With new immigration proposals, state lawmakers hope to build momentum

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Democratic lawmakers will unveil a slew of new immigration-related proposals Tuesday, including measures that would extend state-paid health coverage to those in the country illegally and offer more protection against deportation.

Legislators behind the 10-bill package aim to build on the landmark immigration laws passed in California in recent years, such as one that allows people without legal residency to obtain driver’s licenses.

By keeping momentum on immigrant-aid policies, legislative leaders said, they hoped to spur liberalization of immigration laws nationwide.

“Our message to other states and to members of Congress in Washington, D.C., is that there’s nothing to be afraid of,” said Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles). “What is it that we fear in embracing the millions of human beings that are already living in our communities?”

The most far-reaching of the new proposals would offer enrollment in Medi-Cal — California’s healthcare program for the poor — to people who qualify regardless of immigration status.

In California, about 1.8 million people who are in the country illegally lack healthcare coverage, according to estimates by UC Berkeley and UCLA. About 1.5 million of them would qualify for Medi-Cal.

Joe Guzzardi of the group Californians for Population Stabilization, which calls for strict enforcement of immigration laws, decried benefits such as healthcare coverage for those without papers, saying they increase the strain put on the state by immigration.

“It doesn’t make any sense to keep on reaching out and encouraging more illegal immigration into California,” Guzzardi said.

“More people into California means more water consumption, more resource depletion, more traffic on the roads, more urban sprawl — that’s beyond question but it doesn’t seem to bother [lawmakers].”

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With new immigration proposals, state lawmakers hope to build momentum
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Volokh Conspiracy: Immigration and Equality

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Now that a federal judge has enjoined President Obama’s unilateral amnesty, immigration reform will have to be achieved the old-fashioned – and constitutional – way: by compromise with Congress. A grand bargain is not impossible, but it will require a broad re-framing of the issues and a clear sense of what is at stake. For one thing, any such bargain should end, once and for all, governmental discrimination on the basis of race.

Affirmative action and immigration might, at first glance, appear unrelated; in fact, they are profoundly and perversely intertwined. It is often said that anti-immigration sentiment is driven by a fear of competition; Americans are said to fear competing against new immigrants for jobs, for contracts, for educational opportunities. This account leaves out a crucial part of the story: Americans have never lacked competitive spirit or feared a fair fight. What many Americans fear is that these competitions will, in fact, be rigged from the outset. The sad fact is that they are right.

American law and policy will discriminate in favor of most immigrants — those of favored races such as blacks and Hispanics — and their children, and their children’s children. Correspondingly, American law and policy will discriminate against Americans of disfavored races — Asian Americans, Indian Americans, Caucasian Americans — and their children, and their children’s children. This discrimination is enshrined in federal law, in state law, and in private policy abetted by law. It is called affirmative action.

This systematic discrimination is pervasive in American life — in private employment, state employment and federal employment; in state contracting and federal contracting; at private universities and state universities. And in practice, it is no mere tie-breaker; it is a massive thumb on the scale in favor of some races and against others. A first-generation Asian American who has made his home in, say, Wisconsin and worked hard to earn for his children their chance at the American dream might, in principle, favor liberal immigration reform, so that more ambitious immigrants might follow in his footsteps. This Asian American may be happy to know that the son of a new Hispanic immigrant who settles next door would have an excellent chance of claiming his share of the American dream: With a respectable GPA and LSAT, such a boy would have, for example, a 62 percent chance of admission into the University of Wisconsin Law School. But this Asian American also may know a deeply perverse and unjust fact: If his own son earns identical credentials, that boy will have a mere 16 percent chance of admission, simply because of his race.   State law, federal law, private schools and public schools will all dramatically favor a Hispanic immigrant’s child over an Asian American child, simply on the basis of race. This is one of the great injustices of American life, and it is one of the great political and moral hurdles to immigration reform.

