It’s a disgrace that the government is spending our hard-earned taxes on deporting these so-called “illegals”.

Immigrants should spend their own money to get back to where they came from. And if they don’t want to stump up the cash, well I case they’ll just have to stay here won’t they!

Isn’t the problem here that the government has managed to set up an enforcement agency (UK Borders Agency) without the ability to enforce its own (hopefully court-mandated) decisions? I think this may actually be an issue, but that might just be me. Perhaps officers whose job is to ensure illegal immigrants are sent home shouldn’t have to be trained to actually ensure this happens. After all, it might mess with security companies’ profits…

Incidentally, I presume Septicisle is not in favour of deportation. The fourth and fifth paragraphs from the end (counted that way so that we don’t have to dispute whether a quote is a seperate paragraph) seem to provide colour to a post to no actual purpose, other than perhaps producing sympathy for those to be deported. This is of course no better than the Sun’s use of ‘VIP’ to produce the opposite effect. I am not condemning the expression of a point of view in either case, just stating that whilst criticising someone else for doing it, doing the same thing yourself seems unwise.

Hi Watchman/rumpypumpy/cjcjc/Martin Coxall/Tim J/Tim Worstall, just to let you know – executing “illegals” would cost a lot more than sending them back to where they came from. So either you let them stay or deport them – doing the latter isn’t free.

I do sometimes wonder whether there’s really any point to anything at all.

Spot on John Booth and with a wince, I have to agree with Septicisle.

John Booth,

I’m glad you sorted that out. I was worrying that no-one had costed an idea that no-one had suggested and no-one here would support, but it turns out that someone has (actually, I think you may be wrong as bullets do not cost £500, but I am against executing anyone, up to and including Saddam Hussein, so this is a rather pointless issue).

My point was that we somehow have ended up with an agency unable to enforce its own decisions without employing outside contracters. Despite being in favour of the market, I believe borders and immigration to be part of the security subset of things that must be done by government; my problem is therefore that government is paying outside contracters (at presumably extra cost) to do a job that is government’s to do. There may be an argument for having enforcement done by private companies (not that I believe it immediately) but it is has not been made – rather the situation is one government (non-political here – if it was political I would name the party responsible) has allowed to happen.

However John, in your wisdom, you have ignored the fact my complaint was about government use of private industry (and the second part was pointing out an problem with Septicisle’s piece), and decided I am a stereotypical small-minded right-winger of the sort that exists mainly in your head (and a few golf clubs perhaps; I wouldn’t know as I don’t play golf). So obviously you are correct – I do want to execute illegal immigrants, because that was the clear subtext of what I wrote (note for those who don’t do irony – this clause is ironic). It can’t be that as someone who is probably right wing (whatever that means) that I can believe government should actually undertake some roles efficiently.

Watchman, see Septicisle’s comment at 4, hopefully you’ll see how massively you’ve missed the point.

Some people are just in a different place, which is a shame.

septicisle,

Apologies if my comments have disheartened you in any way. There was a point to this, which was in your case to highlight a tabloid’s abuse of facts (pretty well uncontested), and which I personally took as an indication of another clear problem in government, and one I thought that could be relatively easily fixed.

I pointed out what I felt was a similiar bias to the original piece in your post, just in the interests of fairness. Actually, I am in sympathy with your position, but I worry about the prevalence of arguments to the heart in otherwise well-argued pieces. It allows people to shoot you down without addressing the key issue, and there was indeed an issue here.