Problem families are just the latest immigration issue
EXACTLY what has gone on behind the doors of a small terraced house in Rotherham I can’t possibly tell.
But what I do know is the more we learn about the Rotherham fostering scandal, the more disturbing it becomes.
Two weeks ago a couple from the South Yorkshire town had three foster children removed on the grounds that their
membership of Ukip might compromise the children’s “cultural and ethnic needs”.
Yesterday it emerged that the children were among seven to have been forcibly removed from the same Slovakian family over the past few months.
The real racists, says the father of the family, are not the foster parents but council officials who have effectively
punished the family for following a “non-British” way of life, such as letting their children play outside late in the
evening rather than, presumably, keeping them indoors to play computer games.
Nothing there about problem families and the huge burden on the taxpayer that they would impose
It transpires the Rotherham children are far from the only such cases. Councils across England, reveals Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming, have taken 120 Slovakian children from 40 different families into care.
The cases – details of which cannot be openly revealed because family courts operate under draconian secrecy laws – have caused such an uproar in Slovakia that the government has protested to Britain.
There have been protests outside the British embassy in Bratislava by people waving banners proclaiming:
“Britain, thief of children.”
Given the various social work scandals of the past few years I can quite believe that the Slovakian families are victims of over-zealousness on the part of council officials who profess great understanding of different cultures until actually faced with them.
It is a common problem for the politically correct: reconciling the fact that the rest of the world does not always share liberal British attitudes on women, homosexuality and many other touchstone issues.
If, on the other hand, these Slovakian children really are in danger and need taking into care then that is equally
scandalous for a quite different reason.
When Britain opened its doors to migrants from Eastern Europe in 2004 we were assured repeatedly that migrant workers would be nothing but an asset and anyone who suggested otherwise was denounced as a bigot by
the then Labour government.
One rose-tinted comment stands out for its utter foolishness.
In February 2004 Nick Pearce, director of the Institute of Public Policy Research, a Blairite think tank that did
more than anyone to shape Labour’s policy on immigration, said: “The evidence is clear that there are benefits to us if we allow access to our labour markets early on we will get skilled entrepreneurial people coming in.”
He went on to predict with bizarrely confident precision that 12,799 migrant workers would take advantage of the
open borders policy in the first year, falling to 2,531 new arrivals in 2015.
Thereafter, he asserted, more people would leave Britain to take advantage of Eastern Europe’s new buoyant economies than would come here.
Nothing there about problem families and the huge burden on the taxpayer that they would impose. Taking the seven Rotherham children into care alone will cost £300,000 a year.
This is just one more respect in which the true costs of an open doors immigration policy is becoming clear.
In the event half a million arrived by 2007. Far from all being skilled entrepreneurial workers, three-quarters of
Eastern European migrants in work are in occupations classed as “low-skilled”.
Prior to the accession of Eastern European countries to the EU in 2004 Labour repeatedly assured us that
migrant workers would not be allowed to claim benefits: if they couldn’t find work they would be expected to return
home.
Yet by 2011 28,000 Eastern Europeans were claiming benefits and the Government was telling us that sorry, there
was nothing under EU law they could do to ensure that migrant workers who couldn’t find employment in Britain would have to go home.
You don’t need to be xenophobic or even anti-immigration to see how badly the accession of Eastern European states to the EU was handled.
Ministers recounted the good aspects, such as making it easier for Londoners to find plumbers or for East Anglian
farmers to find fruit-pickers, without making any admission whatsoever about the costs an open-doors policy would
impose on Britain.
No allowance was made for the fact that migrants would need somewhere to live, would use schools and hospitals and place extra burdens on police forces and social services.
Whatever the story that lies behind the Rotherham children and behind the cases of other Eastern European children taken into care there is a simple solution: release the children to the Slovakian authorities, along with all the facts, and allow them to decide whether the children need to be in care.
If they decide that they do not then the family would be free to return to Slovakia to be reunited and Rotherham’s
social workers can concentrate on British children.
Far from observing the “ cultural and ethnic needs” of the children, Rotherham council seems to have achieved the opposite.
It has also caused a diplomatic incident and left taxpayers with an enormous bill.