, like Lansallos or Boscastle…’

The number of points needed will be adjusted, on a regular basis, to limit the number of passports being approved, and ensure population growth is kept more firmly under 'control'.

Crucially, a number of factors which could lead to a migrant being deducted points, and effectively stopped from becoming a citizen, will also be included in the new system.

These include committing serious criminal or anti-social behaviour - usually resulting in a prison sentence

I’d go for an immediate ‘Application refused and immediately repatriate at the sentence’s end’ for this latter one personally - or 'circumstances where an active disregard for UK values is demonstrated'.

Love it or leave it, at last.

This would include attending a demonstration against British soldiers, or showing disrespect to the war dead.

Obvious snags are that this scheme (even if it is truly as reasonable as the article suggests and that’s a colossal ‘if’) will not be administered by people like me but rather by people already in the system that has allowed, cajoled, mission-crept and even funded pro-immigration lobby groups.

It’s a bit like trying to make Ministry of Education officials and educationalists and teachers enforce the National Curriculum which was aimed at the failures of progressive educationalists, bureaucrats and teachers.

Here’s the UKBA’s success rate for 2007.

Table 1 Applications for British citizenship received and decided in the United Kingdom,1997- 2007

Year Applications Grants Refusals Refusal %

1997 66,000 37,010 4,745 11%

1998 68,030 53,935 3,750 7%

1999 67,400 54,900 3,995 7%

2000 62,475 82,210 6,785 8%

2001 109,005 90,295 9,530 10%

2002 115,500 120,125 8,455 7%

2003 147,345 130,535 10,555 7%

2004 132,630 148,275 13,820 9%

2005 219,115 161,700 19,905 11%

2006 149,695 154,020 15,310 9%

2007 160,980 164,635 15,630 9%

Received and decided in the United Kingdom, 1997-2007

You’ll notice that it’s always a small number refused, and I’m betting that the number of immigrants prepared to boo the troops before being granted citizenship and those being caught and successfully prosecuted for crimes is actually a small proportion of the above.

Natural increase will occur again, and in large, localizes numbers and so Anglicization (or Caledonianization? etc) is not going to happen or as swiftly as it did with Huguenots, Flemings, or the Jews: if at all.

On the other hand, people who work for organisations that pay out benefits do tend to be (despite their overwhelming Labour tribalism) of the sort who really, really want to cut the spongers and the crooks off from the goodies, so there may be hope that professionalism fuelled by something like common sense might just possibly, with a trailing wind, work here a bit too.

So it may not work, or work much, but ‘love it or leave it’ is the exact principle that ought be at the top of the citizenship process. We’ve got enough people here who hate and want to damage the UK and/or its constituent countries without importing more.

BUT…

The good news is that Labour must be running scared to do something so apparently raaacist , and better yet the Guardian readers are completely failing to get it and for most of them it’s utterly and unspeakably evil : see Comment is Free link on its article.

Suck it up and swallow it: sandal-wearing lentil-killers.

And let’s not think that the Left alone is being less than switched on about immigration. Looky here on the Right.