Immigration is a topic that has been hot on the agenda for a long time, but is something that has leapt to new levels in the past decade. Following the admission of a number of Eastern European countries in to the European Union armies of people seeking their fortunes have legally headed to these shores, with numbers bolstered further by the influx of tens of thousands of illegals from elsewhere.

It is such a vexed issue that those debating it will more often than not be clouded by their own rhetorical Weltanschauung; it is a subject capable of creating anything from an emotional debate through to heated antagonism and, at the sharp end of the scale, outright violence.

The issue is far from simple; if it were so I am certain that a solution would have been pretty well nailed down by now. It is easy for those on the left to condemn everyone who may harbour reservations about certain newcomers as “Daily Mail readers” in much as the same way as it is for those of us on the right to describe those on the other side of the fence as Guardian-reading Islingtonistas; the truth is that with all of the theorising and bickering across the political divide, the ability to apply any sort of common sense has been lost.

There are no black and white issues here – many newcomers have proved to be of great benefit to this country and its economy while large numbers of others have proved to be little more than a criminal burden and a drain on resources. The problem of course is that while the left continually harp on about the success stories while at the same time ignoring the problems experienced in our crowded neighbourhoods, the tub-thumpers of the Daily Mail will witter on about problems in Dover while ignoring those wonderful stories of the Polish plumber answering an emergency call in the middle of the night without demanding an exhorbitant out of hours callout charge.

The hacks like to keep things simple, only because it helps them generate the same old headlines – all of which are bunk. The truth is that while the Guardianistas are happy to regale us plebs with their fluffy and wonderful multi-kulti vision, they will more often than not return after work every evening to their whiter than white neighbourhoods, comfortable ivory towers light years away from the crowded inner cities. Meanwhile, those who eagerly lap up the ridiculous notion that “immigrants are stealing our jobs” would never consider doing the same thing for even double the money.

Of course, to draw any lines of demarcation would result in accusations of pigeon-holing and – perish the thought – “racism”; it is far easier to on the one hand describe every newcomer as either wonderful – or, if things don’t add up, “culturally different” – while on the other hand dismiss them all as equally horrid. It is a case of “let them all in” or “kick them all out”, with no common sense in-between.

I personally have no problem with immigration per se, provided that it makes economic sense. Truth be told, if I were an employer and needed to find a dozen people to engage in hard work I would post up a notice at the local Polish delicatessen. In doing this I would be confident that the people I get would turn up on time, do their job properly and not be wanting a tea and fag break every ten minutes. I could on the other hand advertise the positions at the Job Centre, only to be burdened with a bunch of lazyboneses whose idea of hard work is turning up late, complaining about the job or quitting before they have even started. By the same token, I wouldn’t attempt to hire a dozen Muslim Iraqis or Afghans, as they’d probably spend most of their time looking towards Mecca or complaining that they weren’t being offered a Halal option for lunch.

Racism, prejudice, call it what you will – as far as I am concerned any decision I might make would be driven by basic economic sense – and this should be the case across the entire country. Businesses should be allowed to function in a way that allows them to become successful cogs of the ecomony as a whole; they should not need to subsidise lazy workers, bend over backwards to meet ridiculous cultural demands or have to defer deadlines on account of the staff not being up to scratch.

The problems we are facing in this country have little or nothing to do with hard-working newcomers “taking away” jobs from local people who for the most part would rather be claiming benefit and vegetating a home all day in front of the Jeremy Kyle Show; take the newcomers away and you’d just have a host of failed businesses and an even larger number of unemployed locals. Meanwhile, the indolent would still be spending their (sorry, our) money on widescreen televisions, ugly jewellery, cigarettes, cheap alcohol and drugs. The benefits system has much to answer for, in that it has helped to create a generation of work-shy, lazy, useless morlocks whose only real aim in life is to breed.

As for the problems caused by immigration – as far as I am concerned at least – these will not be found in fields populated by hard-working labourers from the new EU countries. These problems can be seen in our inner cities, many of which have become little more than ghettos for people that can best be described as culturally insular interlopers. They can be seen on the streets of towns like Dover, parts of which have become encampments for armies of wandering Balkan gypsies. They can be seen in towns populated by Muslims whose desire is not to blend in with the British way of life but instead create their own little Islamic urban statelets, complete with hideous mosques, unhygienic halal butcheries and the implementation of Sharia Law.

Why the government cannot understand that there is a glaringly obvious difference between a Slovak or Polish asparagus picker and a so-called criminal “refugee” from Kosovo (read: Albania) or a mediaeval wife- and daughter-beater from Kurdistan continues to leave me scratching my head in confusion.

In a perfect world, I’d take all of the foreign interlopers on the first boat back from when they came. I’d then ship out all of our home-grown lazybonses and put them on a desert island so that they can vegetate in peace without us having to pay for them. This would solve the immigration problem in one stroke and render one-issue parties like the BNP redundant – doubly so given that most of support base would be amongst those foraging for berries on said desert island. I’d then invite a group of Poles to open up a traditional restaurant at the end of my street, where they’d serve a range of dishes – none of which would be Halal. In fact, let’s have a Hungarian restaurant too – I haven’t had a decent gulasz since my last trip to Budapest.