Remember when I wrote this post about the French campaign, a day without immigrants? Well, along with fish and chips, chicken jalfrezi and our own Royal family, this is yet another bloody good idea to make it to Britain from foreign shores.
The ‘I love migrants’ campaign has been developed by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants to outline the facts around migration and help people show their support for people who have come here from elsewhere. My particular favourite fact is this one:
The British Isles were completely empty until humans returned around 14,700 BCE. The land would by definition have been discovered by a migrant. St George was most likely born in what is now Turkey.
When your Queen, your Saint and your national dish all come from somewhere else, I feel it is time to start embracing your status as a citizen of the world, while junking outmoded nineteenth-century concepts of nationalism. Now if someone could just explain that to the Daily Heil…
5 comments
Hmmm…
I like immigration myself but I’m a little concerned that this island of ours is becoming a tad over-crowded. We have the same population as France, which is four times the size. Might it not be more sensible to move the debate away from the issue of race/racism and into the realm of what’s practical?
And that’s aside from the fact that, actually, as states go we live in a pretty tolerant one as far as this issue is concerned; relative to the attitudes held in most over countries were immigrants often looked down upon as pariahs.
I have family all over the world, but we’re Scottish by descent. I grew up in England, but then I left it.
The question is not whether immigrants or immigration have been good or bad for the UK. Clearly, some are good people and some are not, as it is everywhere else in the world. The question is, why label something when there’s no good reason for it?
The other question we should be asking is, why is the UK government letting in persons with known problematic politics?
I’m also with James above.
Think it depends where you are James, there’s parts of the UK where the rhetoric is a lot less friendly, the BNP and UKIP are making headway in constituencies near where I am (North of England).
Pressure on resources isn’t caused by the migration but by a failure to plan for it, ie dramatic falls in available social housing, schools places etc.
But we’re an aging country, with a dwindling birth rate – at the moment there are four people supporting each pensioner, but when the baby boomers start to retire it’ll be just two working people per pensioner – fact is, we need people to come here and we should be a bit nicer when they do.
Hailing from Plymouth, deep in the west country, I undersatnd what you say about there being parts of the country where immigrants are given shorter shrift.
But economics shouldn’t be the soul considerarion here, although, from a governmental stand-point it nearly always is. Cheap foreign labour helps keep wages down and might be one of the reasons a lot of people just can’t be bothered to work. And who can blame them when they see the obscene amounts of money some people make working in jobs that seem so remote from their own experience.
I should also add that there are as much, if not more, ‘Brits abroad’ having an impact on countries all around the world. Having and then eating cakes springs to mind.
You’re right on that last point. Maybe if I wasn’t about to become migrant labour myself I’d be less tolerant!