Just when you think the government can’t be any more stupid or racist, comes another edict from some cloned minister that shows that stupidity and racism are inexhaustible wells in England. Today we’ve had Alan “Big Nobody” Johnson, pro-tem Home Secretary and body in search of a personality, issuing a pronouncement that there’ll be a further “crackdown” on the “abuse of student visas” [1], which of course means making life harder for those, usually from well-heeled families, who hope to attend universities and colleges in the UK. This in the same week that the Higher Education Funding Councils for England (HEFCE) announced severe funding cuts for UK Higher Education [2]. The government’s response to this was to tell the universities to stop whingeing and seek other ‘income streams’, including private funding and overseas students, who pay whopping fees (up to £20k/year) and keep many universities afloat [4]. Yet visa restrictions have already constricted the flow of these highly lucrative students [4], and infamously last year there was a massive queue of students from Pakistan and India who’d been accepted on courses but were unable to start them because the immigration bureaucracy hadn’t processed their visa applications.
This shows the inexorable logic of racist immigration controls, compounded by overhyped fear of terrorism – like Pringles, once you pop, you can’t stop. There is always a finite probability of “abuse” of visas, and thus no logical end to visa restrictions until you actually ban them altogether. And of course this is highly harmful economically, as not only do overseas students prop up UKHE they also bring big bucks into those university towns and sustain local businesses. To paraphrase Mikhail Gorbachev, the subjective is overruling the objective, a situation which presaged the collapse of the stagnant soviet empire.
However, all the petit-bourgeois – Mail, Express – and neo-fascist – Super Soaraway Sun, Star – sewer Press go apeshit whenever an ‘abuse’ comes to light, and the regime jumps to their tune. A pointless exercise as you’ll never satisfy the racist blood-lust of these rags, just as you’ll never have a Laura Norda policy hard enough to satisfy the Hang ‘Em and Flog ‘Em brigade – you could hang teenage hoodies over a scorpion pit by their scrota with cheesewire and you’d still have the Mail complaining about soft liberal lefties going easy on criminals. Indeed, the more a regime tries to satisfy the endemic and virulent racism of the sewer Press, the more the sewer rats will be encouraged in their lunacy, and the more hardline they’ll get (and the more the real fascists, like the BNP, will be legitimised).
So a rational government would give a big finger to the racist Press and just do what was economically rational, which is to get as many well-heeled overseas students, undergrad and postgrad (especially lucrative, in terms of fees and research income), into the country as possible, and if a few stay on in the black economy as ‘illegal immigrants’ (not likely, given the wealthy families of most overseas students), then WTF – a small price to pay for a massive economic gain. Instead, hamstrung by its own racist logic and two decades of persecution of incomers, it must be increasingly hardline, which not unnaturally results in many possible students deciding “f*ck ‘em – if they don’t want my money I’ll go elsewhere”. Result? Loss of income for UKHE, loss of goodwill and possible future investment and skilled labour from overseas, gain to competitor economies which are less unwelcoming. Inevitable end result? Fortress Britain, where nobody is welcome, a declining monocultural island with a decaying economy and reactionary society of White Van Men and green inkers and Colonel Tufton-Buftons.
You don’t need to be Nostradamus to see this, yet the Tory shadow Home Secretary (some inbred toff clone without the personality to deserve a name) argues that the restrictions aren’t hard enough, even whilst acknowledging the sheer illogicality of, say, demanding an ability to speak English from students coming to study English! [5] The Tories are as much, if not more, in hock to racist exclusionist logic as the NuLabor regime.
Funny, though – if the Spanish, say, were to be so strict on visas for Brit incomers, the petit-bourgeois sewer Press would be up in arms about plucky Brits being harrassed by swarthy garlic-munching donkey-killing bureaucrats, much as they’ve been up in arms about the ‘injustices’ that expat Brits have ’suffered’ when their illegally-built houses on the Costa del Crime have been demolished. The old imperialist double-standard rules – it’s ok for whitey to settle overseas in darkie countries, but not ok, not at all ok, no, no and thrice no, for darkies to come and settle in our Green and Unpleasant Land (shurely New Jerusalem? Ed).
[1] Tougher rules to stop abuse of student visa system. BBC News online, 7/2/10
[2] Hefce announces funding for universities and colleges in 2010-11. HEFCE website, 1/2/10
[3] Overseas students prop up university finances. The Guardian online, 14/10/09
[4] Thousands of overseas students unable to enter UK. The Guardian online, 14/10/09
[5] Chris Grayling on BBC Radio 4 lunchtime news, 7/2/10