The Londoner

By Sikander Hayat 23rd of the June 2016 will always be remembered by the people of United Kingdom . People have spoken and they want out. United Kingdom is out of the EU and Pound is down to the value it has not seen in many decades. This is the most momentous and seismic event after 1945. What is going to happen is anyone's guess as most people are coming to grips with the new reality. The sheer weight of immigration forced British people to leave European Union . In the short to medium term, British economy will come under great stress from the uncertainty created by the Brexit. There is a danger that jobs will be moved from London to European Union centres and London may lose a lot of business to rival cities within the Union. It will take at least two years for the negotiations to conclude between UK and EU on terms of exit. David Cameron has resigned but will stay on till October when new PM will be selected who will trigger article 50. Article 50 st...

The UK's Labour opposition will fight the next election on a tough, anti-immigration platform, a senior Labour figure has revealed. Until now, Labour has been seen as the pro-immigration party. Ed Balls, the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, told a UK political website, politics.co.uk, that Labour needs to change its tune on immigration if it is to recover seats lost at the last election. 'I think people need to know that Labour recognises we didn't get everything right and will have tough controls. That's important,' he said. Mr Balls, the second most senior member of Labour's shadow cabinet, was speaking while visiting Stevenage, a town it lost to the Conservatives in the 2010 general election. Labour strategists believe that the party has lost a great deal of support because of its support for mass immigration. A YouGov poll carried out in October 2012 suggested that Labour had lost around 4m UK votes because of its support for mass immigra...

LONDON --The number of immigrants moving to the U.K . fell to the lowest level since 2004 in the year to March as the amount of visas for foreign students tumbled by more than a quarter, official data showed Thursday, heightening concerns that the government's drive to reduce net migration is damaging the country's lucrative foreign student market. The Office for National Statistics said number of immigrants coming to live long-term in the U.K. fell to 536,000 in the year to March, 30,000 fewer than the previous 12 month period and the lowest since the year ending June 2004 when 528,000 people immigrated to Britain. Net migration--the balance between the number of people coming to live in the U.K. and the number who are leaving--was 183,000 in the year ending March 2012, 59,000 fewer than the previous year and the lowest since the year ending June 2009 when it stood at 166,000. After a decade of high levels of new arrivals, immigration has become ...

Several hundred thousand more female immigrants than had been expected surged into Britain over the past decade, boosting not only the numbers of foreign-born residents but also leading to a mini-baby boom, an analysis of 2011 census data shows. Data released by the Office for National Statistics in July showed that net migration – the number of new migrants minus the number moving abroad – to England and Wales increased the population by more than 2.1m. However, closer analysis shows that when the ONS tried to forecast immigration figures the year before the census, it underestimated the number of female immigrants by 361,000, and overestimated the number of male immigrants by 94,000. Moreover, the surge in female migrants has been concentrated in the 20- to 44-year-old age bracket, the prime years for bearing children. Official data show that more than a quarter of all births are to non-UK born women, which has boosted the population aged 0 to 8 years by nearly 30...

Immigration The Tories’ barmiest policy THE prime minister’s speech at the Conservative Party conference on October 10th contained a thumping statement of the obvious. Britain might never recover its former glory, David Cameron admitted. The country is running a global race against much nimbler competitors. Its only hope is to slice regulations so that innovative, entrepreneurial folk can thrive, and trade furiously. Splendid stuff. So why is Mr Cameron’s government pursuing an immigration policy that is creating red tape, stifling entrepreneurs and hobbling Britain? The country has, in effect, installed a “keep out” sign over the white cliffs of Dover. Even as Mr Cameron defends the City of London as a global financial centre, and takes planeloads of business folk on foreign trips, his government ratchets up measures that would turn an entrepôt into a fortress. In the past two years the Tories have made it much harder for students and foreign workers ...

IN JULY Hussam Elamin, a Sudanese graduate of Leeds University, was told to make plans to leave Britain. A two-year post-study work visa had expired; his application for a residency visa had been denied; his marriage to a European citizen was declared a sham. These were the latest in a series of setbacks. In 2010 Mr Elamin had to leave two jobs because his employers balked at the cost and hassle of sponsoring him for a work visa. Then Mr Elamin’s luck changed. Following a successful appeal (his marriage was not bogus) he has just started work at MarketInvoice, a London technology firm that connects investors with credit-starved small businesses. The firm had searched in vain for a web developer to help the business grow quickly. It is a fortunate break for both firm and employee—but hardly a tribute to Britain’s immigration system. And the tortuous route that Mr Elamin trod has since been made harder and narrower. ...

International students have long been welcome on investment banks’ graduate schemes, but recent UK immigration law amendments have meant that the paperwork burden has become decidedly heavier. Has this made them more reluctant to take on graduates from outside the EU, and how can students make sure they secure an offer? It used to be simple; students in the UK had the post-study work visa option , which allowed graduates to remain here for two years after the degree ended while they looked for work. In April this year, this route was officially closed, along with the previous option of a ‘tier one’ highly-skilled visa where a candidate took responsibility for their own sponsorship: as long as you stayed about 75 points (assessed on age, earning potential and English language skills) you could extend this visa and, after five years, apply for permanent residency. The new stumbling blocks for students outside of the EU Now, the post-study visa has been abolished and y...

Ever wondered how many people are moving to, and leaving, the UK? If so, you're not the only one - the official figures are said by some experts to be based on not much more than guesswork. Yes, despite few issues mattering more to politicians and the public than migration, the UK still does not have an accurate system for counting people in and out. The e-borders scheme - which was meant to do this job - is still a work in progress, and despite government assurances to the contrary, there are some who fear it might stay that way. Instead the government relies on the answers given by a sample of travellers who agree to be stopped and questioned by a team of social survey interviewers at Heathrow and other main air, sea and rail points of entry to the UK. And despite the increasingly high hurdles to jump through to get a visa to come to the UK, it seems there is no way of knowing if someone is still in the country when it expires. UK population Acc...

Britain could restrict the immigration of Greeks and other citizens of euro zone countries affected by Europe's sovereign debt crisis in the event of "extraordinary stresses and strains", Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday. "The legal position is that if there are extraordinary stresses and strains it is possible to take action to restrict migratory flows, but obviously we hope that doesn't happen," he told a parliamentary committee. "I would be prepared to do whatever it takes to keep our country safe, to keep our banking system strong, to keep our economy robust," he added. European Union rules allow the free flow of people to live and work around the group's 27 member states, but fears have mounted in Britain of a wave of migrants from struggling states such as Greece and Spain if their economies continue to worsen. Read the full story here. 

By Sikander Hayat There is over emphasis in the British media about the implementation of sharia law in Uk. The debate has been started by a Christian but Muslims have been entangled in the resultiing fiasco. First of all, the law in discussion will not apply to any non muslim so any scare mongering on that front is completely wrong. Saying that, I as a Muslim do not want any parts of sharia law to be implemented in UK for the following reasons. Muslims who live in UK have come from countures where sometimes freedoms are curtailed, so they do not want that repeated in this country as well. Any changes to the current UK law should only happen as they ussually happen. When a part of law is found to be redundant, it is replaced with another sensible law which takes its crdence from the pople of the country , not some devine power. I belive in God, but I do not belive in an Islamic, Christain ,Jewish or for that matter God belonging to any any organized form of religion. This so called G...