As a political matter, there is a natural bargain here. Democrats believe that immigration is a winning political issue for them; they believe that it makes them look compassionate while it makes Republicans look churlish. Affirmative action, on the other hand, is a political winner for Republicans; polls overwhelmingly oppose it, and it allows Republicans to argue for the ringing principle of equality under law, while Democrats are left to defend the status quo of institutional discrimination and racial spoils. The connection between these two issues creates the potential for a grand congressional compromise. Republicans could agree to comprehensive immigration reform, if Democrats would agree to end governmental discrimination on the basis of race.

Meanwhile, for President Obama, this would be more than a political victory; it would be a historic moral triumph. There is a broad consensus that our immigration system is broken and that it can be downright cruel in its current dysfunctional form. President Obama has wanted to achieve immigration reform since before the beginning of his presidency. As for affirmative action, President Obama is uniquely well qualified to explain the moral case for equality under law. His soaring speech in Selma last month reminded us all of how eloquent he can be on this topic: as he declared, the heroic marchers of 50 years ago “didn’t seek special treatment, just the equal treatment promised to them almost a century before.” Our newest Americans seek exactly the same thing. It is President Obama alone who can say to them:

Welcome to the United States of America. We are a nation of immigrants, a nation of opportunity. We are not a land of discrimination; we are a nation of equality under law. This is a nation where the son of a Kenyan immigrant may grow up to be president of the United States. Come to our shores and we make you this promise: We will treat you like everyone else. We will not discriminate against you based on your race, your color, your country of origin. And we will not discriminate in your favor either. Your children will be treated like our children. We will not discriminate in favor of your daughters on the basis of their race. But neither will we discriminate in favor of my daughters, Malia and Sasha, on the basis of theirs. We know that, like the marchers at Selma, you seek not special treatment but equal treatment, and that is what we promise you. You are welcome here, and we offer you a uniquely American constitutional guarantee. We promise you — our Fourteenth Amendment promises you — equal protection of the law.

This is the speech that President Obama was born to give, a speech that no one else could, a perfect complement to his speech at Selma. In one historic moment, he could renew the pride that we all felt six years ago when our first black president swore his oath of office. He could at once reform our immigration laws and, in the same moment, redeem the true promise of equal protection — the promise, in Justice Harlan’s words, that “[o]ur Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”

In 2008, President Obama promised to “fundamentally transform[] the United States of America”; here, at last, is the transformation that would assure his legacy. For the first time in American history, we could welcome immigrants of all colors to the nation of Martin Luther King’s dream, “a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” And President Obama could, for all time, be the one who made Martin Luther King’s dream come true.

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Harris wants immigration controls scrapped

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“The number of people coming from the peninsula to settle in Sabah since 1963 has been negligible.”

Harris-Salleh_imigresen_600KOTA KINABALU: Former Sabah Chief Minister Harris Salleh, under attack from all sides for allegedly weakening Sabah’s immigration powers during his time, has called for the remaining controls between Sabah, Sarawak and the peninsula to be scrapped.

He also wants the Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) and the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) to find out from the Singapore Government why it has banned Orang Asal youths, below 35 years, from working on the island, instead of picking on him. “We are nitpicking when the rest of the world is going borderless.”

“The number of people coming from the peninsula to settle in Sabah since 1963 has been negligible,” reiterated Harris in justifying his proposal. “The controls on the movement of our people between the peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak are unnecessary, even politically.”

“Malaysia is a developing nation. We need a free flow of people to help build up the country.”

He was rebutting statements by PBS and PKR that he was wrong in eroding Sabah’s immigration powers.

What will happen if the peninsula imposes immigration controls on Sabahans and Sarawakians?

“At present, our youths cari makan (find work) in the peninsula, not here. It’s easier there for them. There are over 100,000 Sabahan youths in the peninsula.”

The day will come, he warned, when Labuan would impose immigration controls on people entering the island from Sabah. “There are always two sides to a story. What is being presented now in the media is just one side of the coin.”

