THE new rules on immigration are welcome but don't go nearly far enough.

Before being allowed into Britain, all potential immigrants should be subject to a medical examination, at their expense, and only by a UK-approved medical officer. Anyone with long-term, expensive-to-treat illness or health hazard in evidence should be rejected.

There should be absolutely no entitlement to any form of benefit for at least five years.

Potential immigrants should be able to show - honestly - that they can support themselves by having a certain amount of ready cash available to rent accommodation and keep themselves for at least three months.

If no such job is forthcoming within the three-month period, the entitlement to reside in this country should be withdrawn and they should be returned to their own country without delay or appeal.

Medical insurance should be compulsory. They should not be allowed to take advantage of our extremely limited NHS facilities.

Sounds harsh?

Well, no more harsh than we Britons being told to pay more and more money for services which seem to be becoming a rarity for us.

The powers that be talk of free NHS treatments. It is not free. It has been well paid for. A lot of people who are desperate for various operations seem only to be able to get them if they pay privately.

The costs for dental and optical treatments are appalling.

These treatments should be given, first, to the people who pay for them, then if there are any resources left over, we can let others use them.

Janet S Kitchen,

Ashley Park Road,

York.

...IN connection with the ongoing debate on immigration, there are two associated matters which seem pertinent.

It is widely said that the indigenous birth rate is falling, and we are short of skilled workers.

In the first case, what justifies the unseemly haste to build hundreds of thousands more houses? For whom are they intended and can they be afforded?

In the second case, is there a correlation between the hundreds of thousands of well-remunerated jobs created in government-associated organisations since 1997, and the labour shortage?

These often questionable jobs in Ofthis, Ofthat and Oftheother as well as numerous other quangos are attractive and perhaps more cushy than other occupations.

However they have all but solved the unemployment situation but in so doing they have diminished an available labour pool to a point where we have to import workers to fulfil more worthwhile tasks.

Is this a self-inflicted position designed specifically to maximise the number of "government" employees so that come the election they will be more inclined to vote for their paymaster?

As a taxpaying pensioner and contributor to funds of which G Brown & Co are in denial, am I unduly cynical?

Derek Chapplow,

Middlethorpe Grove, York.

...ONLY 30 asylum seekers in York? On a recent ten-minute stroll through the centre of York I must have encountered every one of them.

There is a significant number of people of east European and Oriental extraction wandering the streets of York at any given time. Who are these people and what are they doing here?

They are not asylum seekers (only 30 in York according to the Evening Press). They are obviously not tourists and if they have come here looking for work they have patently not succeeded.

If the numbers in York are being replicated throughout the country we are facing immigration by stealth on a massive scale. How long will it be before they and their families will be legally entitled to stay here and avail themselves of all the benefits of our welfare state? And how on earth are our already over-stretched health and education services going to cope?

Ruth Bradley,

Heslington Lane, York.

Updated: 10:38 Friday, March 05, 2004