Tag Archives: Equality

International Women’s Day 2015 Empowering Women Make It Happen

International Women’s Day 2015

Since the early years of the century before last century nearly 200 years ago, in diverse ways individual countries and eventually the world, at the behest of the United Nations since 1977, have fought for various forms of women’s equality and celebrated women.

Now known as International Women’s Day it is a national holiday in many countries, appropriately just for women, in China. Like Mother’s Day, which falls on a Sunday in the UK, it is not a day off for mothers, working or otherwise!

Women in Finnish Parliament (1907)
13 of the total of 19 female MPs, who were the first female MPs in the world, elected in Finland’s parliamentary elections in 1907

In 1910, an International Women’s Conference of 100 women from 17 countries was held in Copenhagen, Denmark. At the conference, Luise Zietz, a German Socialist, suggested establishing an annual International Woman’s Day. The delegates agreed and promoted it as a way to foster equal rights, including suffrage, for women. It was observed far and wide across the Austro-Hungarian empire, even in Russia in 1913. The First World War suspended much advancement but 1918 brought rights for women in England and Germany, but not until 1944 in France or Greece! French Algeria took until 1958 to grant the right to Muslim women.

2015 IWD Themes

The International Woman’s Day theme for 2015 is ‘Make It Happen’ whilst the UN theme is “Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture it!“.

Bring Back Our Girls

Whilst Boko Haram this week have seemingly sworn allegiance to IS (Islamic State, ISIS, Daesh) it seems less likely than ever that the 200+ Chibok girls kidnapped in Nigeria a year ago will be returned. Yet, the UN seems to be more worried about declaring the cultural vandalism of destroying ancient Assyrian artefacts in Nimrud and other historic cities of Iraq and Syria, a war crime, than the heinous human rights atrocities of kidnap, torture, forced marriage, stoning of women and more, as crimes against humanity, especially women.

Somali-born feminist and activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, fights against forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and honour violence. In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, Ali wrote that:

“The kidnapping of the schoolgirls throws into bold relief a central part of what the jihadists are about: the oppression of women. Boko Haram sincerely believes that girls are better off enslaved than educated. The terrorists’ mission is no different from that of the Taliban assassin who shot and nearly killed 15-year-old Pakistani Malala Yousafzai because she advocated girls’ education. As I know from experience, nothing is more anathema to the jihadists than equal and educated women.”

WOW Festival

Last year I attended the awesome Women of the World Festival in London, this year I followed most of it on Twitter and Radio 4, and heard an interview that gave me pause for thought. Was it not “preaching to the converted” the interviewer asked? Perhaps, but it was also encouraging the feminist faithful. Still, more does need to be done.

Selma, Voting and Double Discrimination of Black Women

This week has also seen the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights march and demonstration which triggered US voting reform. As one young woman visiting the site this month said, “Voting was never really important to me,” she said. “But I will never not vote again.”

The 1965 activism on 7 March was one of several marches to pressure full enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the legalities of which were being avoided by those finding ways to inhibit black voters.  At Selma, one of the leading organisers, Amelia Boynton was beaten unconscious by state troopers. Rosa Parks had been present too. Boynton survived and in 1990, she was honoured with the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Medal.

Amelia was born to parents of African-American/Cherokee heritage in 1911 – the very year that International Women’s Day was marked for the first time by a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. As a young girl Amelia had joined the fight for women’s suffrage. As an adult she organised alongside Martin Luther King. While Selma was 50% black, only 1% of the town’s African-American population were registered to vote.

In 1964 Amelia ran for the Congress from Alabama, “the first female African-American ever to do so and the first female of any race to run for the ticket of the Democratic Party in Alabama.”

Triple Discrimination of Women

Audre Lorde wiki
Audre Lorde

Imagine being black, female, and bisexual or a lesbian – before race equality, voting reform, gay rights, let alone sex discrimination. Furthermore, don’t imagine but recognise that some of that prejudice came from other women, white heterosexual women. Audre Lorde, was one such black lesbian feminist who realised that not all women fight for “all women”, in reaction she became a staunch advocate of intersectional feminism of the “continuum of women”, of ANY women, of ALL women:

“I am not free while any woman is unfree even when her shackles are very different from my own” – Audre Lorde

In addition, she spoke about the oversimplification of labels and single issue politics:

“there is no such thing as a single-issue struggle. We do not live single-issue lives.”

