I enjoy your articles for their humanity and sensible expositions of positions I don’t share.
Two things stood out for me in this article. The first was “even though the country is mired in problems that are far more consequential to the lives of the vast majority of the country, such as cost of living, energy, infrastructure, and housing.”
Surely the unprecedented level of immigration we’ve seen since Tony Blair opened the floodgates in 2003 is a significant factor in two of the primary problems you mention- crumbling infrastructure and housing. These are complex systemic problems but to dismiss the impact of the influx of 10m in 23 years (as the left usually do) feels disingenuous.
The other was “races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, which distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.” I couldn’t find this is Tom’s piece so assume it is your reframing of his case and as such I feel is a false straw man. If you rephrased it as “cultures posses distinct characteristics, ethical and religious frameworks, and behavioural norms” I think you’d be closer to his intent and it would be harder to dismiss.
I do agree with your argument that it would be ludicrous to judge the Muslim population by its terrorist or rapist outliers. It’s also not realistic, though, to ignore 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Charlie Hebdo, Ariane Grande, Bataclan, London Bridge, David Amis, Lee Rigby, grooming gangs, honour killings, forced marriage, FGM etc etc etc and expect the non political voting public not to notice the common denominator. These are some of the hard edged realities which can’t be talked away by high sounding words, which I think was his major point.
On the last point, it’s worth examining the counter factual. What would happen if we just stopped immigration. We have a bit of evidence from the post Brexit years. It was particularly noticeable in the tourist area where I live. Most hospitality staff here were Eastern European. They left and many restaurants and hotels struggled. I believe wages in that sector have now improved and my observation is that hospitality staff are generally younger (and not quite as good) but mainly local.
If we couldn’t import carers we’d have pay enough (and offer training and career pathways) for local people to take the jobs. That would make care more expensive. The current rules are that you pay for it out of your own assets until they are reduced to about £23k. In theory that prevents boomers passing on their wealth, which I’d expect the left to applaud. It also means the state does not pay for something you can afford to pay for yourself, something the right should applaud.
I’m 69 and actively interested in that question of protecting an inheritance for the kids. At the moment I can give it away and as long as I last 7 years (a reasonable expectation) it’s free and clear to them. Make that period 20 years and it’s already too late.
The point being we would be able to staff the care and other low paid sectors properly if we paid them properly. Other parts of the system would adjust (or be adjusted by government) to the new reality. One way or another we’d all have to pay more for our coffee/carer/cleaner/courier. I think that was once a primary objective of the left. Open borders means an unlimited labour supply and therefore cheap and powerless labour, surely an anathema to the left?
If we’re to build a new community, well paid meaningful jobs must be a part of that solution. The current situation is a Ponzi scheme.
On the impact of immigration and its position on the totem poll of problems: If you didn't have immigration, you would have faced other issues due to low birth rates, so no, housing and infrastructure would not have kept up anyway. Even in terms of building you would have had an issue because of glaring labour gaps.
The hospitality industry is only one of many many and in that case, it is easier to fill because it does not require training. For example we have not been training enough nurses. In the care and construction sectors it is hard to find people who want to do the jobs. You mentioned that infastructure would be less of a problem with less immigrants, it would be the opposite. Transport is a massive issue and not having enough people using it adds to the costs of keeping them, not to mention not having people willing to build it.
How we pay for care is a lot more complicated than that, and basically a direct cash transfer from the young to the old. In England, the home is sometimes ignored, help can start when assets fall below £23,250 but does not wait until they hit zero, and councils treat savings between £14,250 and £23,250 as a notional weekly income. There are 12-week and lifetime property safeguards, separate rules in Scotland and Wales, and a coming (but repeatedly delayed) £86000 care-cost cap plus a higher £100000 upper limit. Property is permanently disregarded if your spouse, a dependent child, or a relative aged 60+ or disabled still lives there. If your needs are primarily medical, NHS Continuing Healthcare pays everything, irrespective of wealth.
To pay properly for care we need to increase taxes massively. I am infuriated by the right and especially Thatcherites like Nigel Farage who pretend that we can have our cake and eat it. I honestly have loads of sympathy for people who have the human isntict to preserve an inheritance for their kids, because I know how bloody hard everything is right now. However, property multiplying in value beyond salaries is extremely unfair. It means we are in a situation where landlord feel entitled to raise rents without investing in improving the housing cost while workers have to pay more than half their salary. The people who for 15 years voted for the party who believe care workers should be happy with minimum wage now want to put in goverment a man who doesn't know how to do simple math and who would never do anything that harms the interests of his main base, landlords and pensioners. But I am afraid that we can't continue rigging the system against working people.