“Sabah contributes very little to Labuan,” claimed Harris. “Most of its visitors and business people are from Brunei, the peninsula, Sarawak and overseas.”

“So, in a tit-for-tat move, it can impose immigration controls on Sabahans entering the island.”

He was implying that Labuan should not be referred to as a loophole, in the immigration laws, allowing people to flood Sabah. He recalled that the Berjaya Government (1976-1985) scrapped the need for passports and ICs between the peninsula, Sarawak and Sabah “but the controls between the peninsula and Sabah were put back later, for some reason”.

He conceded that it was the decision of his Administration that visitors entering Sabah from Labuan need not produce passports and ICs. “It was the decision of the government of the day,” said Harris. “The decision was in accordance with the rule of law under parliamentary democracy which Malaysia practices.”

“Both Parliament and the Sabah Assembly decided.”

Harris, stressing that what has been done in the past can be undone, suggested that PBS bring up the matter of plugging all the loopholes in the immigration laws at the Barisan Nasional (BN) level, and later the Federal Cabinet, before proceeding to Parliament. “This is the rule of democratic law.”

“Of course there are other rules, some imaginary,” he added. “It’s not clear what rules that PBS and PKR are referring to.”

Source Article from http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2015/04/06/harris-wants-immigration-controls-scrapped/
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Start-up to energize immigrant entrepreneurs

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Moroccan immigrant Ali Hajjaji’s business plan fills a notebook. But his back-of-a-napkin version is just a rectangle labeled “hub” and a handful of lines representing “stores” and “pick up points.”

A master of cellphone repair, Hajjaji, 37, came to America in 2010 with a green card he won in the State Department’s diversity lottery. He has worked for resellers and retailers, including RadioShack.

Two months ago, he opened iSmartTech, his South Ninth Street shop amid the bump and bustle of the Italian Market, where broken phones are as common as cabbage.

Now he hopes to hone his expansion plan, thanks to the “Philadelphia Immigrant Innovation Hub,” a new Knight Foundation-funded start-up that was awarded $261,500 last week.















“If it is possible, I will do it,” Hajjaji said, evincing the grit of a man accustomed to 16-hour workdays.

The Hub, which will occupy a rehabbed former post office at 6700 Germantown Ave., is a joint venture of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, which offers language and job-readiness training for immigrants; Mt. Airy USA, a community development group; and Finanta, a nontraditional lender in Kensington.

Their grant-winning proposal seeks to “harness the energy of immigrant entrepreneurs” and revitalize parts of Mount Airy by offering subsidized office space, language assistance, technical training, and access to capital.

“If you look at the census data on East and West Mount Airy for 2010, we had pretty significant population loss,” said Anuj Gupta, director of Mt. Airy USA, the nonprofit residents established in 1980 to counter blight on Germantown Avenue.

Though the city’s overall population grew 0.6 percent, the population within the area of Mount Airy bounded by Cresheim Valley Road, Washington Lane, Wissahickon Avenue, and Stenton Avenue declined 7 percent, an Inquirer analysis of the census data showed.

The communities of Mount Airy have much to offer in terms of livability and affordability, said Gupta. So why, when Philadelphia started adding population after decades of decline, was Mount Airy left out of the party?

“One of the primary drivers of Philadelphia’s population growth in the past eight years has been immigrants,” Gupta said. “But [Mount Airy] isn’t getting those immigrants, either as business owners or residents. If we want access to that population pipeline, we need to be part of the larger city’s dynamic.”

Though Mount Airy has some Latino- and Asian-owned businesses, he said, “we don’t see a clustering or concentration coming out of that. Nor have we seen much refugee resettlement up here.”

 

Put to the test

Striving to turn that around, the groups pitched their idea to the Knight Foundation’s Knight Cities Challenge, which this year provided $5 million to 32 projects from among 7,000 proposals nationwide. Including the Hub, Philadelphia had seven winners.

