Piers, with all due respect, I grew out of views like yours when I left my teens and started to find out how the world really works.

I think the key is that you say ".....for providing people with decent food, clothing, housing, education and entertainment....then it doesn't happen"

in other words, you already suppose that people will be entering a country with the expectation of being provided for. We already know that's WHY they come, what we are discussing is the results of their failure to "be provided for" and their failure to "provide for themselves".

If the result of those two failures is poverty, unemployment and discrimination leading to social disorder which is of no good to anyone, not the immigrants and certainly not the indigents, then we need to do something different from what we are doing now, on the grounds that

"The height of stupidity is to continue to do what you've always done and to expect a different result".

My feeling is that it's nobody's job except mine to provide these things for me and my family.

So we first need to establish

1. Do the immigrants expect to be provided for?

2. Do the immigrants expect to be able to provide for themselves?

Then we need to establish how everybody feels about whatever the answers to those questions are. And if we can't then make sensible decisions about a realistic immigration policy without launching off into left-wing or right-wing rehetoric, then things will stay as they are and we must expect the same, unacceptable to all, results that we are getting right now.