"Here is the cope of right-wing English people like Tom: you could deport every single migrant tomorrow, and the country would still be a mess. You would still be poorer than you thought you would be. Your towns and cities would still look uglier than you remember them. Your suffering is not unique. If you truly were a communitarian, you would find comfort in the solidarity this can inspire. I miss the Greece of my childhood as much as you miss the England of yours, but what I realised when I decided to leave home during the financial crisis is that, eventually, you run out of foreigners to blame."
Never underestimate the human talent for rationalization.
"You could deport every single migrant tomorrow, and the country would still be a mess." But it might have considerably lower incidences of certain crimes and social problems. No matter what you believe, this possibility (if correct) is an argument against uncontrolled mass migration. It might not be a decisive argument but it's a difficult point to even raise in professional circles.
Let's be adults and admit that certain cultures have certain norms and attributes, and these can be both good and bad when introduced into a new country. It's always been thus.
I'm not too concerned whether or not claims are racist. I care more about whether or not they're true. It mostly seems to be privileged professionals using 'racism' to suppress discussion. In my country, 'anti-racism' is much more popular among progressive white professionals than it is among black people. Now THAT is a decisive argument.
I don't know this case, but don't know anyone who suggests deporting every immigrant (I'm in the US). I married one. I certainly think the Pakistani rapists are an example of racists we should all want out.
You gave an excellent example in this piece that I hadn't heard of--the rapists daughter and wife. How can we protect and help them? What do they think the answer is?
All societies can only assimilate a finite number of immigrants at a time and while it might be racist to decide which, somehow the decision has to be made and I don't think it is immoral to make it.
I am ok with requiring immigrants to speak English, Tory austerity cuts most English teaching programmes and community outreach services. Only now are we realising what they took away from us. Their immigration integration policy was to just dump people in underinvested areas and then use them as a scapegoat for the problems they let fester. How do we protect muslim women? the same way we protect all women, take them seriously when they tell you they were raped!!!
Why is it for the British people to fund the improvement of foreigners English skills after they've moved to our country? I've moved abroad before, and I paid for my own language teaching, as I should have, why should the native population be burdened by the cost of my learning to communicate with them?
Your worldview is very strange to me, although I suppose it isn't unusual for an immigrant working in Westminster. Outside of that bubble (and the bubble of the elite classes in Western countries more generally), the underlying principle is that the administrative state of a country works in the interests of the people of that country. Its resources are reserved for them etc. This is true in China, Korea etc. etc.
Clearly there are no categorical truths about what beliefs people of a certain background can hold. You can get secular liberals who come from very traditional cultures, and Nazis who come from very progressive cultures.
But if you want to promote integration, it still makes sense to skew your migration policy towards cultures that are closer to yours in the things you care about. So in the case of the UK, having generous rules for Australians and stringent rules for Pakistanis is likely to perpetuate our liberal political culture (and Anglo heritage, if that's something you care about).
Why would someone be embarrassed to state a fact in front of a muslim person? Pakistani muslims are incompatible with Western civilization. Up to 500,000 girls in the UK were brutally raped, not in the date rape way, but in the racial and religious hatred way, because they were viewed as sub-human. What more evidence do you need? Why import and pay foreigners to put your native daughters in danger? Your utopian visions of racial harmony put women's lives in danger and do not bear any semblance to reality. Perhaps you should listen to your friend 'Tom' before it's too late.
do you make the same argument when white people commit attrocities? i have many many pakistani muslim friends and they are extremely compatible with my values
Hey maybe the ethno-religious background of the Pakistani Muslims is a factor in them raping white girls en masse? Oh no, sorry, I forgot that such thoughts are *the very definition* of racism and should never be countenanced by anybody.
If one population commits crimes (rapes, murders, what have you) at a rate that's an order of magnitude higher than another, then it's a fair assumption that belonging to that population is indeed a causally relevant factor in an individual crime. Especially if the higher crime rate it explicable by said population's barbaric culture or low IQ or whatever.
