Immigration: a major election issue

I was recently asked to complete a survey commissioned by the Conservatives, but got stuck on one of the questions. It asked "Which of the following are major election issues for you?", and one of the multi-tick box options was "Immigration". Immigration is a major election issue for me, partly because of the appalling way so many immigrants are treated, and partly because of how difficult the marriage visa process is. The survey offered no opportunity, though, to clarify why immigration is a major election issue for me. They just seem to assume that everyone that cares about immigration does so in a "oh noes brown people stealing our jobs and benefits and being terrorists" kind of way.

As the husband of a (white) immigrant, I'm pretty sure I've never met anyone who is actually anti-immigration. Everyone I've spoken to has been willing to make an exception for my wife, "because that's different". When I tell people how difficult the immigration process is, they're surprised, and often ask me how all the asians get here - assuming, because they're here, that they must have found some other, easier, way.

So, immigration quotas. How are they going to work? Here's my three point plan:
  1. Magically prevent people in other countries being persecuted (to prevent them from needing to claim asylum)

  2. Disfigure any British people going abroad, and ban tourism into the UK (to reduce demand for marriage visas)

  3. Remove the programmes that we have in place that allow immigrants to fill our skills-gaps (yes, more people will die on the longer hospital waiting lists, as Doctors are a significant number of the highly-skilled immigrants, but they'll be martyrs for a worthy cause).

Of cause, this won't work. Not because we need immigrants, or anything like that, but because if you read the tabloid press (especially the Daily Mail), you'll know that immigrants don't all come from abroad. They must born here, because how else could a gang of eight-to-fourteen year olds be immigrants who came over in 1990s?

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