We are multifaceted human beings, complex creatures, not to be reduced to someone’s label or category and in the process denied our unique identity and individuality.

Yet More Stigma

Add to all of the above prejudices and discrimination that some aspects of mental health disproportionately affect women. For instance trans women and bisexual women have the greatest mental health risks of all groups. 25% of women will suffer from depression, 15% post-natally. Women are twice as likely to experience anxiety disorders as men and ten times as likely to suffer from anorexia.

Audre Lorde heel print quoteAs Audre Lorde argued it is time for a coalition of the continuum of women to fight for any woman, until all women are free, from the schoolgirls of Nigeria to the sweatshops of the Far East, and the LGBTI women denied recognition and respect, whether as asylum seekers in Yarl’s Wood or as trans teenagers taking their lives and being misgendered in life and death.

Whilst gender may be a construct and sex an accident of birth, how we treat each other is the one choice we have the power to make.

Let them Eat Cake unless it’s a Gay Cake as Christian Bakery refuses to bake Bert and Ernie Equal Marriage Cake for Belfast’s QueerSpace

Marriage in Northern Ireland is still “defined as being a union between one man and one woman” says NI Christian bakery company that refused to bake a “gay” Bert and Ernie queer cake and is taking “a stand” according to a trending BBC story.

[UPDATE: Bakery loses appeal against conviction for discrimination based upon the grounds of sexuality]

Queerspace logoIt seems that the cake request came from a volunteer LGBT activist from Belfast’s QueerSpace, as the cake design was to include their logo. QueerSpace is a “volunteer-led collective which has been serving the LGBT community of Belfast and Northern Ireland since 1998. It does this by raising LGBT visibility, supporting LGBT community activities and facilitating communication.”

QueerSpace Belfast Support Gay Marriage cakeThe cake was designed for their event to promote the International Day Against Homophobia as can be seen in the alternatively sourced cake that features prominently in several Facebook photos.

IDAHO(T) Day

The International Day Against Homophobia is celebrated each year on 17 May to combat homophobia and transphobia.

Sesame Street

Sesame Street Bert and Ernie LoveDescribed by Channel 4 News as “Sesame Street’s most sexually ambiguous couple”, Bert and Ernie have long been considered possibly, if not probably, gay.

The official Sesame Workshop position is that they are just “good friends”. In a 1993 statement they issued, it said:

“Bert and Ernie, who’ve been on Sesame Street for 25 years, do not portray a gay couple, and there are no plans for them to do so in the future. They are puppets, not humans.”

CEO Gary Knell in Sesame Street: A Celebration – 40 Years of Life on the Street, was a little more vague, hinting at sexual ambiguity as well as their sexual inability:

“They are not gay, they are not straight, they are puppets. They don’t exist below the waist.”

Sesame Street Bert and Ernie FriendsIn a 2011 statement it was reiterated that they “do not have a sexual orientation”.

This didn’t stop some Christians complaining that they represented a gay couple. Reverend Joseph Chambers on his radio show, in 1994, said:

“Bert and Ernie are two grown men sharing a house and a bedroom. They share clothes, eat and cook together and have blatantly effeminate characteristics. In one show Bert teaches Ernie how to sew. In another they tend plants together. If this isn’t meant to represent a homosexual union, I can’t imagine what it’s supposed to represent.”

Eric Jacobson, in a 2011 interview for Vanity Fair, said that Bert and Ernie were more “The Odd Couple” than a gay couple, if anything they emulated the close friendship of Jim Henson and Frank Oz.

All these assertions and denials, it makes one wonder, because we all know what hides behind denial, lol! 😉

Ashers Baking Company

Ashers Baking Company and its Christian founders and directors have taken their stand based upon their religious beliefs against a customer’s request to bake a pro-equal marriage cake. Whether the gay rights activist’s order was a test and if the bakery’s Christian views were well known beforehand is not clear. What is clear, is the law. Refusal of goods or services based upon someone’s actual or perceived sexuality is an offence. The Equality Commission wrote to the bakery saying that they had discriminated against the customer on the grounds of his sexual orientation and that they had seven days to recompense and “remedy [their] illegal discrimination” or end up in court.