“If we give immigrant entrepreneurs reasons to come up here – affordable space, programming, linkage to capital,” said Gupta, “can we simultaneously sell them on the neighborhood? Have we convinced them to start businesses here, to live here, or both? . . . That’s the hypothesis we want to test.”

An 18-month pilot project, the Hub expects to open in late summer or early fall. It will offer subsidized, flexible, incubator-style space to approximately 60 entrepreneurs. The Knight funding supports the programming for immigrant entrepreneurs, said Gupta, but anyone can start a business there and benefit from the reduced rents.

Sameer Khetan, Finanta’s director of development, said his organization’s goal was to increase access to borrowing for largely low-income, minority, and immigrant populations. “We fill a gap in the market for individuals who just can’t get financing from traditional banks for a variety of reasons, like lack of assets, collateral, or credit score,” he said.

He anticipates Finanta’s loans to future Hub tenants will be for working capital less than $50,000.

Like Mt. Airy USA, Finanta will scrutinize the impact of its lending on the area’s residential areas and business corridors.

Finanta has helped revitalize parts of Woodland Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia by lending to businesses started mostly by West African immigrants. In making Mount Airy a magnet for immigrant entrepreneurs of all ethnicities, he said, Finanta hopes to replicate that success.

The lender will evaluate the social experiment by counting how many new businesses the Hub brings to the area and the number of “loans to existing [Finanta] clients who opt to do business or locate in Mount Airy in some capacity,” even if it’s only a food truck that brings new business in during the day.

 

Up the game

Herman Nyamunga, the Welcoming Center’s director of business development, came to the United States from Kenya 10 years ago. He will be in charge of Hub workshops and seminars designed to “up the game” of the immigrant entrepreneurs, he said.

Nyamunga met Hajjaji, the cellphone master technician, through a program of the Welcoming Center and was immediately impressed with his market research.

When the Hub is ready for its first group of entrepreneurs, Nyamunga said, he will happily refer the Moroccan man.

As an immigrant and former owner of a cleaning company and an import-export firm, Nyamunga knows the challenges immigrant entrepreneurs face.

“We will be helping people transition from an idea to a viable business,” he said, “and minimizing the cost of that transition” through Hub economies of scale.

The Knight Foundation made grants, from $20,000 to $297,000, to six other initiatives in Philadelphia, including projects to enhance city pools, vacant spaces, polling places, and schoolyards.

 

mmatza@phillynews.com

215-854-2541

@MichaelMatza1







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Another Great Argument In Favour Of Immigration

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Which is that immigration can shake up the power and economic structure of the society into which people are immigrating. This is of course what some people worry about concerning immigration. But it is entirely possible for a society to become too static in economic terms and thus something that shocks that stability can be beneficial to all:

Mass migration to the United States shaped the U.S. economy in a variety of ways. Most vital was the continuous instability it brought. Local monopolies of labor and enterprise were broken up by immigrants. Techniques of production were upset by the succession of new views and conflicting attitudes. Where business had a monopoly, where labor controlled entry to an occupation, where engineers promulgated a traditional method of production – there resources were unlikely to be used with high efficiency. But the free market in ideas, the persistent competition of novelty, kept surfacing ever more efficient production techniques, then got them adopted.

Think this through in a slightly different manner. The way in which entry of a Walmart into a local economy kills off the Mom and Pop stores. This is, of course, why we see rather large numbers of the sort of people who own local retail businesses agitating against the idea that Walmart should be allowed to enter their local market. But the entry of that Walmart into that local market undoubtedly lowers prices for consumers: which is the point of our having an economy in the first place, we want consumers to be better off over time. Walmart is being those immigrants into that local economy. As is any business that expands into new territory of course: it’s an immigrant into a new part of the economy. And such business migration does much the same as immigrants themselves. Breaks up the locally stable economy.

