"Rod" Liddle: idiot

The inaptly named Rod Liddle asks a stupid question:

Would al-Qa’eda have found it so simple to place a dozen foot-soldiers in the NHS if we had been a little more rigorous about who we allowed into this country and we were a little more choosy about where they came from?

Yes, they would. A "little more rigorous" immigration policy would still let in doctors, especially those fleeing a country as dangerous as Iraq. Nor would it filter out al-Qa'eda supporters: they don't have "comedy terrorist" tattooed on their forehead.
What Liddle is doing here is exploiting an old cognitive bias - the salience heuristic. Often, the (alleged) gains from restricting freedom seem clear, whereas the costs are obscure. The upshot, as Hayek recognized, is a bias against liberty:

Since the value of freedom rests on the opportunities it provides for unforeseeable and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom. Any such restriction, any coercion other than the enforcement of general rules, will aim at the achievement of some foreseeable particular result, but what is prevented by it will usually not be known....And so, when we decide each issue solely on what appear to be its individual merits, we always over-estimate the advantages of central direction. (Law Legislation and Liberty Vol I, p56-57.)

One way to counter this bias is to remember one thing - that if we'd had tougher immigration controls in the 1970s, we might not have Freema Agyeman today, a cost which surely swamps all other considerations.

Comments

[dearieme]

I expect better of you, Mr D, than this sort of "look at me wearing my heart on my sleeve" fatuity.

[Meh]

Too many in the "Times-Mail-Telegraph" nexus seem to think that's it's easy to spot potential terrorists at immigration time.

I wish someone would actually ask them to produce evidence for this assertion, since it seems rather counter-intuitive.

The worst part is that since they are members of the press, they don't get any serious cross-examination.

[tom s.]

When he was five years old, my son had a great idea. We were sitting in a doctor's waiting room and had been looking at the security camera. He had the idea that you could make a security camera that would only take photos of criminals. I asked him how it would distinguish the criminals from non-criminals (not in so many words) and he said "by their masks".

We could use the same device to keep out the terrorists.

[Karthic]

Thanks for that Chris.
It is at such times such as now that voices of sanity are ever more important.

[dsquared]

it might be thought that we have a duty to take large numbers of refugees from Iraq, given that it is largely our fault that the place is such a mess, and that the risk of increasing our own vulnerability to violence (at a fraction of the levels that the Iraqis endure every day) is a sacrifice we ought to be prepared to make, if only to counter the charge that we're playing at consequence-free foreign policy.

[Matt Munro]

"Too many in the "Times-Mail-Telegraph" nexus seem to think that's it's easy to spot potential terrorists at immigration time."

I think the problem is more subtle than that. In this country we have no border control to speak of. If you don't beleive me check out how many people with non EU passports are asked even a cursory question at the Heathrow arrivals desk - answer, none. Due to lost paperwork I have had more trouble leaving other countries after a 2 week package holiday, than anyone ever seems to get coming into this one to live.
It's not that tighter controls would gurantee terrorists couldn't get in, it's more that the concept of "porous borders" so beloved of the left, creates an environment where someone can come into the country (be they a terrorist, pedo, murderer, whatever) do whatever they wish, and then leave, with no one any the wiser. In an age when my purchases at a supermarket till can be analysed on a database in milliseconds I find it inconceivable that we do not know who is in the country at any given time.
Getting into a country should be time consuming, bureacratic and difficult for anyone not entitled to be there.
Obviously you cannot spot terrorists but that's not an argument for relaxing border controls. That's a bit like saying you can't spot illegal drivers so let's not bother with number plates.

[Mark Wadsworth]

OK, but would we miss Freema (as delightful as she is) if she were not over here? Methinks not. Plus, we might still have BIlly Piper on the case.

[Katherine]

Matt, you have mistakenly confused immigration controls with border controls. Foreign-born doctors do not get into the UK and into jobs with the NHS on the basis of the assessment at the Heathrow arrivals desk. Nor, in fact, do most immigrants.