But regardless. A policy which imports that sort of population, knowing their propensity to certain kinds of crimes, will inevitably result in higher crime. In this case, it's led to the mass rape of girls of our indigenous population. I wonder if you can see why people might be reluctant to welcome these people?
I mean: you cannot infer anything about the prevalence of integration from that young girl - other than it is not zero - because it required an integrated person for the journalist to secure an interview in the first place. Without an integrated person, the article wouldn't have been written, but that doesn't tell you there are lots of integrated people.
Your article is full of straw men. I doubt Tom Jones thinks literally there are zero people from Pakistan who integrate, only that the proportion is far too low and the consequences of low integration (in this case gang rape) is too high.
Your arguments would be more compelling, and the scope of your disagreement would be more obvious, if you stated explicitly what costs you'd accept for migration.
What so i’d have to pay a marginal tax rate of 400%? Sounds terrible!
I’m not really sure who you are arguing against. I’m just pointing out what Tom Jones’ argument actually is, not the simpler one you’ve decided to argue against.
You are treating immigration as if it's one thing - you either have it from everywhere or you have it from nowhere; you either take in any person from a given country or you take no one. This is obviously not correct.
Migration from MENA countries isn't even an economic benefit, by the way, if data from Netherlands and Denmark is to go by.
“ A good test for whether you should tweet something out is, would I feel embarrassed to say this in front of a black/muslim person?”
I’d argue it’s an awful test. I think the negatives of mass migration are enormous but I would never say that to a recent migrant because that would be rude and personalising something that isn’t personal. The issue is not individuals at all but group identity and the erasure of English group identity (as something unique and distinct) in order to accommodate other group identities via speech codes and restrictions on free association. This plus physical immigration without an off will ultimately end Englishness as a self identifying culture and ethnicity. And the left think this is good whereas they would regard the reverse (the loss of a foreign ethnic and cultural group to Westerners) as the horrendous/tragic loss of something precious - which it would be.
nah, I am quite alright with people wanting to preserve their ethnic identity, that includes English, just not keen on people losing touch with reality and thinking it is anything but racist to say Afghans should not be here.
Appreciate you taking the time to respond. In turn:
The left would strongly oppose mass migration from Europe to Sudan were the Sudanese demos opposed to it. The left would understand Sudanese concerns about cultural dissolution/erasure and legitimate concerns about becoming a minority in their own country. The left would empathise with Sudanese anxiety and even (or especially) Sudanese anger. Is this not broadly true? And if it is broadly true where is the empathy about the application of this process in relation to the English. And especially the English working class who enjoy none of the upside enjoyed that mass migration provides to the elite class – not least lower labour costs. Are they not deserving of it or is it that within a left world view they are the Kulak and deserving of their fate.
Talking about the “left” like a strawman blob is not very useful here. The thing is immigrationnumbers are similar percentages compared to global population to what they have always been. What has changed is that it used to be Europeans moving around whereas now it is everyone else.
Well as an individual of the left what do you make of my actual point. Would you react to the imaginary situation in Sudan as I suggest the left would tend to or would you react as you appear to do in relation to England - which is roughly they need to stop being racist and just get over it. This is not intended as a set up to becoming argumentative btw
Your argument is rather like saying to someone "well, we'd cut out the cancer from your body, but you'd still be diabetic after so what would be the point?"
I favour treating people based on the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin.
Noticing that some groups of people, on average, behave worse than others is a solid strategy for minimising the likelihood of harm to you, your family and your community.
Sometimes that judgement can be made based on a style of dress*, a level of intoxication or an accent. Sometimes, a person’s skin colour and demeanour might give you a clue. Asserting that this calculus shouldn’t happen because it’s rude is just foolish.
There will be citizens of your country who offer little other than criminal and anti-social behaviour. Because they are citizens, you are obliged to try to minimise the adverse consequences of their presence, however that might be achieved.
But you have no obligation to retain anti -social or criminal non-citizens in your country. You can, and should, send them away.
This is so obvious that the only possible refutation is to invoke racism, accompanied by ever-more-ridiculous human rights lawsuits.
Be polite. But don’t be dumb.
*Talking about football shirts and skinny jeans here, obviously.