We could look at this through the trials and tribulations of the old producers in that market. And indeed in some industries in the US, in some places, that is the way that we do look at it. Certain states, for example, insist that if you are to enter a certain line of business in that state then you must have the agreement of your soon to be competitors that you should be allowed to enter that business. The downside of this is of course that those extant businesses are able to extract oligopolistic profits from consumers due to the legal barriers to competition. And as above (and as both Smith and Bastiat pointed out) we’re really supposed to be looking at the economy from the point of view of consumption, not production.

Note that if the new business entering the area doesn’t make the consumers better off then that new business will fail in that area: it’s only if consumers become better off that they will patronise it after all.

So, another reason why immigration is to be welcomed: it stirs up the economy to the benefit of all.

My latest book is “23 Things We Are Telling You About Capitalism” At Amazon or Amazon UK. A critical (highly critical) re-appraisal of Ha Joon Chang’s “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism”.

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Blu-ray Review: James Gray's 'The Immigrant' starring Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix

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One of the casualties of the 2014 awards season was James Gray’s The Immigrant. While Gray has worked with Joaquin Phoenix and other big Hollywood stars during his entire career, The Immigrant was seen by some as his first masterpiece. Still, for whatever reason, The Weinstein Company never gave the film the same kind of awards season push it gives other high-profile movies, and it was dumped in theaters during the summer.

After its incredibly short theatrical run, the film was then posted on Netflix in the fall. That left some of the film’s fans wondering if we would ever see a physical release at all. Thankfully, TWC felt nice enough to give us one. The Anchor Bay Blu-ray hits stores on Tuesday, April 7.

I reviewed the film in June, when it did make its theatrical release. At the time, I gave it a glowing review and I still feel that it is a really good movie, coming close to a masterpiece. It doesn’t quite reach the level of other iconic immigrant stories that have been told in film, but the performance by Marion Cotillard is heartbreaking and Darius Khondji’s acclaimed cinematography is stunning.

Cotillard stars as Ewa, a Polish immigrant who arrives at Ellis Island in 1921 with her ill sister. Thankfully, Ewa can speak English, but that skill doesn’t save her from the fate many immigrant women face. Bruno (Phoenix) sees her and tricks her into coming with him. At first, she thinks he can help her get a real job, but it’s soon obvious that he’s just a pimp who believes he’s something more. Later, Ewa meets Bruno’s cousin, magician Emil (Jeremy Renner). Bruno and Emil have a violent relationship, as the two collide over Ewa.

Since The Immigrant is still available to stream on Netflix, it’s hard to recommend the Blu-ray to those who haven’t seen the movie. It is definitely a film one has to see first before committing to including it in their collection permanently. That said, fans of the film will appreciate the Blu-ray because it preserves the stunning visuals of the film. This is one gorgeous movie and it’s a shame that more people didn’t get to see it on the big screen.

Extras are a bit thin. The only video extras are the trailer and a short two-minute featurette with Gray discussing photos and paintings that inspired the film’s look.

Gray’s commentary though is worth the price of admission, as he goes into the technical details of the film and discusses the differences in acting styles that clash when Cotillard and Phoenix are on the screen. He also admits to some of the heavy-handed flaws in the film and explains why it was such a personal story to tell. It’s also interesting to hear him say that, while he does admire the work of Gordon Willis on the first two Godfather films, he wasn’t really inspired by that look. The Immigrant looks the way it does because of the time period, not because Gray was trying to mimic his film idols.

The Immigrant will go down as one of the forgotten classics of 2014 (even though the film was technically made in 2013 and premiered at the 2013 Cannes Festival). The film’s treatment was sad to see… and don’t even get me started on the garish poster.

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Blu-ray Review: James Gray's 'The Immigrant' starring Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix
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Hunger strike by immigrant mothers at Texas facility prompts probe

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WASHINGTON — Federal civil rights officials will meet Monday with two immigrant mothers who’ve been leading a hunger strike at a family detention camp in Karnes, Texas.

According to advocates working with the detained families, investigators from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties are expected to talk to the mothers about their allegation that they and their children were assigned to the facility’s medical clinic to punish them for the hunger protest.

