Reports last week that net immigration has had a 94,000 net rise in the last 12 months won’t take anyone watching the news at Calais and Dover by surprise. In fact, many UKIP supporters and shocked British reading the scaremongering by several tabloids would possibly have deemed the figure to be much higher, as ‘swarms’ begin the ‘invasion’ of the British Isles.
Background
As a third-generation migrant whose lineage is largely from the Caribbean with traces of British ancestry, I have an especially unique view on the subject. I consider myself to be British, educated and grown up on English soil, I believe I have the right to the same as those who are racially indigenous but as I opened the book entitled, The Diversity Illusion: What we got wrong and how to set it right by Ed West; it is as I always believed in the back of mind. I was gravely mistaken.
The Diversity Illusion – An Educated Response?
Ed West is an educated man. It is obvious from the meticulous research he has done to frame his position in this book. In many instances he has pinpointed the very nature of realities of the way in which the ethnically British treat migrants; in this, he has succeeded, however, he has missed one grave point. In order to make the premise of his book plausible, he had to ignore reasons and rights and address what he deems to be the reality of human nature.
In the chapter entitled, ‘The Jobs the British won’t do’, he argues that immigration crossed with emigration make no impression on the economy. A 1% increase in immigration has been cited as having the effects of between 5 and 15 per cent on the economy where skilled workers are available.
“…the costs or benefits to the economy are small…The Lords declared the biggest beneficiaries from international migration are ‘migrants themselves’, but, it argued: ‘We have found no evidence…that net migration-immigration minus emigration-generates significant economic benefits for the existing UK population.’ ”
loc. 1131
I work in recruitment for the time being, and I have noticed with startling alacrity the capacity of discrimination against foreign academics, especially those gained in India or Africa. Jobs are only open internationally so as to attract Americans; other academic qualifications are largely ignored. So what is clear, it is not that migrants are just simply a burden; he mentions Canadians suffering more than 180 million debt to its migrants, it is that they have been discriminated against.
Migratory History
For a historical perspective, The Empress Windrush carried my predecessors to the British Isles more than sixty years ago. A Guyanese born RAF pilot found the UK to be exceptionally unwelcoming:
“…British people ‘demonstrating the same racism they had so roundly condemned in Germans’. Braithwaite, despite a Physics degree from Cambridge, could only get a teaching job at a sink school in east London. He remembered: ‘I tried everything…I tried applying for jobs without mentioning my colour…the reasons given for turning me down were all variations of the same theme: too black…”
loc. 448
In this quote, not only does it connote that qualifications are nothing in the stead of active racism, but that this man, an RAF pilot, had fought in WWII along with thousands of other young men from colonies. West mentions that many Jamaicans had felt they had ‘every reason to feel they had a right to work in England‘, and that even twenty years later, more than 80 per cent were happy to consider themselves British as well as their children English. In this, he prescribes to the colour bar, though considered not to exist by the British (largely Conservative) government not, had impressed upon that community quite harshly the need to conform. He spares little sympathy for those who underwent such racism and discrimination, makes no mention of the fact that liberating one country against discrimination and racism is only for those who were white instead uses it as proof of tribal human nature.
“There have been stunning individual success stories, while Indian, Chinese and African-Asian immigrants today out-perform other members of the British society in almost every sphere…”
loc.100
The degree to which some communities have expanded their horizons to become well-educated people within society, though he professes the inclination towards a collective lack of Britishness. In that statistically, these sects of society are among those least likely to adhere or consider themselves British, he still determines them ‘individual success stories’, wherein only 2 per cent of Pakistani’s were happy with the same national identity. Cameron has sought to deal with a sect of conservative religious Muslims who do not consider themselves part of Britain, but the treatment of the first Windrush settlers would be enough to put any migrant off considering themselves British.
‘I work in recruitment…and I have noticed with startling alacrity the capacity of discrimination against foreign academics, especially those gained in India or Africa.’
Contemporary Europe
Having taken to the streets of London, there were few who would consider themselves British no matter how long they reside here. One person said: ‘I’m not white, I can’t be British. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I’m still not what they want.’
The feeling of being unwelcome was a common sentiment amongst the people I spoke to. West went on to speak about the demographics in London as wholly out of sync with the rest of the UK and represents far more of an ethnic scourge than any other city. In regards to the concentration of minorities he wrote:
“…yet no one would argue that the peoples of Uganda, Iraq or Sri Lanka should become an ethnic minority in their capital cities or countries…”
loc.100
Blatantly he ignores the colonisation of African countries such as Tunisia and Morocco, destroying their own local histories and replacing it with French history. Yet it is believed here that it is such an awful tragedy that Caucasians should become a minority in their own country. Or that the French should be taken over by a Muslim majority. You can hardly help but mention the existence of America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, where the indigenous have been largely exterminated and live as a second-class minority within their own countries.
My sentiment is not to place blame. It is not to determine that immigration does not have negative points. It is the reaction to immigration that is largely violent and discriminatory. You can hardly cite a migratory pattern since the liberal birth of nationalism that has not been publicly met with distaste, ostracisation and ridicule. What is often forgotten is the callous way that the Parisian police dealt with a peaceable protest of Algerians in the 1970s, dumping their bodies in the Seine. Nor are the violent abuses in educational environments that defeated many migrants in the UK, of which I suffered in primary school. Or the attacks on Jewish people that increased in continental Europe as the widespread inclination declared them at fault for the economic crisis.
Ed West has sited that multiculturalism is an illusion. That the net increase of migration is a serious worry for the demographic in Britain. That the rhetoric of diversity is a leftist response to migration but in its articulation, flawed and unrealistic. As the son of an Irish Mother, would anything tempt him to take the place of any of the waves of migrants to the shores of Britain? Or even to believe in the transcendence of human nature?
You can buy his book here
Politics of Opinion 