Maybe there is something missing I'm failing to comprehend based on the title. The article seems to be about afghani and middle eastern people specifically so what does him having more black friends have to do with his views on Afghani immigrants? This guy seems to be the kind of person who has these ideas in spite of reality and regardless of any poc people he may know or be friends with. I would assumed he saw any poc he was close with as outliers and, anyways as we all know, in areas where white people are the majority they tend to be less articulate about race because they are the majority. Hopefully this isn't coming off as negative [maybe I don't understand the dynamics because I'm in America] but I'm not seeing why him having black friends has to do with any of this. The title came up on my feed and so I read the piece but by the end I found myself asking, "what does this have to do with black people?"
Why not have an immigration policy like Australia that is explicitly aimed at maximizing the benefits and minimizing the costs of immigration to current citizens? The US has a lot of Muslim immigrants, but given that they are legal immigrants, they tend to be very highly educated, already have a degree of fluency in English, and are more liberal than a typical person from their country (more liberal as in adhering more to Enlightenment values). They also have jobs and don’t rely upon government social programs. Why can’t the UK have that?
It seems to me politically suicidal for the left to defend immigration policies that lead to immigrants who commit crimes, don’t integrate, and rely upon public assistance. Especially in a world where almost every single one of those immigrants could replaced by one who is better educated, acts in a more pro-social manner, speaks and reads English much better, and contributes much more to society.
be more specific when you talk about the left! The Tories tried that, and this is where we are. It is not as easy as you portray to 'minimise the costs' and 'maximise the benefits', especially given that the UK is in many cases in most dire need of people willing to do low-paid jobs. What seems politically suicidal to you is, in fact, economically suicidal, but nobody has ever argued for the kind of immigration policy you are presenting as the left position. The left very much wants people to integrate. You are referring to the results of Tory mismanagement and state capacity collapse.
On the framing point, the onus should be on the pro-mass migration lobby to outline the benefits of such a radical and relatively new policy (the London new left have convinced themselves that it's a very normal position to have). Every time the issue has been put to the British electorate in various guises, they've rejected it. It used to be the prerogative of any nation state to decide who enters and stays within its borders, that was before the rise of supranationalism of course.
They would not describe themselves as pro-mass migration; most lefties are migration-neutral due to labour policy considerations. A lot of these problems are economic, industrial policy, and education-related, rather than immigration policy, which is notoriously hard to get right in any country. I genuinely have not met in real life an 'open borders' lefty that I keep on reading about from right-wingers. Not one who seriously advocates for it to be government policy anyway.
The Green Party: “The Green Party wants to see a world without borders…”
Sir Keir Starmer: “We welcome migrants. We don't scapegoat them. Low wages, poor housing, poor public services are not the fault of migrants and people who've come here: they're political failure. Political failure. So we have to make the case for the benefits of migration, the benefits of free movement.”
Nicola Sturgeon: “We welcome free movement because we know how much we benefit from it.”
I wouldn’t describe the above statements as ‘neutral’.
EU free movement is not 'open borders'. Philosophising about a world with no borders is not government policy-making. This is a bad-faith translation of political communication.
Stella, I've never used the phraseology 'open borders', I said 'pro-mass migration' and then pointed to the three main left-leaning parties endorsing such a position (EU has ~200m workers). You've tried to skirt around this challenge on three fronts 1. The anecdotal claim that "most lefties are migration-neutral" 2. The creation of a straw-man 'the right always points to open borders advocates that don't exist' approach 3. The claim that a lot of "problems" exist, therefore the immigration policy debate should be shifted elsewhere. This is demonstrative of the new London left's approach to the policy debate: ignore, deny, and then ignore again.
If by mass immigration you mean some immigration, then the benefit is that we don't have to raise taxes significantly. I am not ignoring anything, tell me how are you going to fund social care, staff the NHS, our schools, build our houses etc. TODAY (not in decades' time when you will have fixed the funnel, which again will take time) and how you will do it without significantly raising taxes.
I enjoy your articles for their humanity and sensible expositions of positions I don’t share.
Two things stood out for me in this article. The first was “even though the country is mired in problems that are far more consequential to the lives of the vast majority of the country, such as cost of living, energy, infrastructure, and housing.”
Surely the unprecedented level of immigration we’ve seen since Tony Blair opened the floodgates in 2003 is a significant factor in two of the primary problems you mention- crumbling infrastructure and housing. These are complex systemic problems but to dismiss the impact of the influx of 10m in 23 years (as the left usually do) feels disingenuous.
