By Prensa Latina
London : British plans for immigrants outside the European Union have been attacked here as potentially discriminatory and degrading, reports Ekklesia newsletter online.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave strong backing to the new approach in a speech on the “rights and responsibilities” of British citizenship, which he likened to a premium product.
Under current rules, migrants are first eligible for a passport five years after they arrive in the country. Under the new proposals, they will have to serve a further probationary period of one to three years.
Immigrants who wish to settle will also face more tests to prove their “worth”. They will have to undertake community work, run a sports team or play group, or serve as a school governor.
Critics point out that this is a higher test of citizen loyalty than any in the indigenous population face. It also seems to be based on a suspicion towards migrants fuelled by the tabloid newspapers and anti-immigration lobbying by groups like Migration Watch, they say.
Don Flynn of Migrants Rights International (MRI), the independent global monitoring body focusing on human rights, said on BBC2 TV’s flagship ‘Newsnight’ programnme yesterday that creating an effective second class of citizens was a matter “of great concern”.
Research shows that “migrants pay 10 per cent more in tax than they take out in services,” he declared. Habib Rahman, the chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), predicted that ethnic minority groups would be hostile to the proposals.
Habib Rahman told The Independent newspaper: “[People] will be particularly upset and they will feel they are treated like second-class people … It might take 10 years to become a citizen, which is a quarter of your working life.”
Campaigners point out that in spite of scaremongering by sections of the media and some politicians, and the fact that immigration is consistently high in voter perceptions of major isuues, four out of five people do not iidentify migrants as a ‘problem’ issue.
Migration is a global issue that needs global solutions, not panic and closed borders, humanitarian agencies say.