According to a YouTube statement the company was named after Asher, one of the twelve tribes of Israel, recorded as having “gifted bakers” in it. It runs itself on what it perceives to be Biblical guidelines, not opening on Sundays either.

General Manager, Daniel McArthur, said of the customer order that:

“The directors and myself looked at it and considered it and thought that this order was at odds with our beliefs. It certainly was at odds with what the Bible teaches, and on the following Monday we rang the customer to let him know that we couldn’t take his order.”

It was not the first time the bakery had declined orders, McArthur, said they had also refused to bake cakes containing “pornographic images and offensive vile language”. They made no direct link between gay marriage and pornography but by offering up no other examples their statement makes a less than subtle and unfortunate, if not downright offensive, connection between the morality of pornography and homosexuality to some Christians.

Rev Andy Marshall, a Church of England priest, has written a fabulous piece pointing out Ashers’ biblical failings according to Leviticus and the New Testament. I mean what is a non-bearded man doing selling pork sausage rolls and then condemning dubious Levitical laws allegedly condemning homosexuality? Not to mention not representing the love and acceptance that Jesus showed towards ‘outsiders’, the oppressed and minorities. I can imagine Jesus being more likely to storm angrily into the bakery and upset their dough wielding a “whip of cords“.

Whilst Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK not to have passed a same-sex marriage law, this particular incident depends entirely on existing legislation prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Northern Ireland and Devolved Equality -The Equality Commission

Unlike Wales and Scotland, anti-discrimination legislation is devolved in Northern Ireland has devolved anti-discrimination legislation, what this means is that whilst Wales and Scotland fully comply with the Equality Act (2010), Northern Ireland implements it incompletely, in its own way. The Northern Ireland Assembly, rather than the Westminster Parliament, is responsible for equalities law. Sections 73, 74 and 75 of the Northern Ireland Act (1998) established the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland and placed public sector bodies under an equivalent though not entirely identical to British Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). Notably, pregnancy and gender identity/reassignement are not explicitly protected characteristics.

The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland has responsibility for enacting and enforcing the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (NI) 2003 and the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (NI) 2006 acts. It is the latter regulations , which came into force in 2007, which make it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of, among other things, “goods, facilities or services”.

Equality Commission NI Logo

Whilst some religious organisations in Northern Ireland are exempt from the regulations, a bakery is a business, Christian-run or not, and as such must comply.

A Defence of Religions and Political Freedoms?

The Christian Institute, which is mounting their defence, disagrees and their director, Colin Hart said:

“All the McArthurs want is to run their bakery according to their Christian beliefs. There won’t be many situations where they need to turn down an order but this is obviously one of them. No one should be forced to use their creative skills to promote a cause which goes against their consciences.”

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph the initial story of which made front page news, Hart described this in apocalyptic terms:

“[It’s] a sign of things to come exactly as we predicted…. Now this nonsense, more usually associated with the public sector, is being applied to the private sector … This means millions of ordinary people who do not agree with gay marriage, face intimidation and the real threat of legal action from the forces of political correctness if they, out of conscience, decline to provide good or services to campaign groups they do not agree with or support. It establishes a dangerous precedent about the power of the state over an individual, or business to force them to go against their deeply held beliefs.”

Their defence will be based upon arguing that an equal marriage cake is a political campaign and that it is not discrimination to refuse to endorse a political position.

The issue has now made it to the UK Parliament with Prime Minister’s Question time (PMQs) raising the issue and David Cameron, knowing little about it, being challenged to defend religious freedom.

Burwell v Hobby Lobby Case

The case has some similarity with the recent SCOTUS (US Supreme Court) judgement on Burwell v Hobby Lobby in which despite a federal mandate to provide employee health coverage, Hobby Lobby’s owners, David and Barbara Green, refused to comply as they felt that 4 out of 20 of the health insurance registered contraceptive drugs were morning-after and week-after life terminating abortion pills, based upon their view of life beginning at conception. SCOTUS upheld their refusal by 5-4 and ruled in their favour with “important implications for over 50 pending lawsuits brought by non-profit religious organizations … also challenging the mandate”.