The other was “races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, which distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.” I couldn’t find this is Tom’s piece so assume it is your reframing of his case and as such I feel is a false straw man. If you rephrased it as “cultures posses distinct characteristics, ethical and religious frameworks, and behavioural norms” I think you’d be closer to his intent and it would be harder to dismiss.
I do agree with your argument that it would be ludicrous to judge the Muslim population by its terrorist or rapist outliers. It’s also not realistic, though, to ignore 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Charlie Hebdo, Ariane Grande, Bataclan, London Bridge, David Amis, Lee Rigby, grooming gangs, honour killings, forced marriage, FGM etc etc etc and expect the non political voting public not to notice the common denominator. These are some of the hard edged realities which can’t be talked away by high sounding words, which I think was his major point.
On the last point, it’s worth examining the counter factual. What would happen if we just stopped immigration. We have a bit of evidence from the post Brexit years. It was particularly noticeable in the tourist area where I live. Most hospitality staff here were Eastern European. They left and many restaurants and hotels struggled. I believe wages in that sector have now improved and my observation is that hospitality staff are generally younger (and not quite as good) but mainly local.
If we couldn’t import carers we’d have pay enough (and offer training and career pathways) for local people to take the jobs. That would make care more expensive. The current rules are that you pay for it out of your own assets until they are reduced to about £23k. In theory that prevents boomers passing on their wealth, which I’d expect the left to applaud. It also means the state does not pay for something you can afford to pay for yourself, something the right should applaud.
I’m 69 and actively interested in that question of protecting an inheritance for the kids. At the moment I can give it away and as long as I last 7 years (a reasonable expectation) it’s free and clear to them. Make that period 20 years and it’s already too late.
The point being we would be able to staff the care and other low paid sectors properly if we paid them properly. Other parts of the system would adjust (or be adjusted by government) to the new reality. One way or another we’d all have to pay more for our coffee/carer/cleaner/courier. I think that was once a primary objective of the left. Open borders means an unlimited labour supply and therefore cheap and powerless labour, surely an anathema to the left?
If we’re to build a new community, well paid meaningful jobs must be a part of that solution. The current situation is a Ponzi scheme.
Thanks for reading and engaging, Martin.
On the impact of immigration and its position on the totem poll of problems: If you didn't have immigration, you would have faced other issues due to low birth rates, so no, housing and infrastructure would not have kept up anyway. Even in terms of building you would have had an issue because of glaring labour gaps.
The hospitality industry is only one of many many and in that case, it is easier to fill because it does not require training. For example we have not been training enough nurses. In the care and construction sectors it is hard to find people who want to do the jobs. You mentioned that infastructure would be less of a problem with less immigrants, it would be the opposite. Transport is a massive issue and not having enough people using it adds to the costs of keeping them, not to mention not having people willing to build it.
How we pay for care is a lot more complicated than that, and basically a direct cash transfer from the young to the old. In England, the home is sometimes ignored, help can start when assets fall below £23,250 but does not wait until they hit zero, and councils treat savings between £14,250 and £23,250 as a notional weekly income. There are 12-week and lifetime property safeguards, separate rules in Scotland and Wales, and a coming (but repeatedly delayed) £86000 care-cost cap plus a higher £100000 upper limit. Property is permanently disregarded if your spouse, a dependent child, or a relative aged 60+ or disabled still lives there. If your needs are primarily medical, NHS Continuing Healthcare pays everything, irrespective of wealth.
To pay properly for care we need to increase taxes massively. I am infuriated by the right and especially Thatcherites like Nigel Farage who pretend that we can have our cake and eat it. I honestly have loads of sympathy for people who have the human isntict to preserve an inheritance for their kids, because I know how bloody hard everything is right now. However, property multiplying in value beyond salaries is extremely unfair. It means we are in a situation where landlord feel entitled to raise rents without investing in improving the housing cost while workers have to pay more than half their salary. The people who for 15 years voted for the party who believe care workers should be happy with minimum wage now want to put in goverment a man who doesn't know how to do simple math and who would never do anything that harms the interests of his main base, landlords and pensioners. But I am afraid that we can't continue rigging the system against working people.
Another poignant goodie !
Thank you!
