Spoken word poet Hollie McNish spells out what's wrong with most of the arguments used against immigration. She cites as her inspiration a book by economist Philippe Legrain called Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them.
Spoken word poet Hollie McNish spells out what’s wrong with most of the arguments used against immigration. She cites as her inspiration a book by economist Philippe Legrain called Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them. (Hat tip: Adam Mordecai)
85 Responses to “Next time someone claims that immigrants are destroying Britain, show them this”
gavinrider
What a trite monologue from Hollie McNish. Here are some simple numbers for her to chew on:
total employment Jul-Sep 1997: 26,707,000
total employment Jul-Sep 2009: 28,972,000
Increase in total employment under New Labour: 2,265,000
Increase in employment of UK-born workers: 557,000
Increase in employment of non-UK-born workers: 1,698,000
total unemployed Apr-Jun 1998: 1,741,000
total unemployed Jul-Sep 2009: 2,514,000
Increase in unemployment: 772,000
So, we gained more jobs under New Labour, but the majority of those jobs went to foreigners and more people were unemployed at the end of their catastrophic stint in power than were unemployed at the start.
Go and make up a rap to that, Ms McNish – I would love to see it.
gavinrider
Go and check out the Labour Market Statistics for April 2012 on the ONS website:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/april-2012/statistical-bulletin.html#tab-Employment-by-country-of-birth-and-nationality–not-seasonally-adjusted-
Then look at the year on year change in employment by country of birth:
UK born: -208,000
Non-UK born: +212,000
Aha, there were 4,000 more jobs than in Apr 2011, so that’s great for UK plc…
BUT 208,000 fewer UK-born people were in employment and 212,000 more foreign-born people were employed here.
How is that considered to be good for the people of the UK, even if it makes the national economy look more buoyant than a year earlier?
gavinrider
Mat – j08 has a valid point, even though you don’t particularly care for it. Our resources in this country are being severely stretched. We are constantly being told that there is a housing shortage because of the increasing population and we are having masses of new housing built on Green Belt to address this “problem”, when in fact the problem is being imported on a daily basis.
The vast majority of new housing being built at present is needed purely to accommodate the number of immigrants who are moving here. That does not mean that immigrants all move into brand new houses of course, it means that the indigenous British population is displaced from certain locations and it moves to the new housing leaving behind areas of our major towns and cities that are turned into migrant enclaves, transformed beyond recognition. These areas are no longer an integrated part of Great Britain, they are “a little bit of home” to the foreigners, who often don’t even bother to speak and write in English because they can survive just fine in their own little twilight zone.
These zones are getting bigger year on year and more of them are being established in more of our towns. This is not enhancing British culture and society, it is replacing it with alien culture and communities who share very little in common with the British except geographical location.
Why do they come here? It certainly isn’t to help us, it is to help themselves gain a better life than they could have back “home”. Any benefit they might bring to us or our economy as a result of them living here is an accidental side effect, it is not their purpose in being here to enrich the British nation, it is to enrich themselves and to give their children (of which there are usually very many) a better chance in life.
What they gain for themselves is partly gained at the expense of lost opportunities for British people. This is inevitable.
So, I suggest you stop being a “petty minded ignorant thick as pigshit” commentator and recognise that the concerns being expressed are valid and understandable, and they certainly won’t be reduced by ignorant and offensive comment such as your own.
gavinrider
Robe D – then come and have a serious conversation with me, then.
I don’t hate immigrants, I just don’t want so many of them coming here and ruining what our British forefathers created for us, simply in order to enrich themselves.
The institutional destruction of the cohesion of the British nation through the mass immigration of cheap labour, which began decades ago after the Second World War but which was shifted into a higher gear under New Labour, was based on short-sighted economic policies and a complete disdain for the concept of “Britishness”.
The excuse for this was to tell us that our culture is “enriched” by the alien influences that are brought in with the immigrants. Certainly there are some positive aspects, but the ability of a society to adapt and change is limited – it takes time – and if the change is too fast or too big, there will be a backlash.
Enoch Powell among others warned that there would be negative consequences as a result of large-scale immigration and he was vilified for his views, but many of his warnings have been proven to be spot on. The fact that so many migrants and their descendants who live here have a high degree of social dependency is not down to the fact that they are immigrants, otherwise all immigrants would show the same characteristics, but they don’t.
It is because very many of the migrants who are living here are not contributing adequately to our society, and those who are tend to be seen as succeeding at the expense of a lost opportunity for a British person, that there will never be acceptance of the huge changes that are happening in the UK as a result of immigration.
Those who do accept the situation, like Ms McNish for example, are guilty of ignoring the negative aspects just as much as it can be argued that those who are against immigration are ignoring the positive aspects of it. But the point is, gaining an economic benefit for the nation’s GDP or “enriching our culture” will never be seen as a positive outcome by British people if, as a result of immigration, large numbers of our own children find their work opportunities reduced and if they become demotivated to the point of becoming consigned to the scrap-heap before they have even had the opportunity to realise their own potential.
gavinrider
David – you make one very big mistake in your “accounting” principles. You say that “if migrants are not accessing public funds they you cannot attribute government spending to them”. That is nonsense. The entire historical expenditure of money and work that has been built upon over decades to establish the UK and to give it the foundation that we all rely upon today is being exploited by immigrants who come here and benefit from it from day one. It is why they come here rather than going to Gambia or Kenya or anywhere else, for God’s sake.
But, if the foundation is not strong enough to support millions more people living here in just a decade, then things will start to fail. We end up with the perception that there is a massive housing shortage which forces the government to throw planning policy out of the window and turn construction into a free-for-all. That is the beginning of the end, when the planning policies of half a century that have allowed our built infrastructure to develop in a controlled, sensible way are discarded for short term economic expediency. A few developers and land owners will get rich quick and retire overseas on the proceeds, leaving behind the mayhem and destroyed natural environment that they will have created.
The immigrants won’t care because they won’t see the destroyed British countryside from within their enclaves, and anyway it will probably still be better here than wherever they came from. But the British people will have lost a lot and they will never be able to get it back – it is a one-way ticket to the deterioration of the British Isles.