A shitty existence in the UK has got to beat the hell out of a shitty existence in Pakistan.
A shitty existence in the UK by yourself without any friends or family probably wouldn’t beat a shitty existence in your hometown where you’re surrounded by familiar faces.
Plus you should have told that to the homeless illegals who used to live under the M4 for couple of months before they were sent back home by the border agency.
I dunno. We see the same thing here in the US, and some of those people are leaving lives so bad you wish they were fictional.
But I totally sympathize with your desire to have only legal immigrants in your country.
Thread is about opinions on the signs, and my opinion is they aren’t going to help you much. 
Sadly, often these signs get posted because people are just that stupid. Not long ago, maybe 8 months or so, there was a pedestrian that was struck in a hit and run at an intersection a few blocks from where I work. It’s got heavy pedestrian traffic since one corner is a high school, one is a shopping center and the other side is a housing development. There is a cross walk and signals for it, but there wasn’t any signage saying “No Turn on Red when pedestrians present”. At some point since then, they put them up.
The thing is, signs are cheap, certainly compared to government investigations, lawyers and deportation. Chances are, one of those billboards pays for itself as long as it convinces just a few people to leave compared to the cost of finding them and doing all the paperwork to get them deported. Sure, it’s an offensive to illegals, and it’s a bad message to send to other immigrants, but it may still be effective.
All of that said, I’d object to it more for completely different reasons, that I hate billboards in general, and specifically dislike those sorts of “Click it or Ticket” “Don’t Text and Drive” “Don’t Smoke” sorts of campaigns. There’s better ways of encouraging different behavior in the public than making idle threats at the population.
Right, that linked billboard looks shady. I wouldn’t think it was from the government or someone trying to help me, I would think it was a scam. And the hostile tone wouldn’t make me think that they were trying to be helpful either.
I think it would be maybe useful if it was reworded to be friendlier like other people in the thread have suggested. But like others suspect, I think it’s main audience are voters, not actually to illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration is like gay marriage and drug use in that there’s a lot of politicians who don’t care about it a huge amount but know that the issues can be used to easily rile people up.
I would love it if billboards were banned more places. They are eyesores, and can actively be distractions to drivers.
I admit I don’t know a lot about immigration, whether legal or illegal. But why would illegal immigrants who wanted to get back home not be able to get back home because of the way they got to the UK? I would think the main barrier would be money, and I doubt that they are offering to help financially for that.
Right. If it was really about being helpful, it wouldn’t have the picture of the handcuffs on it. The “for free advice and help with travel documents” is in fairly small font, it’s not the emphasis of the billboard. The emphasis is the hostile tone.
Why? How much do the billboards cost, as compared to how much illegal immigrants cost the country?
I would support billboards like that, saying something like you said. Something about help to get things straightened out. To make the billboards truly useful, they would need to clarify that you won’t be immediately thrown in jail and deported if you come visit or call whatever number; I’m sure that no matter how friendly the billboards are that people would be afraid of terrible consequences if they called.
I doubt there is a large population of illegal immigrants in the UK who desperately want to get back to their country of origin, but can’t work out that turning themselves in will get them possibly sent back, especially of people with good enough English literacy to read these billboards. The few that are unaware of this are probably those living in borderline slavery situations, and a vaguely threatening billboard is not going to help.
Um, and by the way, Small Clanger, Poland has been a full member of the EU since 2004, since when Polish people have had free right of movement and residence in the EU, including England; there are no Polish illegal immigrants here, by definition.
“Illegal” is not a noun, and “illegals” is not a word. More importantly, in terms of a cost/benefit analysis, such billboards will always result in a net loss, because human migration results in more benefits than losses. There’s no way for the investment in the billboard to result in financial gain.
The aforementioned benefits of migration can be seen within free-migration zones such as the US and EU, or by looking at British migration policy from 1948 to (at the earliest) 1962, when around one-quarter of the world’s population could theoretically migrate freely to the UK. No, the UK was not swamped by “parasites,” instead, many workers came, and they and their dependents rented rooms and bought houses and newspapers and food and whatever. The UK rebounded from the postwar doldrums, poverty was lessened in many parts of the world, and there’s a lesson for all, especially as low fertility becomes the norm in many countries.
Illegal immigrants help the economy. They do jobs that others wont. They tend to pay as much net money in as anyone else. The only reason to be against them is either racism or lack of knowledge because someone else is racist somewhere along the line.
But even not counting that, this is just being an asshole. When you are trying to get someone to do something, the last thing you do is insult them. And make no bones about it, this is an insult. You just don’t tell people to “go home” unless you are referring to their current place of residence. It’s nothing like “Click it or Ticket,” which uses a playful way to say “buckle your seatbelts” and uses the levity of a rhyme. This uses none of that. It is deliberately hostile.
And, like everyone else says, how many illegal immigrants can read signs in English yet not be smart enough to know that, if they call, they’ve just admitted they are there illegally and will get arrested?
The whole thing stinks to high heavens.
Of course it is. So is ‘furries’.
Languages grow and change, English wasn’t locked down the day you were born.
There are certainly people here who have paid to be smuggled in, had their passports and ID taken from them and subsequently discovered that it is not a land of wine and roses. Some of these people would love to go home.
But this is a blatant attempt by the government to appear to be TOUGH on immigration and in terms of the cost versus the publicity generated it’s been a good deal for them.
Don’t forget, we have a general election in less than two years time…
Same in Vermont. You can’t even have large/tall business signs, here. Like you know the ones from gas stations/fast food places that tower hundreds of feet above the trees so you can see them from the interstate? Not allowed.
I’ve never seen a mobile billboard here, so I suspect either they’re illegal too, or no one has bothered with them because the low population means the low views you’d get aren’t with the cost of gasoline + truck driver + truck maintenance.
Independent actors probably have a right to put that billboard up (if billboards are allowed at all). I’d find it disgusting, but not illegal.
Now, if some unfortunate accident might happen to that billboard, who am I to say?