"Here is the cope of right-wing English people like Tom: you could deport every single migrant tomorrow, and the country would still be a mess. You would still be poorer than you thought you would be. Your towns and cities would still look uglier than you remember them. Your suffering is not unique. If you truly were a communitarian, you would find comfort in the solidarity this can inspire. I miss the Greece of my childhood as much as you miss the England of yours, but what I realised when I decided to leave home during the financial crisis is that, eventually, you run out of foreigners to blame."
Never underestimate the human talent for rationalization.
"You could deport every single migrant tomorrow, and the country would still be a mess." But it might have considerably lower incidences of certain crimes and social problems. No matter what you believe, this possibility (if correct) is an argument against uncontrolled mass migration. It might not be a decisive argument but it's a difficult point to even raise in professional circles.
Let's be adults and admit that certain cultures have certain norms and attributes, and these can be both good and bad when introduced into a new country. It's always been thus.
I'm not too concerned whether or not claims are racist. I care more about whether or not they're true. It mostly seems to be privileged professionals using 'racism' to suppress discussion. In my country, 'anti-racism' is much more popular among progressive white professionals than it is among black people. Now THAT is a decisive argument.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-low-trust-society
The UK would collapse if you deported every immigrant tomorrow. What is a definition of racism that you would accept then?
No it wouldn't. It would be a substantially better place.
I don't know this case, but don't know anyone who suggests deporting every immigrant (I'm in the US). I married one. I certainly think the Pakistani rapists are an example of racists we should all want out.
You gave an excellent example in this piece that I hadn't heard of--the rapists daughter and wife. How can we protect and help them? What do they think the answer is?
All societies can only assimilate a finite number of immigrants at a time and while it might be racist to decide which, somehow the decision has to be made and I don't think it is immoral to make it.
I am ok with requiring immigrants to speak English, Tory austerity cuts most English teaching programmes and community outreach services. Only now are we realising what they took away from us. Their immigration integration policy was to just dump people in underinvested areas and then use them as a scapegoat for the problems they let fester. How do we protect muslim women? the same way we protect all women, take them seriously when they tell you they were raped!!!
Why is it for the British people to fund the improvement of foreigners English skills after they've moved to our country? I've moved abroad before, and I paid for my own language teaching, as I should have, why should the native population be burdened by the cost of my learning to communicate with them?
Your worldview is very strange to me, although I suppose it isn't unusual for an immigrant working in Westminster. Outside of that bubble (and the bubble of the elite classes in Western countries more generally), the underlying principle is that the administrative state of a country works in the interests of the people of that country. Its resources are reserved for them etc. This is true in China, Korea etc. etc.
Clearly there are no categorical truths about what beliefs people of a certain background can hold. You can get secular liberals who come from very traditional cultures, and Nazis who come from very progressive cultures.
But if you want to promote integration, it still makes sense to skew your migration policy towards cultures that are closer to yours in the things you care about. So in the case of the UK, having generous rules for Australians and stringent rules for Pakistanis is likely to perpetuate our liberal political culture (and Anglo heritage, if that's something you care about).
Why would someone be embarrassed to state a fact in front of a muslim person? Pakistani muslims are incompatible with Western civilization. Up to 500,000 girls in the UK were brutally raped, not in the date rape way, but in the racial and religious hatred way, because they were viewed as sub-human. What more evidence do you need? Why import and pay foreigners to put your native daughters in danger? Your utopian visions of racial harmony put women's lives in danger and do not bear any semblance to reality. Perhaps you should listen to your friend 'Tom' before it's too late.
do you make the same argument when white people commit attrocities? i have many many pakistani muslim friends and they are extremely compatible with my values
Hey maybe the ethno-religious background of the Pakistani Muslims is a factor in them raping white girls en masse? Oh no, sorry, I forgot that such thoughts are *the very definition* of racism and should never be countenanced by anybody.
did Pelicott rape his wife because all French people are perverts?
If one population commits crimes (rapes, murders, what have you) at a rate that's an order of magnitude higher than another, then it's a fair assumption that belonging to that population is indeed a causally relevant factor in an individual crime. Especially if the higher crime rate it explicable by said population's barbaric culture or low IQ or whatever.
But regardless. A policy which imports that sort of population, knowing their propensity to certain kinds of crimes, will inevitably result in higher crime. In this case, it's led to the mass rape of girls of our indigenous population. I wonder if you can see why people might be reluctant to welcome these people?
You do realise there is a selection bias in the Daily Mail article that it required an integrated younger person for the journalist to get access?