According to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, a Texas-based advocacy and legal services group, three women were taken to the medical clinic on Monday, the first day of the hunger strike. Two of the women were held overnight with their children, said the group’s advocacy director, Mohammad Abdollahi. Others were warned they could lose custody of their children as a result of participating in the strike, he said.

“The women technically had not started their hunger strike on Monday when they were put into medical, so there was no reason for them to be in medical in the first place, let alone be threatened with their kids being taken away,” said Abdollahi. He called use of the clinic “solitary confinement.”

The hunger strike has focused attention on a rarely scrutinized portion of the network of facilities run by the government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of the sprawling Department of Homeland Security. The Karnes County Residential Center, about an hour southeast of San Antonio, currently houses about 300 mothers and their children who are awaiting a decision on their petitions for asylum.

About 40 are participating in the hunger strike.

Some of the women have been held for as long as 10 months, according to one of the detainees, Kenia Galeano, a 26-year-old from Honduras who spoke with McClatchy. They began refusing food on Monday to protest the lengthy detention of their children.

“We have come to this country with our children seeking refuge and we’re being treated as delinquents,” the women wrote in a letter explaining their actions.

ICE officials said they don’t have solitary confinement areas and that the medical unit was not used for punishment. ICE said it also is investigating claims from some detainees at the Karnes facility that a member of a nonprofit group encouraged residents to stop eating to protest their detention.

According to a handbook of ICE standards, residents who do not eat for 72 hours will be referred to the medical department for evaluation and possible treatment. When medically advisable, medical personnel may place residents in a single occupancy observation room to measure food and liquid intake, the handbook states.

The Karnes detention camp is one of three facilities set up to house mothers and children in the United States. The Obama administration last year revived the once almost abandoned, and highly controversial, practice of detaining mothers and children. Since July, more than 2,500 immigrants, mostly women and children, have been detained at family detention centers across the country.

Email: fordonez@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @francoordonez.

Source Article from http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/04/03/262080/hunger-strike-by-immigrant-mothers.html
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The Fix: Obama met with Mormon leaders on immigration — a rare issue they actually agree on

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The Fix: Obama met with Mormon leaders on immigration — a rare issue they actually agree on
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Mothers start hunger strike at Texas immigrant detention center, want their children released

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Dozens of mothers went on a hunger strike this week at the immigrant detention center in Karnes City, Texas, to demand that they and their children be released.

“We have decided to unite and launch a hunger strike to show our desperation,” they said Friday in a message written in Spanish and signed by 78 women, all of whom are being held at the center.

The Karnes City facility, located some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the city of San Antonio, Texas, is one of four detention centers in the United States for families, all operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

The others are located in Dilley, Texas; Artesia, New Mexico, and Leesport, Pennsylvania, which if filled to capacity can hold a total of some 4,000 undocumented immigrants.

Most of the women in detention came from Central America and crossed the border during the last fiscal year, when an enormous wave of undocumented immigrants led the U.S. government to reopen these facilities as a way of discouraging new arrivals.

“You must know that this is just the beginning. We won’t stop until we achieve our goal. This strike will continue until every one of us is freed,” the women, who after crossing the border asked for asylum in the United States because of the violence in their own countries, said in the letter.

They also said in the note that living conditions in the center “are not good” for their children, who “aren’t eating well and are losing weight every day and whose health is deteriorating.”

“During this hunger strike, no mother will work in the detention center, nor will we send our children to the school or use any service of this place,” they said.

Karnes Detention Center, which was opened in August 2014 and is managed by the privately owned GEO Group, has been notorious for several scandals, including several complaints of sexual abuse of female detainees by the guards.

The Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, of which ICE is a division, opened an investigation following the complaints but concluded that no proof could be found to justify them.

For its part, ICE denied finding any evidence of a hunger strike at the Karnes family immigration facility.

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Leaders clash on NHS and immigration

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The UK’s party leaders have clashed in the first TV election debate on a range of issues including the NHS, immigration and the deficit.

