In today’s FT, Quentin Peel rehashes the old Homo Economicus argument in favour of European immigration. The article is called No room for the intolerant
When I read the title in a newsgroup I thought this might be an article about Europe refusing to take xenophobic, racist and bigoted immigrants. I was to be disappointed.
Instead Mr Peel trots out the usual half truths about Europe ‘needing immigrants’ for economic reasons. The second and sub-argument is that stopping immigration is impossible even if there were the will to do so.
He is of course, completely mistaken. If the will were there it would be easy to stop immigration completely. The problem is that there is no will to do so, precisely because of specious arguments pro-immigration arguments like his economic one and the fact that people are prepared to accept moderate immigration which is beneficial and stimulating.
But whereas moderate immigration combined with assimilation or acculturation is mostly a good thing, massive immigration with multiculturalism is invariably disastrous. This is borne out from Palestine to Fiji. Even in extremely tolerant and liberal societies like Holland immigration beyond a certain level is becoming unacceptable.
This Homo Economicus part of the Peel’s argument is mostly bunk. Not only is it economically unsound (i.e. the economic problems it refers to could be fixed by moderate changes in behaviour - e.g. raised pension age - and technology). It assumes that people would trade deracination for the promise of future ‘prosperity’. They deserve to be given all the choices available and know the full facts and consequences of proposed responses to our problems.
How do our leaders plan to manage this influx. How will our values and principles be protected? What obligations will immigrants have to us and vice versa?
These are but three of thousands of urgent questions.
Given that we cannot even broach immigration without triggering the robots of the left with their accusations of racism, how are we to tackle this enormously important issue? Since we cannot even talk about it, how can we make informed decisions about its consequences?
When, if ever, are we the people of Europe going to be able to really decide on this matter upon which the very future of this continent hinges?
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