[An earlier version of this article first appeared here]

Image Credits

QueerSpace Belfast Support Gay Marriage public facebook photo
Equality Commission NI logo

 

17 May IDAHO, IDAHOT, IDAHOBIT Day to combat Homophobia, Transphobia, LGBTI Acceptance

IDAHO day, the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

May 17, each year, is IDAHO day, the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, since 2009 called IDAHOT to fully incorporate Trans people. I’ve always prefered the longer IDAHOBIT to include Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexphobia and Transphobia, not to mention the little people with hairy feet from Middle Earth!

May 17 was the day that homosexuality was removed from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1990. IDAHO day first took place in 2005 with activities taking place around the world including the first ever LGBT events to take place in the Congo, China, and Bulgaria.

In 2009 Transphobia was added to the day’s remembrance and activism although, unlike homosexuality, trans activists are still campaigning to have Gender Dysphoria removed from the various mental health classifications (ICD10/11, DSM-IV/V), though France was the first country to do so that same year. In May 2012 Argentina passed a radical groundbreaking Gender Identity Law depathologising trans and providing medical access for all without psychiatric hoop-jumping. Argentina should be watched and observed to see if its model becomes one that could be followed by other nations and allow for the safe and full depathologisation of transsexuality.

ILGA LGBTI Report

Times have changed and things improved since the removal of the criminal threat and mental health stigma from homosexuality, at least. If a recent ILGA LGTBI report is to be believed, Britain is the best place to live if one is lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or intersex.

 ILGA LGBTI Europe map 2014Launched to mark IDAHOT day, the ILGA Rainbow Europe Map “reviews the standing of European countries against essential legal benchmarks for LGBTI equality, while the Annual Review of the Human Rights Situation of LGBTI People in Europe 2014 provides an analysis of trends and an overview of key political and social developments country-by-country.”

For many there were improvements, such as same-sex marriage (although not in Northern Ireland) and for some to the East of Europe, such as Russia, a deteriorating situation of LGBTI freedoms and protections.

Apparently, the UK has the best laws (the 2010 Equality Act was pretty groundbreaking), rights and freedoms, even better than the Netherlands, Spain, or Scandinavia. This is partly down to some nations being gay and lesbian positive but then failing on trans and/or intersex, and usually totally ignoring and hence erasing bisexuals.

Homophobic & Transphobic Hate Crime

Here in the UK, homophobic and transphobic crime seems to be on the rise, although this may just be perception and/or data inflation, since increased numbers may just be better victim reporting and police recording, rather than increased incidence of hate crimes or incidents. We’ve been tackling racism for decades and it doesn’t go away over night. Just ponder the upcoming European elections and the 30% vote share that UKIP the party of xenophobia are likely to gain. Fear of difference is still endemic everywhere.

A recent NUS report into the experience of gay and trans students demonstrates that schools and colleges are still not safe places for LGBTI people. Only 20% of trans students feel safe or accepted in higher education. 20% of LGB+ students and 33% of trans respondents experienced at least one form of bullying or harassment on their campus, making them 2-3 times more likely to drop out of education, affecting future job prospects, and mental health and wellbeing.

Trans students are 2.5 times more likely to have a disability in addition to being transgender. They are, furthermore, the group at the greatest risk of suicide with 34% attempting it and up to 80% considering it. Thankfully, the UK is better than many other places and these figures are greatly increased elsewhere, e.g., the USA, Eastern Europe, etc.

Other Rights Still Not Equal

The right to bodily integrity of people with Intersex conditions (people with differences of sexual development, sometimes unhelpfully termed “disorders”, DSD) is an issue still being fought for. Just because gay rights are seemingly “in the bag”, same-sex weddings won, does not mean trans or intersex people have the same or equal benefits, nor does it mean that any LGBTI person is free from bullying, hate crime or prejudice in the workplace.

