Originally posted by SadisticSid
In what ways have the Tories been racist? There's nothing racist with reducing immigration and being more selective based on the potential economic value of immigrants. FYI I'd also suggest the reverse, that native dole layabouts get deported from the country, but that'd be impossible politically. 
Because it's not based on any facts and is targeting a specific group for the apparent purpose of milking prejudice; specifically gypsies ,who IIRC the Tories would remove their Human Rights Act protection from.
And so many of the facts about the actual amount of refugees are simply ignored; We only take about 2% of the worlds refugees, for one thing. Immigrant 'labour' has been estimated to generate £2.5bn for the UK economy. Asylum seekers - the supposed drain on the economy - are not even allowed to work, and receive 30% less benefit than the lowest UK resident rate. After the '300,000 benefit seekers from eastern europe' pullaver during EU expansion, only 132,000 actually came here. Of that - admittedly substantial - number, exactly 123 are on benefit.
Less than two (at the very most; less than one by certain more conservative estimates) percent of the UKs population - including illegals - are actually immigrants. The University of Swansea estimated the UK needs to
increase immigration by a fifth to prevent an age demographic crisis as the population ages faster than it reproduces. Scotland, in particular, is already in need of new migrants because of the declining population & growing elderly demographic. The chairman of the CBI has also attacked the Tory plans to limit immigration as hurting British industry;
[q]Sir Digby said every 1% increase in immigration brought a 1.5% increase in national wealth and that 97% of immigrants found work straight away.
"If it was not for immigrant labour, especially in leisure, in tourism, in agriculture, in construction, then frankly many of our businesses would not have the workers we need," he added. [/q]
(incidentally, the number of asylum applications have plummeted since 2002)
The Tories arguements over immigration have included linking immigrants with disease, claiming not reducing immigration will lead to race riots (implying immigrants cause violence), and also linking immigration to the murder of a policeman (connecting migrants to violent crime). On top of that they plan withdrawing from the UN Convention on Refugees.
I consider all that to be borderline (if not worse) racism & xenophobia, pandering to mass prejudice and tabloid media.
Oh, and Labour aren't much better; advocating some form of 'British' test, when it's highly unlikely you could even describe what is being tested - or even advocating only letting in 'desirable' immigrants (doctors, etc).
