Immigration & emigration - what's your stance?

Often one of the most hot button topics - immigration & emigration. Do you believe there should be limits? If so, in what proportion? What would you do to reduce immigration and emigration?

The UK in my opinion has a problem with immigration and emigration. The amount of people coming to the country far outweighs those who leave.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jun/26/non-eu-immigration-uk-statistics

Surely this isn't beneficial to a country which already has large unemployment?

Mass migration (with the emphasis on mass) is a generally a negative phenomenon, that except in select cases should be stopped. The point is that most people think that you can stop it by closing your borders, which is a very skewed way of looking at it that totally ignores the point. Which is that these people dont migrate for shits and giggles, they migrate because (simply put) their own country is sufficiently fucked up compared to a select group of other countries. Solve this and you solve mass migration, just closing your borders is an action comparable to thinking it doesnt rain when you are standing under (a very unstable in this case) roof.

I agree that the long term goal is helping countries with large emigrant populations to increase their quality of life. What about short term though?

I think we should have a more open border even though we are starting to have a problem with illegal immigrants coming across the border.

Mostly in favour of an open border policy with the developed countries providing a large amount of aid to third world countries.(see Joske's post) Even in times of crisis. I'm satisfied with the way my country handles the latter, but certainly not the former.

This depends somwhat on the local conditions and the position a certain country occupies in migration patterns. But generally something you can observe is that alot of the problems associated with migration are caused by the illegalisation of the entire process, driving these types of migrants into marginality and poverty while further alienating them from the society they enter. Policy should focus on the dragging new migrants away from marginality and into strong communities that would provide a framework in which these migrants can adjust from the relatively traumatic experience that mass migration is. In practice this would mean the building up of strong communities of migrants of different generations inside the host country providing support for new arrivals, intensive language courses (not knowing the language of the host country allows migrants to be easily exploited as they are isolated from the rest of society), labour reform to eliminate exploitative the labour relations migrants often find themselves in and that would allow the elimination of unemployment which is a major problem in migrant communities...etc.

all good if they follow our laws.

Mass migration does hurt the economy, but that does not mean all immigration is bad, my stance on immigration is that everyone should have a chance to get into another country freely and easily, of course the standard security checks should still be implemented.

I see a lot of support for open borders so let me pose a question. What would you do if your country had significant numbers unemployed and had a large surplus of immigrants, with overcrowding on the increase in an island nation? People already can't get jobs. There's a strain on the welfare system in having to provide for those who can't get jobs. And for those who do have jobs, a surplus of labour will bring down their wages.

You do know that it's not just the UK that are having these problems. You're just the ones bitching about it constantly.

Why would immigrants come to a country where there is no work?
That's just not logical.

I've always found it funny how Americans can chose which people are allowed to live in a country when practically all of you were immigrants at some point.
And this is a question, but is it not against human rights to dump 400,000 illegal immigrants on the border(I would assume Mexico) and just leave?

They don't care, after there deported coming back is a FEDERAL offense.

Well I think we should make it easier to come here legally so we don't have as many people coming here illegally.

My stance on the issue is that you have to go through the legal process to get in. The problem with the citizenship test is that it's freaking hard for immigrants to take because they need to have prior knowledge of the country beforehand. I think that we need to lessen the requirements for the citizenship test so that more immigrants turn away from immigrating illegally.

Scandinavian countries have low populations. The UK as a much larger population. Are you saying that it's not a legitimate problem? That when a country's own citizens become more overcrowded, have their wages flatline and can't get jobs, it isn't a problem? Is it so wrong to ask for a neutral immigration/emigration rate? One in, one out?

You should kill all the minorities there, that will solve the problem.