I hate blogging about immigration. It's a minefield. Almost any opinion is likely to attract accusations from one direction or another. I don't subscribe to the BNP "foreigners taking our jobs" theory. Nor do I share the Guardianista view that our country's culture is so disgusting that it can only be improved by foreigners. I have the extra dimension of having lived and worked in other people's countries for more than half my working life. I have been on the receiving end of both points of view as the foreigner in question - and I know them for the nonsense they are.
Far from "taking our jobs", many immigrants are doing the jobs "we" would rather sit on our fat chav behinds than do. The Labour heartlands where I grew up contain an archipelago of idleness, funded by disability, unemployment and other benefits, insurance fraud, fake personal injury claims, drug dealing and other crimes. My wife tripped and fell on an uneven pavement in our home town and was advised by the next three people she met how to sue the council (i.e. get free money from the taxpayer). People who don't read for pleasure and find Big Brother demanding viewing know the intricacies of "the system" inside out. Don't get me wrong. Those three were nice people. They were all in gainful employment, but they have been hopelessly corrupted by living near to the rip-off culture of the archipelago.
Unless we are prepared to take measures so drastic as to be politically unthinkable, I am afraid we have to accept that our enormous underclass will now do anything but work. There are now third-generation idlers who don't even know anyone with a job. They are sanctified as "the most vulnerable members of our society" and indeed there are some such amongst them - held up rather like the photos of "martyrs" at a march of Islamic fascists, as justification for future crimes.
So we need immigrants. Hard-working immigrants who will do essential jobs to make our country livable. Immigrants who will appreciate what a free society has to offer.
Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers have arrived in recent years from new EU members, notably Poland. I know Poland well. I lived there for over a decade. It is a country of which I could be proud to be a citizen. It has a good education system, strong family values and a work ethic. I am no fan of Britain's membership of the EU, but I was there as Poland prepared itself to join and the EU's influence was good. It required many reforms - legal, administrative and social - as conditions of membership. Poland dutifully delivered them, as did the other candidate countries. Any Pole, Hungarian or Czech who comes to Britain to work is not a refugee from a failed state or a primitive religious fanatic. He or she is a citizen of a civilised European country, sharing all of our key values and simply looking for a better job. The proportion of social security claimants amongst those migrant workers puts our native population to shame.
The same will be true of the Bulgarians, Croats, Serbians and Romanians when their time comes. If we need migrant workers - temporary or permanent (and most of these people would prefer to live in their own more polite and civilised countries if they could, so many will eventually go home) - then the EU is finally providing us with a benefit for our massive membership fee.
So why has Labour admitted over a million immigrants from non-EU countries? Why has it done so without questioning their motives or their objectives? Why is it continuing to do so even when it has become apparent that a dangerously significant minority of those immigrants not only don't share our basic values but despise them? Even after, in their self-imposed apartheid, they have bred British citizens so primitively fanatical as to murder by suicide bombing, Labour continues to admit them.
This is not a question of racism. Many non-EU immigrants from Hong Kong, India and elsewhere make a superb contribution to our country. So far from finding us so racist and hostile as to alienate them and justify terrorism, they have rolled up their sleeves and got down to work. Their children have the highest rates of educational achievement. No excuses from them, and no complaints from us. They are welcome. However, it is time for "profiling" not just of airline passengers waiting in line for security checks, but of immigrants waiting in line to come to our country. To the extent that the New Europe can't supply the skilled workers we need, we should take them from the countries that have the best history of providing productive, law-abiding, and well-integrated citizens to date.
And that - call it racism if you will - precludes any further immigration from the Islamic world. One does not have to be a paranoid who suspects them of following their false prophet's advice to infiltrate infidel nations to say this. One just has to use common sense. No more immigrants from communities whose leaders advocate, justify or excuse terrorism. No more immigrants from communities which don't share our views on female equality, religious tolerance or minority rights.
What has been done so far already puts our society in mortal danger. But it is never too late to start fighting back. Today would be a good day to begin.
