The contempt the Scottish Government has for its own people is always there for all to see. They don’t hide it; they just keep on lowering the bar for people’s expectations. The party that claims to be for the “People of Scotland” certainly seems very keen to make laws and policies to benefit a small section of that group. This latest taxpayer-funded scam is just one more step along the road.
Iraqi-born Ola Jasim challenged the Scottish Government in court in order to be granted free tuition at university. Although born in Iraq and only moving here 9 years ago, the 20-year-old claims Scotland is her home and she should be treated just like everyone else who lives here.
And the Scottish Government have decided that she is right. She does deserve the same taxpayer-funded access to university tuition that Scottish children and adults are entitled to.
And it’s not just her; the latest ruling will allow all children of asylum seekers to apply for free tuition. At a time when we are in a financial crisis, more and more people are being allowed onto the government teat.
Free tuition to our people should absolutely be a goal for our society: we want to produce the best and brightest so that they can, in turn, drive our homeland forward. But just handing this out to all and sundry is counter-productive to the needs of the nation. Our own people will now have to do without certain government resources as cutbacks will be necessary in order to fund this extra tuition. And now our students will have to compete for places at universities in their homeland against multiple peoples from all over the globe who now get in for free because they live here.
This ruling also puts a morale drain on our own people: much like all the times young people hear “the NHS needs migrant workers”, they will feel that, somehow, these other people are being put in front of them. At no point does anyone in government encourage our youth to go into care and become nurses or doctors. All we hear about is how the NHS needs more people from abroad. Our government do our own people a disservice by only ever talking up the qualities of other people. This move to give non-Scots government funding to compete with our own people is yet another kick in the teeth for our youth.
We also should factor in that these asylum seekers should return home one day. They are only temporary residents here. So the training and knowledge gained by these people at our expense will one day be moving to benefit a different country. Instead of us focusing on upskilling our own children, we are now happy to upskill other people’s.
There is no benefit in this for Scotland. The children of Scotland will now suffer initially and the wider population once this extra drain on resources sets in. University places will be over-subscribed and our people will miss out on opportunities.
This is not how a government should run our homeland.
Our people should take priority over everyone else in our own homeland. Just as we would expect Ola’s home nation of Iraq to put its own people’s needs ahead of anyone else.
