Saturday, March 19, 2011

Immigration enforcement demonstrates Calder's Second Law of Politics

Calder's Second Law of Politics holds that: "The more power that government has, the more arbitrarily that power will be exercised."

As an illustration take these two stories from the past week.

BBC News told us:
Up to 181,000 migrants who should have left the UK since December 2008 could still be here, according to UK Border Agency estimates.
Meanwhile, I was being asked to publicise an event on 26 March that is being staged to urge the Coalition to deliver fully on its promise to end the immigration detention of children:
Not only was a child detained on Christmas Day, as many as 100 children were detained by the UKBA in the first six months of the coalition government.
I rest my case.

Since you ask, Calder's First Law of Politics holds that if people of good will from all parties are united in support of a measure, that measure is bound to turn out to be a disaster.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I thought we were going to have an end to government organisations lobbying the government. That 181,000 is nothing but crude propaganda - all means is they haven't counted everyone out. Why should they have? Why should the government know at any time whether I'm in the country or not.

The border agency has made a habit of publicising difficult cases in an attempt to whip up support for its aggressive behaviour. It should be stopped.

We don't need borders like the old east Germany. We should join Schengen.