BBC Debate on Immigration

Today, 11 July 2010, there was an interesting debate on BBC on their program, World Debate, hosted by Nik Gowing. The debate today was entitled Matching Skills to Jobs, but mostly revolved around immigration. It was interesting to learn that there are 3 million jobs in Europe that can not be filled because the skills are not there, yet millions are unemployed. Therefore jobs are there, but people need retraining in order to fill these jobs. Can immigration fill these jobs.

Australia a success story has seen its GDP quadruple because of a successful immigration policy, immigrants are allowed to use their skills as compared to countries like Canada and Europe where immigrants are barred from using their skills.Canada 40 years ago was almost 50% richer than Australia, Australia was in the league of South Africa, then Rhodesia now Zimbabwe, Namibia. South Africa has staggered along, Zimbabwe collapsed in the last decade to be the lowest income generating country in the world, and Namibia is hobbling along, yet Australia has flourished why.

Simply Australia adhered to sound political economics as outlined by Adam Smith, and that guaranteed it adhered to the laws of knowledge as laid out in the paper, "The fundamental theory of knowledge". One of the Panelists, "Sharan Burrow", though having put forward good points clearly blundered when she suggested that there is some sort of brain drain from the poor countries to the richer countries, nothing could be further from the truth. If people where allowed to use their brains in these countries they would obviously not be compelled to leave. If they stayed there, their minds would become stagnant, if they move to where they can use their minds, they would be doing themselves a favor, obviously that means not moving to countries like Canada, where people have different body structures because a doctor from USA, or Thailand though using same text book can not practice to protect the Canadian doctor, who must be of dubious quality to rely on government protection.

This was clearly pointed out by Angel Gurría of the OECD. In fact David Arkless hit it on the nail, countries can easily fix their internal problems and reduce migration. To say there is no opportunity in poorer countries is the biggest con, there are opportunities, In Niger, Liberia, Burundi, right now, if they freed their markets and followed the laws of knowledge there will be opportunities. Governments are in the way, then people must migrate. Read the words carefully, right now there will be opportunities in the poorer regions of the world if they freed their markets and let people use their knowledge, this is a domestic doing, nobody says there should be no freedom to create in Zimbabwe, but the Zimbabwean government, nobody says in Nepal people should not create but the Nepalese government that is in the way, it is as simple as that. Incidentally, allowing people to do, means there would be greater opportunities in the poorer countries than in the richer countries.

You need money for education and man power training as pointed out by Jo Ritzen of the University of Maastrich, but first of all you need to stop controlling people the system is always babbling that they are free. Freedom, is the right to use your knowledge to survive, simple as that.

Bhekuzulu Khumalo