The Merry Prankster
Pactum serva
We might need to do both.
Without doubt as well as areas that have benefited from economic migration to this country, there are areas where public service provision has become far more difficult as a result of it. Even if the net result is an economic benefit for the country as a whole there are areas suffering. Some element of control on overall numbers or even the distribution of those that came here would help to ease this situation
A big mistake that David Cameron made was scrapping the 'migrant impact fund' a Brown policy that diverted resources to those areas disproportionately impacted by immigration and as they weren't ever Tory voting areas, it was an easy thing for them to scrap.
The thing I get so frustrated about with this debate is the inability of the major politcal parties to realise a) The right thing to do is somewhere in the middle b) You can't look at immigration with broad national brushstrokes, the effects of it are so locally nuanced that optimum polices for areas separated by only a couple of miles might be wildly different.
So yes, some elements of control (and not just on overall numbers) may well be useful but let's not kid ourselves that there isn't also a government policy/ funding issue here. For too long, for reason of political expediency on both sides this issue has been presented as a binary choice, it isn't.
One thing's for sure - the neo-liberal, free market, free movement, low tax argument does not stack up. It's why we're in this mess and people smelt that bullshit at the referendum.
Bang on.