Call to give London babies TB jabs as cases rise

By Rashid Razaq

Babies born in London must be vaccinated against tuberculosis to protect them against a resurgence of the disease, health experts have warned.

Routine immunisation is needed to combat increasing numbers of children and adults contracting TB which attacks the lungs and can prove deadly, according to the Health Protection Agency.

Almost 45 per cent of all cases involving children in the UK are in the capital because of the large immigrant population. Nine out of 10 cases occur in ethnic minorities.

TB was thought to have been almost eradicated in Britain with the number of cases falling to a low of 5,000 a year by the Eighties.

However the disease has been on the rise with 9,153 cases recorded last year. Health experts believe the threshold at which routine immunisation is required — 40 cases per 100,000 — has been reached across the capital.

Current policy has been to offer vaccination to children who are born abroad or whose parents are born abroad.

Dr Ibrahim Abubakar, from the HPA's Centre for Infections, said: “This increase shows we must remain vigilant in our fight against TB. This is an entirely preventable infection, but it can be fatal if prompt diagnosis and treatment are not given.

“People need to be aware of the main symptoms of TB, which include a fever and night sweats, a persistent cough, weight loss, and blood in your sputum [spit].

“If you experience two or three of these symptoms for more than three weeks, you should go to your GP.”

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I Truly Despair

TENS of thousands of immigrants are claiming the DOLE - just months after arriving in Britain supposedly to WORK.

In the last six years a staggering 169,000 immigrant workers claimed unemployment benefit within six months of getting a National Insurance number.

Last year alone, 21,160 lodged claims within six months - costing taxpayers £1.4MILLION a week.

The shock new figures from the Department of Work & Pensions will fuel fears that thousands of immigrants come here to take advantage of our generous welfare state.

And they shatter claims that immigrants only move to the UK to do the jobs nobody else wants to carry out.

Sir Andrew Green, of campaign group Migration Watch, blasted: "This is appalling.

"The government should explain who these people are and why they're able to claim benefits without having paid a penny into the system."

Drain

The ministry's figures reveal that last year 15,280 foreign nationals claimed jobseekers' allowance within six months, a weekly drain of £982,504 on taxpayers.

A further 2,570 claimed incapacity or disablement allowances - despite applying less than six months earlier for an NI number to work. These payments would cost £205,986 a week.

And 3,310 claimed income support, giving a weekly bill of £212,833.

Last year 590,000 new arrivals came to the UK.

And ministers admit they've no idea how many illegal immigrants are already here but estimates place the number at a million.

Britain's total benefits bill is £187billion a year but, incredibly, the government does NOT record the number of immigrants currently being paid.

A Department of Work and Pensions spokeswoman said: "Less than three per cent get benefits within six months. And the vast majority are claiming jobseekers' allowance while they look to get back to work."

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Madness! Absolute and total madness!

How can any politician or civil servant make excuses for this?

Treaties must be ripped apart, conventions must be reappraised and rewritten or withdrawn from, new N I Numbers to school-leavers only, borders must be nailed shut until we get a grip of this spiralling and destructive problem...this cannot be allowed to continue.

Britain is broke, we make nothing of importance any more in substantial numbers to be exported, we are in debt up to our eyeballs, I just can't see how we can afford the luxury of supporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants, and no doubt their soon to arrive extended families.

We have millions of our own on benefits, why do we feel the need to import more?

It is not soft-touch Britain, it is soft-touch politicians; the ordinary people have had enough.

I just can't get my head around it; am I stupid or am I just going mad?

A question of loyalty

By George Jonas

Until recent times, the West has been spoiled by the loyalty of immigrants, even from hostile regions or cultures. During the First World War, with negligible exceptions, immigrants from enemy countries as well as their children remained loyal to Canada and the U.S. throughout the hostilities. During the Second World War, although we treated German, Italian or Japanese immigrants and their descendants shabbily, as a rule they responded with unfailing patriotism. For every Tokyo Rose (the American GI's nickname for Ikuko Toguri, a Japanese-American woman, born in Los Angeles, who broadcast Japanese propaganda during the war) there were thousands of Japanese-American soldiers who gave their lives to fight fascism.

The pattern continued during the Cold War, when former nationals of hostile communist countries often found refuge in North America. These newcomers of various ethnicity and religion, from Eastern Europe to Vietnam, were as supportive of the values and interests of their adopted countries as native-born citizens of Western descent. Few Americans opposed the anti-American antics of Fidel Castro more resolutely than Florida's ex-Cuban community.

This started changing. In the last 30 years, a new type of immigrant emerged: the immigrant of dubious loyalty. Then, even more alarmingly, came a third phenomenon: the disloyal native-born, sometimes of immigrant ancestry, sometimes of Islamic conversion.

The new immigrant seemed ready to share the West's wealth but not its values. In many ways, he resembled an invader more than a settler or a refugee. Instead of making efforts to assimilate, the invader demanded changes in the host country's culture. He called on society to accommodate his linguistic or religious requirements. Some were innocuous: In 1985, a Sikh CNR railway worker refused to exchange his turban for a regulation hard hat. In 1991, less innocuously, a newly appointed Toronto police board commissioner of Asian extraction declined to take the traditional oath to the Queen.

The host societies' usual response was accommodation. Turbans were substituted for hard hats; the language of the police oath was changed. Recently, ceremonial daggers were allowed in schools. But accommodation only escalated demands. Requests for cultural exemption were soon followed by openly voiced sentiments of disloyalty. By the late 1990s, a Muslim group in Britain saw fit to express the view that no British Muslim has any obligation to British law when it conflicts with the law of Allah.

Disturbing as such talk was, it wasn't unlawful. Dissent was within our democratic tradition. Unfortunately, the new dissenters weren't democrats. Their "dissent" culminated in threats, fatwas, assassinations and finally massacres in American and European cities. How did this come about? Three reasons seem to stand out.

One, we retreated from the principle that immigration should serve the interests of the host country first. We forgot that when groups of distant cultural and political traditions arrive in significant numbers, they may establish their own communities not merely as colourful expressions of ethnic diversity -- festivals or restaurants -- but as separate cultural-political entities.

Next, we tried to turn this liability into an asset by promoting multiculturalism. We stopped ascribing any value to integration, and began flirting with the notion that host countries aren't legitimate entities with their own cultures, only political frameworks for various co-existing cultures.

Finally, in fundamentalist Islam, we've come up against a culture for which the very concept of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's is alien. Puritanical Islam considers that everything belongs to God (or rather, some mullah's idea of God). This concept doesn't envisage one's citizenship commanding a higher loyalty than one's faith.

It's not a matter of where immigrants come from, but where they're going. Refugees from the East are no threat; colonizers are. That's where current immigration trends and multiculturalism become a volatile mix. Extending our values to others is one thing, but modifying our values to suit the values of others is a vastly different proposition.

By now, multiculturalism has made it difficult to safeguard our ideals against a new type of immigrant whose goal is not to fit in, but to carve out a niche for his own tribe, language, customs or religion in what we're no longer supposed to view as a country but something between Grand Central Station and an empty space. When Canada is no longer regarded as a culture, with its own traditions and narratives, but a clean slate for anyone to write on what he will, immigrants of the new school will be ready with their own texts, including some that aren't very pleasant. The sound you hear is the sharpening of their chisels.