What do you mean?
I mean: you cannot infer anything about the prevalence of integration from that young girl - other than it is not zero - because it required an integrated person for the journalist to secure an interview in the first place. Without an integrated person, the article wouldn't have been written, but that doesn't tell you there are lots of integrated people.
Your article is full of straw men. I doubt Tom Jones thinks literally there are zero people from Pakistan who integrate, only that the proportion is far too low and the consequences of low integration (in this case gang rape) is too high.
Your arguments would be more compelling, and the scope of your disagreement would be more obvious, if you stated explicitly what costs you'd accept for migration.
What costs would you accept for no immigration? How much tax are you willing to pay, because it would need to be magnitudes more than it is now.
What so i’d have to pay a marginal tax rate of 400%? Sounds terrible!
I’m not really sure who you are arguing against. I’m just pointing out what Tom Jones’ argument actually is, not the simpler one you’ve decided to argue against.
You are treating immigration as if it's one thing - you either have it from everywhere or you have it from nowhere; you either take in any person from a given country or you take no one. This is obviously not correct.
Migration from MENA countries isn't even an economic benefit, by the way, if data from Netherlands and Denmark is to go by.
We deport the immigrants and seize their assets on the way out. Simple!
the middle class blacks and muslims i know hate lower class blacks and muslims way more than any white person i know does....
There is loads to hate everywhere, the point is what can and can’t be used in policy making
“ A good test for whether you should tweet something out is, would I feel embarrassed to say this in front of a black/muslim person?”
I’d argue it’s an awful test. I think the negatives of mass migration are enormous but I would never say that to a recent migrant because that would be rude and personalising something that isn’t personal. The issue is not individuals at all but group identity and the erasure of English group identity (as something unique and distinct) in order to accommodate other group identities via speech codes and restrictions on free association. This plus physical immigration without an off will ultimately end Englishness as a self identifying culture and ethnicity. And the left think this is good whereas they would regard the reverse (the loss of a foreign ethnic and cultural group to Westerners) as the horrendous/tragic loss of something precious - which it would be.
nah, I am quite alright with people wanting to preserve their ethnic identity, that includes English, just not keen on people losing touch with reality and thinking it is anything but racist to say Afghans should not be here.
Appreciate you taking the time to respond. In turn:
The left would strongly oppose mass migration from Europe to Sudan were the Sudanese demos opposed to it. The left would understand Sudanese concerns about cultural dissolution/erasure and legitimate concerns about becoming a minority in their own country. The left would empathise with Sudanese anxiety and even (or especially) Sudanese anger. Is this not broadly true? And if it is broadly true where is the empathy about the application of this process in relation to the English. And especially the English working class who enjoy none of the upside enjoyed that mass migration provides to the elite class – not least lower labour costs. Are they not deserving of it or is it that within a left world view they are the Kulak and deserving of their fate.
Talking about the “left” like a strawman blob is not very useful here. The thing is immigrationnumbers are similar percentages compared to global population to what they have always been. What has changed is that it used to be Europeans moving around whereas now it is everyone else.
Well as an individual of the left what do you make of my actual point. Would you react to the imaginary situation in Sudan as I suggest the left would tend to or would you react as you appear to do in relation to England - which is roughly they need to stop being racist and just get over it. This is not intended as a set up to becoming argumentative btw
> What utter bollocks
I see you learnt your English from the best!
Your argument is rather like saying to someone "well, we'd cut out the cancer from your body, but you'd still be diabetic after so what would be the point?"
I favour treating people based on the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin.
Noticing that some groups of people, on average, behave worse than others is a solid strategy for minimising the likelihood of harm to you, your family and your community.
Sometimes that judgement can be made based on a style of dress*, a level of intoxication or an accent. Sometimes, a person’s skin colour and demeanour might give you a clue. Asserting that this calculus shouldn’t happen because it’s rude is just foolish.
There will be citizens of your country who offer little other than criminal and anti-social behaviour. Because they are citizens, you are obliged to try to minimise the adverse consequences of their presence, however that might be achieved.
But you have no obligation to retain anti -social or criminal non-citizens in your country. You can, and should, send them away.
This is so obvious that the only possible refutation is to invoke racism, accompanied by ever-more-ridiculous human rights lawsuits.
Be polite. But don’t be dumb.
*Talking about football shirts and skinny jeans here, obviously.
