As for immigration, Labour has been more hostile than Tories. Prior to 1997, I am told life was a breeze for asylum seekers. A lot of hostile legislation has infact ciome from Labour.
The issue of the British and the migrant is a bitter sweet kind of contradiction that is always characterised by flaws and loopholes( or is it izimbobo)and mutual benefits.This counry will always need migrants if it is to mantain the so called British standards of living it has set,otherwise who is going to do what has to be done, more so now that it is embracing the population of its EU neighbours who are not well endowed. l have decided to illustrate my experience to show how frustrating some of these changes are. I hope others have other experiences to share so that we can get other perspectives.
As a work permit seeker pre and post 1997 l can simple say it was more difficulty during the reign of the Tories to come and work for ones family.I am not sure about asylum seeking but l assume the attitude was the same. When Bleyaa took over , we saw conceited efforts to bring migrant labour to assist the increasingly grey headed British workforce and boost the economy. They still pride themselves of that although the Tories say the benefits are short term meaning that in the long term this will strain the social services as it has already started. My opinion is that the Tories are conservative and believe that they don't like us.I therefore tend to agree with those that say the Labour are better and the current tough laws are actually a direct result of the pressure from the Tories.In mature democracies national interest is paramount and unlike in Africa where the south pole does not meet the north pole; opposers and rulers many atimes converge irregardless of the effect it will have on the migrant. Ngabantwana bomuntu and if they perceive that they are not benefiting from the migrant they can even dodge their own conventions.
The law of aliens has been mutating over the past few years.Look at the drastic changes of the law on the 29 February 2008 on work permits. This country is in dire need of foreign labour but most organisations including some government departments are hamstrung by these new pieces of legislation as they attempt to recruit. For example, our company has been awarded contracts to provide services on behalf of government(GVT) in some boroughs of London simply because GVT does not have adequate staff. One condition is that we can not recruit any one who has been working for the GVT for the past six months otherwise we would increase the problem instead of solving it. Being a social service they are few potential recruits outside the GVT to render it. We were therefore encouraged to recruit from abroad. For the past two years of our existence we have been successfully brain draining from India, Nigeria ,Zimbabwe and lastly e Mzansi in that order.
Come 29/2 we are faced with multiple obstacles in navigating around the Home Office regulations, and although all systems are set , we have delayed initiating services in two strategic areas and worse still the GVT is impatient with us. Our competitors up north are facing the same problem and they are now relying on poching from other PVT companies by inflating pay packages meaning that we have to do the same and also always watch our backs.That is potentially creating havoc to the current employs and packages must therefore be reviewed to match that of the recruits.
We tried to employ the Europeans who are in abundance(Polish, Bulgarians ,Romanians etc) as they do not need work permits but we are faced with problems:
1) language problem, they are generally not English speakers and in our service there is a lot of verbal interaction with the client.
11)the depth of training and competences does not always meet the standard prescribed in the contract.
111)Most importantly ,the report about the client which is actually a final product of our service is generally not of the technical quality set;(the reports are routinely audited by a GVT agency and we can easily loose the contract if they are poor).
With the exception of abeMzansi we are inundated with 'kanti when am l starting' enquiries from recruits. We want them and Britain needs them and they want it too but the current laws makes everything difficulty.I shudder to think what will happen when the Tories take over, damn Tories!