Following the "Day without immigrants" in the US, an interesting opinion in the Telegraph today.
We can no longer dodge the immigration issue
Yesterday's "Day without Immigrants" - Un Dia Sin Inmigrantes - in the United States was a protest mounted on behalf of recent immigrants, mostly Hispanic and many illegal. The idea was to show that the world's greatest economy could be crippled by a strike by people who, largely, are not supposed to be there in the first place.
The American government did not support the strike - but one significant fact should be noted. The protest was aimed at hardline anti-immigration legislation passed by the House of Representatives that the President does not fully support. He favours a guest-worker programme that would open up a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants.
It is worth contrasting George Bush's attitude with the slogan coined by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior minister: "Love France or leave it." Mr Sarkozy, himself from an immigrant background, is hardly a Front National rabble-rouser; but he vigorously supports the deportation of illegal immigrants - the sans papiers - who have turned the outer suburbs into dystopian ghettos.
His attempts to tighten immigration rules enjoy the support of nearly half of the population, including diehard socialists.
One should not exaggerate the contrast between America and France. Neither country is assimilating recent immigrants with total success: the immigrant gang culture of South Central Los Angeles is terrifying. But there is an important difference.
As Mr Bush recognised when he was governor of Texas, Hispanic illegals do not swim the Rio Grande or slither under barbed wire simply in search of work, but because, by and large, they wish to become Americans.
Many of the younger sans papiers, on the other hand, actively despise France; some of them have embraced a mixture of criminality and extremist Islam - apparently disparate world views that, as bemused European liberals are discovering, can be slotted together with surprising ease.
Which leaves us with an intriguing question: should Britain embrace a solution to the immigration problem that more closely resembles Mr Bush's or Mr Sarkozy's? And the answer is that the Labour Government might have left us no choice.
As Charles Moore pointed out on Saturday, during the course of 2004 alone, around one per cent of our existing population took up residence here - and this does not include illegal immigrants. The Government would be incapable of managing immigration even if the European Union allowed it to: it cannot even deport released foreign murderers and rapists.
This is not to deny that Britain benefits from a certain influx of legal immigrants. In London, especially, the arrival of friendly and diligent plumbers, nannies, waiters and cleaners has made life pleasanter for everyone.
And the same is true of France, as even Mr Sarkozy admits. But, like France and other European countries, we are confronting ever larger numbers of immigrants, legal and illegal, who despise everything about this country except its welfare provisions and the criminal opportunities opened up by politically correct policing.
"Love Britain or leave it" is not a refrain that any serious politician is likely to use in the near future, and we are not recommending that they do. But it is what more and more people are thinking.
Source: Telegraph (English)
2 comments:
"some of them have embraced a mixture of criminality and extremist Islam - apparently disparate world views that, as bemused European liberals are discovering, can be slotted together with surprising ease."
To anyone who has studied Mohammed's life, there us nothing surprising about the ease with which criminality and Islam can be slotted together. Islam is Mohammed's Mafia. Kaffirs are targets for robbery, extortion and rape in every major European city.
Oddly enough, this seemed to be going on on the Coasts perhaps, but no sign of it here. I live in a neighborhood that is being re-roofed by almost entirely immigrant Mexican crews, most of whom cannot speak English AT ALL. They were all working for their paychecks yesterday, and all the lawns were being mowed by white teen-agers. Funny, eh? I drove around and checked even. All the very affluent areas. Nothing resembling a boycott at all. The immigrant workers were out, the jobs that "Americans won't do" were indeed being done by Americas of all colors as well.
As for me, I was reading the Mexican national anthem for a video post and am now going to post the lyrics. There's a reason why these folks want things to stay in Spanish it seems. Their anthem reads like something from a HAMAS website.
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