It's the definition of racism to take clues about a person's character from the colour of their skin.
By that definition, everyone is racist, including you, and the word itself is meaningless.
Are you saying that he needs more “black friends” in his life so he has a better understanding of the lives and experiences of poc??? Cause……
he would feel more shame about how he groups people based on their ethnicity
Maybe there is something missing I'm failing to comprehend based on the title. The article seems to be about afghani and middle eastern people specifically so what does him having more black friends have to do with his views on Afghani immigrants? This guy seems to be the kind of person who has these ideas in spite of reality and regardless of any poc people he may know or be friends with. I would assumed he saw any poc he was close with as outliers and, anyways as we all know, in areas where white people are the majority they tend to be less articulate about race because they are the majority. Hopefully this isn't coming off as negative [maybe I don't understand the dynamics because I'm in America] but I'm not seeing why him having black friends has to do with any of this. The title came up on my feed and so I read the piece but by the end I found myself asking, "what does this have to do with black people?"
Meanwhile getting a partner visa is already a nightmare!
Why not have an immigration policy like Australia that is explicitly aimed at maximizing the benefits and minimizing the costs of immigration to current citizens? The US has a lot of Muslim immigrants, but given that they are legal immigrants, they tend to be very highly educated, already have a degree of fluency in English, and are more liberal than a typical person from their country (more liberal as in adhering more to Enlightenment values). They also have jobs and don’t rely upon government social programs. Why can’t the UK have that?
It seems to me politically suicidal for the left to defend immigration policies that lead to immigrants who commit crimes, don’t integrate, and rely upon public assistance. Especially in a world where almost every single one of those immigrants could replaced by one who is better educated, acts in a more pro-social manner, speaks and reads English much better, and contributes much more to society.
be more specific when you talk about the left! The Tories tried that, and this is where we are. It is not as easy as you portray to 'minimise the costs' and 'maximise the benefits', especially given that the UK is in many cases in most dire need of people willing to do low-paid jobs. What seems politically suicidal to you is, in fact, economically suicidal, but nobody has ever argued for the kind of immigration policy you are presenting as the left position. The left very much wants people to integrate. You are referring to the results of Tory mismanagement and state capacity collapse.
On the framing point, the onus should be on the pro-mass migration lobby to outline the benefits of such a radical and relatively new policy (the London new left have convinced themselves that it's a very normal position to have). Every time the issue has been put to the British electorate in various guises, they've rejected it. It used to be the prerogative of any nation state to decide who enters and stays within its borders, that was before the rise of supranationalism of course.
They would not describe themselves as pro-mass migration; most lefties are migration-neutral due to labour policy considerations. A lot of these problems are economic, industrial policy, and education-related, rather than immigration policy, which is notoriously hard to get right in any country. I genuinely have not met in real life an 'open borders' lefty that I keep on reading about from right-wingers. Not one who seriously advocates for it to be government policy anyway.
The Green Party: “The Green Party wants to see a world without borders…”
Sir Keir Starmer: “We welcome migrants. We don't scapegoat them. Low wages, poor housing, poor public services are not the fault of migrants and people who've come here: they're political failure. Political failure. So we have to make the case for the benefits of migration, the benefits of free movement.”
Nicola Sturgeon: “We welcome free movement because we know how much we benefit from it.”
I wouldn’t describe the above statements as ‘neutral’.
EU free movement is not 'open borders'. Philosophising about a world with no borders is not government policy-making. This is a bad-faith translation of political communication.
Stella, I've never used the phraseology 'open borders', I said 'pro-mass migration' and then pointed to the three main left-leaning parties endorsing such a position (EU has ~200m workers). You've tried to skirt around this challenge on three fronts 1. The anecdotal claim that "most lefties are migration-neutral" 2. The creation of a straw-man 'the right always points to open borders advocates that don't exist' approach 3. The claim that a lot of "problems" exist, therefore the immigration policy debate should be shifted elsewhere. This is demonstrative of the new London left's approach to the policy debate: ignore, deny, and then ignore again.
If by mass immigration you mean some immigration, then the benefit is that we don't have to raise taxes significantly. I am not ignoring anything, tell me how are you going to fund social care, staff the NHS, our schools, build our houses etc. TODAY (not in decades' time when you will have fixed the funnel, which again will take time) and how you will do it without significantly raising taxes.