You're welcome to try.

I started a thread some time ago – without any connection to a TV programme – and tried to post a thoughtful OP.

I got about two replies.

And neither of those were from the 'immigrunts are killing ower kulture' fraternity or the 'you're being racist even using the 'I' word' one either.

One point that has not, this time around, been raised thus far: why is that so many of those who rail most loudly against immigration/migrant workers also claim to believe in freedom of choice etc, when they appear not to believe that that should include the freedom to move between countries to search for work/a better life?

And for the sake of clarity, I am not saying that uncontrolled migration/immigration would be perfection. But it is also equally right to bring up migration the other way, and pretending that it isn't part of the same subject is errant nonsense.

That, right there, is the prime reason that it's so difficult to have a proper discussion.

There's a reason that the [iDaily Mail[/i is currently facing a legal threat over its fantasy claims about Romanians from late last year. And unfortunately, far too many people unquestioningly accept what that and other rags publish.

Part of the problem, as I said earlier is, like a lot of issues, lack of understanding.

Too many people rail against it but don't realise, for example, that Kylie Minogue is an immigrant. When film companies make films at Pinewood etc starring, for example, Tom Cruise, he then becomes an immigrant, if we're going to be technical. Should we send Kylie back to Oz? Or tell Tom to take his film making money elsewhere? Should Liverpool be forced to sack Luis Suarez?

The people that blindly rant about, effectively, "darkies", "coming over here" appear (without any irony) to have no problem with us going elsewhere as Minty says. The recent map doing the rounds on Twitter showing the number of UK citizens in other EU countries was a good example of this lack of understanding, and god knows how many Brits live in Aus or the USA for example. But if they want to come here, its the end of the world.

And don't get me started on the number of people who read a tabloid and can spot an illegal immigrant, but would prefer not to tell the authorities.

We need a proper debate, ignoring showboating like the shower that were on the other night. How you have that and get people to pay attention is the next challenge

Yes.

Watched about 10 minutes of it, what a horrible cow that Hopkins is.

I think that there is a difference between skilled immigration and unskilled immigration.

Skilled immigration brings much-needed skills to this country that enrich our nation and make our economy more competitive. Outside of the leadership of the BNP, I don't think there are many people that want to stop doctors, engineers, lawyers, accountants, scientists, American film stars, Russian billionaires, Australian pop singers, Chinese businessmen or Middle Eastern oil tycoons from moving into Britain. Even on the terraces of Chelsea football club I have not heard so called racist football hooligans demanding that Abramovich or Eto'o be deported.

Unskilled immigration provides very little benefit to the nation. It merely serves to expand the labour pool with people who come from countries with such low wages that they are happy to work with anything. The large supply of non-unionised labour simply serves to depress wages, hence why big business loves immigration so much. Young Brits, already lacking a work ethic due to the societal stigmatisation of non-academic jobs and the pernicious influence of the welfare state and the reality TV celebrity culture, therefore are even less inclined to take such jobs. When the head of Marks & Spencer or Dominos pizza comes out and says that the economy cannot survive without mass immigration, what they really mean is that they will have slightly less profits and therefore the directors will have to suffer a slight reduction in their bonuses.

In addition the mass unskilled immigration puts an enormous burden on public services. Schools, roads and hospitals are pushed to breaking point by the rapid influx of such large numbers. Its easy to belittle concerns over such immigration as being "ignorance" or "lack of understanding" for the trendy wealthy white elite that live in racially segregated areas such as Mayfair or Kensington and whose only experiences of immigration are a night out at an Indian restaurant and being able to employ a cheap Polish cleaner. Perhaps if they lived in areas where a foreign language is more widely used than English, or where they couldn't get a council house because of over-demand or where they couldn't get a job because they were all advertised in Lithuanian/Polish, or where they couldn't get their child into the local comprehensive school because it was oversubscribed.

I am not particularly concerned either way on mass immigration. I am not neither for or against it. It brings positives and negatives. Ultimately any threat that mass immigration poses to our culture or way of life is a result of our own abandonment of traditional British values and our embrace of moral relativism. However whilst skilled immigration benefits all and is therefore subject to very little public opposition, unskilled immigration harms those at the bottom of our society whilst benefiting those at the top. It is for this reason that it is so popular, not due to racism or hatred of 'darkies' (as far as I am aware the main focus of anti-immigration feeling at the moment is towards Eastern Europeans whose skin colour is no darker than our own).

It is interesting that the same people who champion mass immigration to demostrate their non-racist credentials are often the very same people who bemoan the widening gap between the rich and poor!

Asian man walks down the street. Is he British, low skilled/unskilled or high skilled? Is he seen as an "immigrant" with all the negative connotations it has?

White man walks down the street. Is he skilled or unskilled? Is he British? American? Australian? Should he be in the UK?

That is why there is a problem. Because the vast majority of the public cannot tell, yet the rhetoric from newspapers and policticians is that it is bad, and an immigrant must have dark skin, right?

Its interesting that the immigration route with (currently) the least control is the one where you have a lot of money, not skills. And the easiest route to get in via the apparently skilled work route is if you're paid a high salary, not a person in an important skilled job regardless of the salary.

Who are they?

Even Mr Titan won't be able to answer that one for him.

The "non-skilled" argument is misleading and is often confused with "poor grasp of the English language", they can't speak very good English so they must be thick.

I've written before about this but I'll give you two examples of my own experiences when working within two different client businesses...

1. Was in an agency when two people came to the reception desk, male and female partners, the male explained that they had literally got the bus straight from Hull to the agency to start the job that they had arranged via the phone from their home (I think they came from Poland), the male was offered a job in a factory as a picker, the female could speak very little English and was told she'd be working "in the fields" tomorrow. they both accepted these minimum wage jobs but the male then pointed out to the interviewer that his partner had a degree in engineering and was taking extra tuition to improve her English - a not uncommon experience according to the person in the agency that I was meeting with, she wasn't unskliied or thick, she just didn't have a working grasp of English - YET.

2. The next day I was at the client site where the woman had been offered the job "in the fields" and in the office that I was sat in was a young man in his late twenties speaking on the phone in an Eastern European language and making copious notes. The Lithuanian girl who I was training eventually explained that he was one of their veg prep guys, spent all day long picking out mis-shaped carrots from conveyor belts so that the supermarkets didn't reject them - they'd had an approach from a Russian business who wanted to deal with them and had asked around the workforce for anyone with good Russian skills, he stepped forward, was Polish but spoke excellent Russian as he'd studied it at University, later they found that he also had an engineering degree, he is now on their maintenance crew, he too wasn't thick or unskilled, just placed in a low skilled job by the agency.

and wtf do the two issues have in common?

Well indeed.

But it's close to a pretty standard anti-immigration approach that works primarily on the basis of simply trying to smear the 'other' side.

FWIW, I'm not convinced by some of the arguments about why we need immigration can[/i have such concerns without getting into a state of being racist. And these are all, in my opinion, issues that need seriously talking through in a calm manner.

Whether that will ever happen remains, I think, to be seen.