It is the only time David Cameron and Ed Miliband will appear together on TV ahead of 7 May’s polling day.

The Conservative and Labour leaders, as well as the leaders of the Lib Dems, UKIP, the Green Party, the SNP and Plaid Cymru, also debated zero-hours contracts, spending cuts and education in the ITV-hosted contest.

An average audience of 7.7m, which was a share of 34%, watched the debate on ITV, the BBC News Channel or Sky News.

Snap polls taken after the debate gave a mixed verdict.

A YouGov poll of 1,100 people gave a clear victory to the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, with 28%, followed by UKIP leader Nigel Farage on 20%, Mr Cameron on 18%, Mr Miliband on 15%, Mr Clegg on 10%, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett on 5% and Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood on 4%.

‘Pick and mix’

But a ComRes poll for ITV made it a dead heat between Mr Cameron, Mr Miliband, Mr Farage and Ms Sturgeon, although Mr Cameron came out on top on the question of who was most capable of leading the country.

Mr Miliband was judged best performer in an ICM poll for the Guardian, taking 25% of support, just ahead of David Cameron on 24%.

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Analysis by BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson

There was no game-changer. No single “moment”, no zinger, no gaffe which looks set to re-shape the course of this election. Save perhaps for one.

That was the presence on the stage of not two or three party leaders but seven – a debate in which the talk of a new sort of politics, multi-party politics, became visible reality.

If that gives a boost for UKIP’s Nigel Farage with his laser focus on immigration and his attack on the “Westminster parties” – as the early instant polls suggest – it will worry the Tories.

If it also promotes Natalie Bennett’s Greens, Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP and Leanne Wood’s Plaid Cymru after their assault on austerity – it will frighten Labour. The consequence could be an outcome more unpredictable and more uncertain than any election for years.

Read Nick’s full blog here.

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Some of the sharpest exchanges in the two-hour event came when Lib Dem Nick Clegg clashed with Mr Cameron.

Mr Clegg accused Mr Cameron of wanting to cut the money going into schools – Mr Cameron denied this and accused the Lib Dem leader of taking a “pick and mix approach” to decisions they had made together in cabinet.

Mr Miliband attacked Mr Clegg for “betraying young people” over tuition fees – a clearly riled Mr Clegg attacked the Labour leader’s “pious stance” and challenged Mr Miliband to apologise to the British public for “crashing the economy”. Mr Miliband said Labour had admitted getting it wrong over bank regulation.

Ms Sturgeon took a firm line against austerity and signalled areas, such as increasing the top rate of income tax, where she could work with Labour but said getting more SNP MPs elected to Westminster was needed to “keep them honest”.

Ms Wood and Ms Bennett joined Ms Sturgeon in stressing their anti-austerity credentials.

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The verdict of the snap opinion polls

Snap poll verdict
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The BBC’s assistant political editor Norman Smith told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme both Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband’s supporters were “pretty pleased” – “they felt their men came through it relatively unscathed, they got over their core message, they both believed they managed to look prime ministerial…”

However, he said, those with the most to smile about would be the smaller parties, “particularly the women, and most particularly Nicola Sturgeon”.

The SNP leader had “managed to project herself as a distinctive, articulate voice of anti-austerity in a way which we’ve not really had on the national stage”, he said.

Mr Farage, on the other hand, seemed to be appealing “again and again and again to his base, this is not a (UKIP) campaign that is reaching out”.

Mr Farage risked controversy by highlighting the number of foreign nationals with HIV whom he said were treated by the NHS, saying: “We have to look after our own people first.”

Ms Wood said Mr Farage “ought to be ashamed of himself” for deploying “scaremongering rhetoric”.

Mr Farage also clashed directly with Mr Cameron on the issue of immigration, saying he stood no chance of getting agreement from other EU leaders to restrict the free movement of people.

Mr Cameron rejected this and accused Mr Farage of wanting to get a Labour government through the “back door”.