Telegraph | News | Biggest migrant influx in Britain's history
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
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5 comments:
Hi Tom, great post and I agree with your stance. I too am very optimistic about the contribution that the Poles can make to our country, other new accession states too. I'm perhaps less sure about Bulgaria and its endemic mafia but I'm open minded if we can plug all the holes in our leaky system, and put something in place which acccurately reflects both the needs of industry and the interests of its people. A look at the Australian or NZ immigration systems will show how practicable that is, and we could do with looking at different approaches across the anglosphere. My fear with mass immigration, is that in say 10 years time with a continued inflow, we will have an even more displaced underclass of native Britains, welfare-dependent, as the lower paid sector is relinquished to work-hungry migrants. There might be a kind of social justice in this, even a deep irony, but it'll feed the cause of the ethno-nationalists, and therefore has potential for deep social division. I think we do need to think about numbers and balancing the economy to reflect national interests.
Given the threat to our way of life I think immigration profiling has to be considered too, though I regret we've reached that point. I can't see it getting the airtime though until there is a dramatic shift in public ideology, and our approach to cultural relativism. In practice that means embracing 'modernism' again, thus reclaiming the moral authority to judge other cultures and their ability to fit in. It's a perspective that is so missing from the public debate now don't you think, but it's anathema to the post-national, post-everything people who run the country, and who invest their intellectual capital in the international humanist dream.
So they'll probably leave the model intact, and build more prisons.
Tom
"So we need immigrants. Hard-working immigrants who will do essential jobs to make our country livable. Immigrants who will appreciate what a free society has to offer"
Do we really need immigrants? I remember this was said in (and of) the 50s when London Transport was recruiting in the West Indies and the (declining) cotton trade was importing cheap labour from Asia into Bradford and elsewhere. There was no real shortage of labour - just a lot of inefficient, mostly state supported (eg cars) or state-owned (eg iron and steel) holding on to labour like grim death because the management and the government were too scared of - or in hock to - the unions to downsize.
And now? You got it in one in your description of "an archipelago of idleness, funded by disability, unemployment and other benefits, insurance fraud, fake personal injury claims, drug dealing and other crimes" Immigration of well-educated, willing workers from Poland etc will, unfortunately, allow this underclass to continue leeching on all the rest of us and this government (or NuTory Dave) to keep in office because when they vote, the underclass votes for a continuation of the system. OTOH, continued immigration of the poor and religiously deluded from Asia will lead us to ruin in another way. Not a great outlook is it?
Whilst I agree with much of what you say, true reform of the welfare system would force many of the underclass to take those jobs they now despise. We should also follow this route.
You say two things: we have an underclass which we can't deal with for whatever reason, and we should allow the migration of hard working foreigners to Britain to fill the jobs they won't do.
There's a problem here.
The underclass find themselves stuck in a situation where their low skills gain them access to low remuneration jobs. So low that they would rather remain on benefits than take such jobs.
In the short term, an immigrant might be attracted perform low paid jobs because the remuneration appears high compared to the remuneration they might achieve in their home country or else they perceive that better opportunities will become available post entry. Either way, over time the more able immigrants will switch to better paid, higher skilled jobs, whilst the less able will find themseves trapped by the same dilemma of our own native born underclass. Certain groups of immigrants already form a disproprtionate number of our underclass. Meanwhile the low skilled jobs still remain unttractive and unfilled.
The problem of the underclass is not solved by immigration. At best it postpones the inevitable. Something will have to be done, whether you are a leftist who would advocate higher pay for the low skilled or a rightist who would advocate reform of the wefare state.
Morover, the longer we leave it, the harder it may become to solve the problem. When the underclass was purely white British born, the issue was one dimensional. Now that a generation of West Indians and now Pakistanis is being added to the mix, we can barely make any reform without being accused of targeting racial minorities. The fact that tomorrow's immigrants happen to be Polish or Rumanian won't improve this matter.
The 'underclass' are prone to violence. 'Immigrants' are prone to violence. I suggest a match be arranged.
Problem solved.
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