Friday, August 2, 2013

Home Office vans: Unite union in 'race hatred' query, Len McCluskey says these are "vans of hate", although the message is terribly ham fisted and probably not effective, this doesn’t represent racism, this is a crime warning, well within Government’s remit


















Dear All

The Conservative/Lib Dem Government has decided on an advertising campaign that illegal immigrants should come forward so as to be sent home.

As an idea I don’t see it as being terribly productive, however, many people would see this as a way to try and fend off the UKIP challenge.

So, where do I stand on the issue?

Illegal immigrants are people who break the law, and as such should be arrested and deported.

If people have legitimate claims they should apply through the proper channels.

The Unite union has said it is seeking legal advice about whether the Home Office "incited racial hatred" by sending vans around London encouraging illegal immigrants to "go home".

The answer to that is no, the vans although a poor strategy aren’t racist.

However, Unite’s leader, Len McCluskey is calling the poster-covered vehicles "vans of hate".

It is not unusual for Government to remind people that they are tackling crime, illegal immigration is a criminal act, and it means that some of the worst type of people can enter our country unchecked.

You can google and see what crimes have been committed by these people, rape, murder, human trafficking and organized criminal gangs involved in drugs.

This differs from the ‘warm cuddly’ illegal immigrant who is just an economic migrant, but unless caught we cannot tell.

Nick Clegg has criticised the pilot scheme, does he have a solution?

Apparently not!

New peer Doreen Lawrence speaking has voiced that police stop-and-check operations focus "mainly on people of colour".

Sadly, this is true, however, other people who are overstayers on visas are also targeted; the problem is that certain countries and regions do produce the mass bulk of ‘illegals’ in this country.

When a problem is serious such as this, then serious measures need to be taken, and also the penalties involved for those assisting should be severe as well.

The Home Office's week-long immigration publicity pilot scheme has involved six vans driving around north London, carrying a board asking:

"In the UK illegally?"

The poster continued:

"Go home or face arrest."

This is a factual statement, so how Len McCluskey can think this is racist seems to me to be rather strange, you could argue the pilot is possibly wrong as a concept and its effectiveness could be questioned.

Downing Street had said the vans had been approved by the "Home Office team"; perhaps they need someone to put forward a better concept on the marketing front.

A Home Office spokesman said:

"We make no apology for enforcing our immigration laws and our officers carry out hundreds of operations like this every year around London. Where we find people who are in the UK illegally, we will seek to remove them."

I wonder what Len McCluskeywould say to the victims of crime, including the people human trafficked to the UK if he had to face them, face to face.

What would he say to a woman who is raped or to her family if she murdered?

In the UK according to news report in 2011, there have been 102 foreign criminals and illegal immigrants we can't deport, that number has probably gone up since then!

The problem how judges are reading the Human Rights Act 1998, many get away using Article 8, however, Article 8.2 allows the state to deport these people, because of such bad judgments we will continue to see the rise of UKIP and the push for an EU referendum to leave the EU.

Foreign criminals who commit serious crimes should be deported after their sentence, if we had a commitment to that then perhaps knowing that there was no safety net would deter crime.

At the nub of this Home Office campaign, there is a simple message; it is that crime will not be tolerated.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

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