Today I stumbled across a photograph of a protester holding a sign – an expression of anger was clear across his face. It read: “£85 BILLION A YEAR ON CORPORATE TAX EVASION,
£100 BILLION ON TRIDENT
and you’re more angry…ABOUT £1.2 BILLION ON BENEFIT FRAUD AND MIGRANTS WHO PAY £20 BILLION INTO THE UK EACH YEAR”.
Whilst these statistics are huge and cite a broth of corruption, I wondered if it is these financial numbers that anger people the most about immigration. Or whether, in fact, it is the fundamental “ruin” these people are apparently causing. I wanted to explore the current situation of immigration in the United Kingdom; I wanted to distinguish a true, non-Farage scapegoat sense of it. And most significantly, how far the Conservatives’ Immigration Bill is dealing with the situation.
I soon found that there is no simple way of addressing the subject. Britain has a rich colonial history which complicates relationships and loyalties with other nations – such as Sudan, who only gained independence in 1956. It is questionable whether we are indebted to these nations and therefore owe their inhabitants residence. When do these bonds of the past break – if ever? There is a clear air of anger throughout Britain towards illegal immigrants and from those same illegal immigrants who feel that they are owed the privilege of freedom.
Furthermore, our relationships are tested between those coming from countries in the Commonwealth and those who are not. A current example of this is the migrant crisis in Calais, France, who feel that the British are simply not doing enough to aid them. Beth Chaplow recently established the situation in Calais here: https://www.indiependent.co.uk/whats-going-on-with-calais/
Britain simply would not cope as a melting pot of the globe’s population who are in dire need – a nation-sized refugee camp. There are just too many people who are struggling. Yet that’s not the reality. London itself already inhabits over 7 million people, and that number is only growing. It’s therefore less of a surprise that it’s often the ultimate target for many illegal immigrants. In respect of this mixture of cultures, there are some efforts by the Conservative government which I value, such as the compulsion of public sector workers to have a fluent understanding of English. However, other measures are shoddy and ineffective.
In a recent radio interview, Communities and Local Government Secretary Greg Clark shared his plans on dealing with illegal immigration in the UK. He was in fact invited to take part in talks about the recent immigration bill. In the interview, he established ideas to give landlords power to force illegal immigrants out of their houses. I found the interview especially hard to listen to. There was no plan as to what would happen AFTER these people were evicted. Landlords would simply be given “power” to evict them – which fails to attend to the source of the issue. In actuality, this “power” would still take landlords three months to acquire and is dependent on the schemes of various different London boroughs. It is also unclear whether this would comply with Article 8 of the Human Rights Act – the right to family and live.
Even when the government is fully aware of where these people are living – the exact house they are in – not enough is being done. It’s men in power like Mr Clark who make me wonder if they’re fit for their job, or just have some kind of morbid flirtation with it, at the expense of people’s well-being.
I often say to those who bash illegal migrants, “what would you do in their situation?”. Most people reply in agreement that there are unfortunate circumstances around the world “but that’s just the way it is”. I agree. That’s the way it is now – a dismal reality that I wish was a fictitious nightmare. The callouses of the establishment such as the billions lost to fraud and corporate tax evasion are treated as distant issues – whilst blaming those who are causing a wider fundamental issue such as immigrants for the many current financial hardships in the UK.
If the rage against immigration was crucially a financial one, surely there would be a heftier uproar against the £1 billion loss on the first sale of shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland, thanks to our Chancellor, George Osborne. The fundamental issue of threat appears to be treated as far greater than any financial burden. The threat that many feel is the chance that Britain is undergoing a drastic identity crisis.
Many people in Britain have been hostile towards immigration long before the barging shoulders of mass immigration from the EU. The mainstream view in the UK has become that “people are coming to Britain and are undeservingly taking things away in a struggle against limited resources”. There is a common paranoia that immigration is “unfair”. Typically, those from working and middle classes who have suffered for decades through a downward economic course are more susceptible to these attitudes. The pursuit of the restoration of “Britishness” is consoling and they are somewhat less likely to be accepting of the multicultural society that we are a part of. Nationalistic attitudes still abound. And still, many of these people would be content to allow a member of the 26% of non-British doctors to revive them back to health.
The underlying issue of immigration is very much a fundamental one: a clashing of culture, ethnicity and a very distinct anger from both tails of the political spectrum. I also believe that the issue of dealing with immigrants should be treated on a social level, instead of a systematic one. When we relieve these people from simply being a statistic – how willing will they be to integrate into a nation that so harshly tried to keep them distant? With a parent who migrated to England as a child, I have grown to appreciate that there are some who are willing to integrate into our society, like my father, and those who are only to feel spite for the country that they live in. Whilst I don’t support nationalistic attitudes, I believe that there is a distinct cultural shift that may be hard for some people to grasp. It is a lack of community and compassion, as opposed to “Britishness”, that is steaming up our cultural identity and warmth.
Words by Lydia Ibrahim