Equality itself is not yet equal, either between different strands of the diversity umbrella of protected characteristics nor across different countries in the EU, Commonwealth, or world. Some 80 nations have laws that still criminalise homosexuality, some with the death penalty. Just because a civil rights battle is part-won in one country does not mean that is everyone’s experience, either at home or abroad. So days like IDAHOBIT, regional and national LGBTIQ Prides, are still needed to remind us of how far we have come, and… how far we still have to go to achieve equality, acceptance and freedom for all.

For more information about LGB+ sexualities, the transgender spectrum, and intersex variations, visit Genderagenda.net, and on facebook: facebook.com/GenderAgenda

On International Transgender Day of Visibility (31 March) see:
http://www.bubblews.com/news/2812307-international-transgender-day-of-visibility
On Bisexual Visibility Day (23 September) see:
http://www.bubblews.com/news/1194960-bi-visibility-day-celebrating-bisexuality
On the Intersex day of Awareness (26 October) see:
http://www.bubblews.com/news/1427921-intersex-day-of-awareness
On the Transgender Day of Remembrance (20 November) see:
http://www.bubblews.com/news/1622567-transgender-day-of-remembrance-tdor-and-awareness-week

FIrst published here.

Immigration controls, an arms race of rhetoric over rational realities and positive benefits

The Labour Party Shadow Cabinet Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has promised today to clamp down on immigration, yet a year ago, said Labour will not enter an “arms race of rhetoric on immigration” … yet does. What is more, she clearly believes in recycling as half of today’s speech on immigration is 13 months old.

In the polls Labour is barely a few points ahead of the Conservatives, despite their expenses debacle over Maria Miller, and is little more trusted than the Tories. Nobody trusts the Lib-Dems for having gone to bed with the Tory government in coalition leaving Nigel Farage and the further right UKIP free to wipe the floor with Nick Clegg in the TV political debates, that Labour and Conservative leaders refused to partake in. Politics and politicians are back to an all time low. So to resurrect trust, they pick an ‘easy’ subject, soft target – immigration, one on which UKIP do well at the polls, in order to gain political traction and voter empathy. If only it were not the wrong policy, feeding on fears and not hopes, as with  Clegg and Farage’s clash in the televised EU debate. Polls show UKIP on 25-29% for the European elections.

Russian immigrants disembarking from a ship at Brisbane in 1931It’s also bad timing as Britain’s first Asian male, of Pakistani immigrant parents, whose father worked hard as a bus driver, so that he could become Chase Manhattan Bank’s youngest VP at 25, becomes Equalities Minister in the Government. So as someone of ‘immigrant stock’ gets to the top, Labour complain about non-graduate immigration, the very parentage from which Sajid Javid emerged.

It is another form of class discrimination to have Australian-styled points systems for immigration, to only allow in highly skilled and qualified foreigners, and to turn away low-skilled desperate working class migrants – not very socialist.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “exploitation attracted low-skilled migrants, when the UK should actually be trying to attract university graduates.”

Labour allegedly got it badly wrong on immigration in their last decade in power, as Cooper admits today, again, “the last Labour government got things wrong on immigration”, and that they were committed to reintroducing full exit checks at UK borders, previously scrapped by the Labour when they were last in government. Not an apology as such, and not really necessary, if, like me, you believe in immigration, multiculturalism and healthy workplace competition.

Protectionist policies are actually very nationalistic and counter globalisation and international aid. People willing to enter this country at their own expense to take on low paid jobs, to literally “get on a bike” – to coin a phrase that when last said by a Tory minister, didn’t go down well – to find a job, even if in another country, should be praised not pariahed.

Socialism only for one’s own country is a nationalistic self-interest. Worldwide betterment and welfare of all would embrace anyone working to feed their family. So long as decent minimum wage controls are in place to prevent employer exploitation then a fair wage is on offer to anyone willing and able to take the job. British people should already have a natural advantage due to their location, education, and own-language fluency – should, I say, but may not due to poor education, training, mobility, motivation etc. There is no need or ethical basis to protect ‘our own’ over ‘immigrant’ competition. To do so, rubbishes the ethics of socialism and international welfare in the name of national interest – for which, read, political self-interest, a phrase that David Cameron has also repeated today, “Britain’s National Interest”, which apparently “sum up everything we are about in Europe.”