Spending cuts

He said: “We do need immigration that’s controlled and fair. In recent decades it’s been too high and I want to see it come down.”

Mr Farage responded: “As members of the EU, what can we do to control immigration? Let me tell you – nothing.”

It was a relatively even-tempered debate, with few examples of the leaders shouting across each other, but a woman from the audience attempted to disrupt proceedings, shouting “they are not listening to us” as Mr Cameron gave an answer on the armed forces.

The heckler, Victoria Prosser, 33, from Salford, told reporters she had challenged David Cameron because she wanted people to question “the 1% at the top” who she said were not working in the country’s interests.

Mr Miliband repeatedly described what he would do “if I am prime minister”, in raising the minimum wage, banning exploitative zero-hours contracts and “rescuing our NHS”.

Mr Clegg directly challenged Mr Cameron over his decision not to ask the richest to pay more towards deficit reduction, but instead to impose “ideologically-driven cuts”.

Responding to Mr Cameron’s casting of the election as a choice between “competence and chaos”, the Lib Dem leader urged him to “imagine the chaos in people’s lives” caused by cuts in spending on health, schools and childcare.

Mr Cameron said the wealthy would be the target of a £5bn crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion.

He then turned the spotlight on Mr Miliband, who he said “still thinks the last Labour government didn’t tax too much, borrow too much and spend too much”.

The leaders' debate

Labour’s Ed Miliband directs a question at David Cameron

Nicola Sturgeon and David Cameron

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and Conservative leader David Cameron exchange points

Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, left, looks on as UKIP’s Nigel Farage makes a point

Leanne Wood and Ed Miliband

Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood is watched by Labour’s Ed Miliband as she has a say

Ms Bennett got things under way with an anti-austerity message, saying there was an “alternative” to making the poor and disadvantaged pay for the mistakes of bankers.

Mr Farage said the other six parties were all the same because they supported EU membership, adding he wanted to “take back control of our borders”.

Mr Clegg said no-one would win the election and voters should think about who they want to see in coalition, saying his party offered “grit” in government.

Ms Sturgeon had a message of “friendship” for the rest of the UK, saying the SNP would work with other “parties of like mind” to end the “bedroom tax” and protect the NHS.

Mr Miliband said Labour had a better plan for the country and vowed to ban exploitative “zero-hours” contracts and “save” the NHS.

Mr Cameron said the Conservatives’ economic plan was working, adding: “Let’s not go back to square one, Britain can do so much better than that.”

Ms Wood had an anti-austerity message and said her party can “win for Wales” in a hung Parliament.

Amid suggestions of a hung Parliament and possible coalitions and deals after the election, commentators have said that the debates made the British political system look very different from the traditional two or three-party set-up.

But Conservative Chief Whip Michael Gove said he would prefer a majority government with David Cameron at the helm, and there were dangers in a “patchwork quilt coalition”.

And shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint said: “At the end of this campaign it’s about a choice: who’s going to be the prime minister? And that’s between Ed Miliband and David Cameron.”

Other debates

The seven-way debate emerged from tortuous negotiations between the parties and the broadcasters, with Mr Cameron refusing a direct head-to-head with Mr Miliband.

The Democratic Unionist Party, which has eight MPs, has criticised its exclusion from the programme.

The full leader line-up

Host Julie Etchingham had the task of keeping the seven leaders in order

A question-and-answer programme featuring Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband appearing separately was hosted by Channel 4 and Sky News last week, and a BBC debate involving opposition party leaders, moderated by David Dimbleby, will be broadcast on 16 April.

There will also be a special Question Time on BBC One, a week before polling day, with Mr Cameron, Mr Miliband and Mr Clegg appearing one after the other to answer questions from a studio audience.

• Subscribe to the BBC Election 2015 newsletter to get a round-up of the day’s campaign news sent to your inbox every weekday afternoon.

Source Article from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32166354
Leaders clash on NHS and immigration
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32166354
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