I caught the end of last night’s Newsnight, where the Home Secretary refused to give a number for what he considered the limits of migration, but claimed that current levels were permanently sustainable (200,000 new people a year).
I did have some observations:
1. The debate is still being framed in economic terms
Whenever immigration is discussed, its putative economic benefits are quoted as a sound reason to support it. This homo economics argument is disputed on two fronts. The first is that economic benefits are real, this is disputed. The second is that we really need masses of immigrants to fill labour shortages. This assumption takes no account of technological innovations. A Victorian civil engineer might have predicted that the country would need hundreds of millions of new labourers (in addition to the Irish navvies) because he could not foresee the JCB and mechanical innovations.
So it is today.
Over the next few decades millions of jobs will be freed up by technology. Everything from bank tellers to check out girls will be a thing of the past. This jobs can be directed into the growth areas of care giving and other human services. We do not need low or no skilled guest workers and we certainly do not need to import a pre-prepared underclass as we are doing now.
Those who appeal to the homo economicus argument (oddly they are usually left-wingers) take no account technological changes that are increasingly rendering people redundant. They also give no account of the social costs of immigration (crime, collapsed health systems, schools swamped, ethnic tensions, racial strife and terrorism ) nor do they seem to consider the environmental costs (massive house building programs, over-crowding).
All we hear is “We need immigrants to fill jobs. They will make us richer”. The first may be plain wrong and the other is not relevant in the context of the costs of immigration. The second piece of propaganda is that immigrants are a net contributer to GDP. This is simple calculation of foreign born peoples tax reciepts versus foreign born people benefits drawn.
This means that the industrious Asian, Carribean, African and Australasian minorities of the first wave - shopkeepers, health professionals and lately IT professionals like me are being touted as a reason to allow in tens of millions of unskilled and unhealthy people.
The contributions of people like me - immigrant professionals - mask the costs of the immigrant underclass. Our utility and net benefit are the only rational reasons British people should tolerate us (immigrants). That much of the benefit is eaten up by a whole new class of migrant does not dissolve the argument against mass immigration, it reinforces them.
When the hidden costs of immigration are added to the discussion the economic argument all but implodes.
2. The Asylum system is the biggest racket in history.
Human beings are programmed by evolution to be extremely astute at detecting cheating. When it comes to Asylum no one needs to be too well equipped to see the massive scale of the swizzle.
We have a 50 year old agreement that no one believes is still reasonably applicable in the age of mass transport, and have to suffer literally millions of people from anywhere in the world by simply brandishing the asylum wand. They trade on the suffering of the tortured and the oppressed to open the door to their countries of choice. It is a gross abuse and we are right to be furious with those 90% of Asylum claimants who are lying about their need for asylum. They are like people who claim they have been raped. They injure the real victims and show utter contempt for the humane systems we have in place aid the genuinely oppressed.
There are three common types of migrant:
Illegal migrants (over stayers, “students” who never leave their studies, Asylum Seekers whose claims have been rejected - 90% of those who claim).
Asylum Seekers (illegal migrants who get apprehended)
Legal migrants (Visa and work permit holders, people with leave to remain - mostly the people adding the billions to the tax coffers and provide an economic argument for us allowing in the rest).
During last nights debate one speaker was trying to separate Asylum Seekers from illegal migrants. he went through the platitudes about our duties to Asylum Seekers as though the very discussion of Asylum Seeking was off the debate menu.
The class of person called Asylum Seeker is in my mind 90% composed of cheats who are abusing our goodwill and humanity. Whilst this is strictly true that Asylum Seekers are here legally (until their claims are rejected) in the overwhelming majority of cases their presence is based on falsehoods. They are cheating and as such their actions are unfair and utterly wrong.
I want to be able to give refuge to victims of torture and persecution (within reason) but not at the cost of allowing in 2 million people every half decade. The will and ability of the British people to help and accommodate genuine refugees is being destroyed by the 90% of Asylum Seekers who are lying cheats abusing the system.
3. There is no assimilation policy and no strong national identity to bind a nation of immigrants.
Another massive problem we face is that there is no policy for assimilating and naturalising the millions of immigrants arriving in this country. There are people who have lived here for 20 years who still speak no English. Multiculturalism - Apartheid by another name - has led to complete abandonment of the ideas of acculturation ,assimilation and naturalisation.
Part of the problem stems from British cultural diffidence and loss of identity. The United States and even France have much more robust assimilation policies.
mass immigration with a robust immigration policy and cultural identity that converts immigrants into loyal citizens and members of a unified body politic might be tolerable. But the current situation makes it impossible. People arrive and agglomerate with their ethno-national fellows in micro-ghettos. Many are horribly exploited by their own people (There is a saying in the Irish community - “Never work for Irishman”. I am sure variations on this exist for most peoples).
There is no proper effort to naturalise those people and educate them about the conventions and standard of this country. If you can think of a barbarous practice carried out anywhere in the world, you can be pretty certain you have it being carried out here too. Not only that, such practices are lumped in with dietary and sartorial variety (Foodcourt multiculturalism) and we are asked to not only accept them, but “celebrate” them.
I for one refuse. I celebrate commonality and unity. I celebrate common humanity and equality. I celebrate freedom and rights balanced by duties. I celebrate democracy but not tyranny of the majority. I celebrate tolerance but not the abandonment of all standards and judgements.
I celebrate controlled immigration, but not super-colossal irruption of tens of millions of aliens into this country with disastrous consequences for everyone who lives here.
You can literally transport a Central Asian yak farmer to London where he can comport himself exactly as he does on the Steppes without any censure from our tongue holding citizens. This
4. The indigenous people are being dispossessed.
Citizens far from be assured their rights as guaranteed and their tenure secure and being attacked on every front demands for group rights and special privileges and advantages for immigrants.
Their ancient civil rights are being taken away to try and deal with the consequences of immigration. Free speech is sacrificed to maintaining racial harmony. Identity is sacrificed to celebrating diversity ( no really, we are encouraged to emphasize what makes us different and unique. This of course is what separatists have encouraged for years. Seeking common ground, similarity and agreement and emphasising what unifies us is not even considered.
They also see hostile immigrants, terrorists, criminals and slavery all directly linked to immigrants. They see they see their institutions, like the police, under attack for being racist whilst simultaneously reading every day about gang rapes, gun crimes and organised criminality that is the overwhelmingly dominated by immigrants and ethnic minorities.
How can a people reasonably asked to accept tens of millions of people under these circumstances? Where are the incentives? What are the benefits of letting all these people in?
Putative economic benefit based on hotly contested economic assumptions versus the already establish immigration linked problems of rampant diseases (AIDS and Tuberculosis, ethnic strife and riots, terrorist attacks, a permanent alien underclass, slavery, corroded institutions, massive environmental damage, sever overcrowding and decline).
The good news is that the public debate is now focussed on this issue. As little as two years ago one could be called nasty names for saying exactly what the Home Secretary now says in every interview. People have woken up and the political party that responds best to this will have a voter boom.
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