So, as Yvette Cooper claims, if Labour win, they would make the exploitation of migrant workers a crime, I wonder if she is protecting their political interest rather than the welfare of migrant workers, who in the same breath she would restrict the numbers of, which is not protecting them. The real aim is to reassure British voters that they will not have undue competition for their jobs and hence Labour votes. But even Patrick Wintour in the Guardian sees the proposal as “legally fraught … giving the state greater control over the setting of wages in the private sector above and beyond the minimum wage.”

It is already illegal to exploit migrant workers, it is just hard to enforce, and workers are unlikely to complain for fear of losing their jobs, or not knowing their rights. So Labour is not bringing in anything new, just tinkering for political gain and to reverse their reputation on immigration.

Her measures are nothing new, and the current Government are already “doubling the maximum fine for employers found using illegal workers … a four-fold increase in fines for firms not paying the minimum wage and increased penalties for landlords housing migrants in illegal premises.” Blatant employment of substantial illegal immigrant workers already merits potential jail terms of up to two years and unlimited fines.

Yvette Cooper also said, “When people go to work in other countries in Europe they don’t expect to be able to claim benefits as soon as they arrive and likewise, I don’t think people should expect to when they come here,” – that could have been said just as easily by a Tory or UKIP spokesperson. The current rhetoric on immigration is knee-jerk political fear that it will cost them votes unless they at least ‘sound’ tough on immigration, and the causes of immigration.

Yet Cooper kept harping on about not having:

“an arms race in rhetoric, but practical policies instead”

She used the same phrase 13 months ago:

“But we won’t enter an arms race of rhetoric on immigration – and we hope the Prime Minister won’t either. That’s not honest, or good for Britain.”

It seems to be her favourite soundbite of the moment, if a moment can last over a year. Today, according to the  Guardian she was planning to attack the approach of UKIP, saying that having simplistic solutions:

“ramps up the rhetoric, raises false promises and expectations, undermines trust and confidence, and creates division and hostility …”

“We won’t engage in an arms race of rhetoric, and we reject the divisive politics of the right that promotes hostility instead of building consensus .”

“We will never compete in an arms race of rhetoric. We will never conduct the debate in way that whips up tensions and hostility.”

Last year, in the same speech, she accused the current Government of being:

“engaged in a frenzy of briefing and rhetoric

and ended by saying:

“It means no rhetorical arms race, just sensible and practical proposals…”

So, all that has changed is proposals have become policies, yet the rhetoric remains the same.

Take, for instance, last December, when Yvette was still on the same song in an article she wrote in the Daily Mirror that the Government’s ministers’ had:

“ramped up rhetoric looks more like panic than plan. Instead of chasing headlines that increase concern and hostility, David Cameron should concentrate on sensible policies to help. Labour won’t join in a Dutch auction of tough language that helps no one.”

Yet that is all Cooper’s words are, “tough language”, allegedly in response to having “listened and learned”. Rather, it is all politicians fearing the rise of UKIP and losing the moral and media battle on immigration. They are listening to the polls and not their political principles, afraid of losing the next election not of making a better world for us all to live in, one with a great multicultural Britain, without racism, prejudice and phobias of several kinds.

Cooper also chooses some strange examples and stereotypes in her speech, suggesting that immigration has given us “Trinidadians on our hospital wards” and that the Norman Conquest was immigration not invasion!

Brits living abroad in EUDespite some of the highest levels of immigration in Europe we also have one of the lowest unemployment figures and now the highest growth figures of all Western developed economies. So, clearly, immigration is good for us. We should not forget that over 2.2 million Brits have emigrated to Europe alone from our shores. It is time to end the “arms race of rhetoric” over immigration, by Labour, Tory, and UKIP, combatants and to start seeing immigration and multiculturalism as a blessing to British society, adding to its richness and diversity. Nobody is selling the positives of healthy immigration.

Motive for UK immigrationThis is an edited, updated version of an article I first published here. I’ve previously written about the scaremongering over Romanian and Bulgarian immigration and the positive benefits of immigration and multiculturalism since migrants are less likely to claim benefits, more likely to contribute fiscally and 99% come here for work, education and family, not for the alleged welfare benefits.