US immigration policy under Donald Trump...

Is utterly vile when it's not being an utter waste of money:

• Wanting to spend $25bn on a wall when most illegal immigration is people overstaying visas
• Comparing countries to toilet pits and then not wanting people coming from those countries to seek a better life
• Putting children in conditions that you wouldn't keep convicted murderers in; with no books, toys or anything like that
• Not actually doing anything to improve the lives of peoples in countries like Honduras and El Salvador
• Making dog whistles about MS-13
• Not realising that without these people, the US is going to have a labour shortage

Also, "womp womp" is just a whole new level of sick. That guy should never be allowed back on a TV show until he apologises and donates a big sum to a refugee charity.

The refugee crisis in Europe

We're seeing the biggest influx of refugees and economic migrants into Europe for many a year; there's not been this many displaced people turning up since the war.

They are fleeing intolerable conditions in their own countries; be it the ravages of Assad or Islamic State (to reference a comment about the Iran-Iraq war, it's a pity they can't both lose), poverty in Kosovo or general repression in Eritrea.

We need to be dealing with both the crisis and the cause of the crisis. The EU needs to get together and agree a equitable distribution of asylum seekers; it is not fair to expect one or two countries to expect to bear the vast majority of the associated costs.

Also, we need to tackle the people smugglers; they are simply trading on human misery with little care for their charges. We have the capacity to take people from the refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey in a safer manner.

Finally, we need to defeat Islamic State (I don't think you can talk to these people even if you want to), as well as facilitating wider peace deals in Syria and Libya. Then continue to act to end the unequal world economy that causes much of this migration in the first place.

In the meantime, sadly, more people seeking a better life - or children who haven't got a huge clue what is going on - are likely to die crossing the Mediterranean. They are in my prayers.

Foreign-born workers

David Cameron, in what looks to me to be an attempt to divert attention from the lack of support for NHS reforms, is today making a speech about immigration.

One common statistic is that 75% of jobs created in the last ten years have gone to foreign-born workers. Of course, the term "foreign-born" is one that could be highly misleading.

Let me give some examples where this could get ridiculous from here and abroad:

• Sir Trevor McDonald, the famed newsreader, was born in Trinidad. Does that count as being foreign-born? Trinidad & Tobago is now an independent state, but it was part of the British Empire in 1939.
• One could equally apply this query to most of the members of the "Windrush Generation".
• Amanda Tapping, the Canadian actor best known for her role as Samantha Carter in Stargate SG-1, was actually born in Rochford, Essex, moving to Canada at the age of 3. She could count as a foreign-born worker.
• Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Dexter's Laboratory, was born in the Soviet Union, going to the USA at the age of 7. He counts as foreign-born despite the fact he would likely remember very little of his time in the USSR.

Here's a suggestion to some of my fellow left-wingers. Next time someone complains about immigration, ask them if they watch/watched Hustle, NCIS, Waking The Dead or House...

Update:

There's a great article from the Office of National Statistics on this. I would particularly advise people to look at Tables 7 and 8.