Our new, optimistic PM has abandoned the previous, and unfulfilled, Tory pledge to bring annual immigration under 100,000.
Instead he favours an Australian-style points system, whereby all residence seekers are vetted for their economic usefulness.
Points are awarded on the basis of such factors as age (no one over 44 is admitted), profession, education, experience, health, knowledge of English, criminal record and so forth.
The underlying assumption is that Australia is a hospitable but selective host. She decides who is and who isn’t a welcome guest, and she proceeds from the assumption that quantity should be determined by quality.
As far as general principles go, this is fine. What I find hard to accept is that the selection seems to be based on purely economic criteria (if I’ve got this wrong, I hope my Australian readers will correct me).
True, immigration plays an important economic role, either positive or negative. A young Indian engineer is a better bet than, say, an old Romanian pickpocket.
Also, someone who can be confidently expected to become a contributor to tax revenue is preferable to someone who’s going to be its recipient. That much is indisputable.
But mass immigration isn’t just an economic phenomenon. Much more important are its cultural and social aspects.
Discounting for the purposes of this argument foreign specialists who come to Britain on a temporary work visa, let’s consider those who intend to settle in the country for life.
Under such circumstances, immigrants’ value isn’t limited to their ability to hold a job and stay off welfare. They must also be capable of fitting into Britain’s cultural landscape, and speaking English is only one of its features.
The greater the number of immigrants, the more vital does this aspect become. Admitting, for the sake of argument, millions of aliens who quite like the benefits of the British economy but refuse to adapt to British culture – or worse still, despise it or, even worse, actively seek to undermine it – is tantamount to national suicide.
Did I say ‘for the sake of argument’? Actually, this situation is a grim reality.
For Britain already boasts 3,000,000 Muslims (those we know about), not many of whom have become culturally British or ever intend to do so. And that number is growing rapidly, threatening to outdo France’s 5,000,000-plus, although the French are doing their level best to stay ahead.
Whole areas of Britain are no longer Britain, and an inquisitive visitor is left in no doubt of that fact when he sees posters announcing that Sharia law is in force there. Children in such places are often even unaware that Britain isn’t a Muslim country, with hatred of everything indigenously British taught in schools and preached in mosques.
This isn’t immigration any longer. It’s colonisation or perhaps even occupation. In fact, Islamic leaders openly regard it as such: their declared goal is to turn Britain into a Caliphate, and demographics work in their favour. Our best weapon, they say, is the womb of every Muslim woman.
No country, and certainly none within the core European civilisation, can afford such a disaster culturally even if she can afford it economically. Britain certainly can’t, and her immigration policy must be based not just on economic considerations, but also on a survival instinct.
Allow me to spell it out the way no politician can: if Islamic immigration continues unabated, indeed continues at all, before long a certain critical mass will be reached. When that happens, Britain will die as Britain.
Islamic immigration turns our democracy into a suicide weapon, for the children of new arrivals vote and experience shows they vote as a bloc for the most subversive candidates on the ballot. An incompetent ideologue like Sadiq Khan would never have become Mayor of London if over a million Muslims didn’t live there.
Obviously, there are exceptions, and one of them now occupies the second most important post in Her Majesty’s government. But neither demography nor sociology deals with exceptions. Their stock in trade is large numbers, and these cry out against admitting swarms of Muslims every year.
So yes, an Australian-style points system has merit – provided it’s accompanied with a ban on Islamic immigration. An exception should be made only when a Muslim arrival is so valuable that no native talent can fill the same slot.
Thus, I’d admit a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, provided his political record is spotless. (It’s easy to be so magnanimous, considering that, while Trinity College, Cambridge, has produced 33 winners of the Nobel Prize for sciences, the entire Islamic world has managed just three.) But I wouldn’t admit a young Muslim even if he has some marketable skill and speaks decent English.
This is nothing Boris Johnson doesn’t understand. But it’s also nothing he can ever say – our whole ethos has been corrupted too successfully and for too long to allow such thoughts.
So perhaps he should instead ponder the fact that Australia has 30 times Britain’s area and a third of Britain’s population. Such numerical disparity alone must make one wonder to what extent Australian immigration policies are applicable here.
P.S. Boris has triumphantly declared that it’s time to end austerity. However, it’s hard to end something that has never begun. Then of course the Westminster definition of austerity is increasing deficit spending at a slightly slower rate.
Indeed.
An ongoing bugbear has been successive governments blaming the EU for UK immigration when no-one really cared about a few thousand French bankers coming over to ply their trade in the City. Immigration, as an issue, has always been, as you rightly point out, the transformation of whole towns into another country, through mainly large scale muslim immigration and the refusal of that particular group to disperse and integrate. The concern has never been ‘racial’ – it has always been cultural.
Speaking of ‘EU’ immigration…I now live in Spain with my new Spanish wife. If I weren’t married to a Spanish national, I – as a British subject – would have to complete ten years of residency before applying for Spanish citizenship. If I were to get off the boat from Spanish Latin America, I would only have to complete two years.
Why? Because the Spanish constitution sensibly recognises that someone from the Hispanic diaspora requires a lot less integrating into Spanish society than this white kneed, apple cheeked son of the Sceptred Isle.
If you can speak Spanish you can join the Spanish Legion and expedite legal residency.
Fix the immigration system and allow more in BUT ONLY AFTER those already present assimilated and follow English culture. Doesn’t mean they can have their own cultural mores and holidays and such, but at least a minimum be English.
Excellent post. This bit is interesting:
“This is nothing Boris Johnson doesn’t understand. But it’s also nothing he can ever say – our whole ethos has been corrupted too successfully and for too long to allow such thoughts”
I would have thought that the whole point of Boris is that he is the man to occasionally say the unsayable and to think the unthinkable. He often did it in his journalistic capacity and when a show of frisky heedlessness was required to keep him in the news. Let’s hope that the premiership hasn’t completely neutered him, and that he will be able to resist the official narrative. It wouldn’t be very Churchillian if he surrendered on this one without a shot being fired.
The real worry, of course, is that the 3 million already living here mustn’t be stirred up prior to elections.
But the silver lining here is that the Brexit party are likely to have a far more robust take on this problem, and they will need to be involved if Boris makes even the slightest mistake which impacts upon the electoral mathematics.
Boris says the unsayable sometimes unfortunately on both sides of an argument. There is a clip on youtube where he is campaigning for Turkey to be allowed IN to the EU. He asks:
then he says:
“We Muslims are a religion of peace. And don’t say otherwise or we will punch you in the nose.”
In Australia immigrants with skills we require are the top priority. We need doctors, so we have lots of Indian J.P’s; however, most train here and simply stay on. Family consideration are considered, but with caution (can’t get all your wives in). And special considerations, rarely, (they would be butchered if they didn’t escape).
The law here slows down the take-over. As a young Middle Eastern Muslim boy, who arrived a mere year and a half ago, said to me, “it’s our country anyway”, “Why’s that”, I inquired, “you never get it! Wherever we go its ours ‘cos Allah made it”.