It's bad enough that the British government have unveiled a dodgy plan, to basically treat Romanians and Bulgarians as if they were the new 'white niggers' of Europe. On top of that, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, thinks it's perfectly acceptable to label these migrants as 'racists' , even though he admits it's based solely on 'anecdotal evidence'.
Neil Davenport, a writer for Spiked Online recently commented that 'Phillips comments also show what a dramatic turn around there has been on the immigration debate'. He's not wrong there. In the past, it was old-fashioned racists who wanted tighter controls on immigration to keep blacks out. Today, it's anti-racists who demand stricter rules on new migrants all because they apparently want to keep racists out of Britain. The truth is, old school, and new school ignorant attitudes towards immigrants, are just bad as each other.
UPDATE: The Times (London) also thinks that Trevor isn't all that clever.
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3 comments:
I agree with you, not only in this article but also on the article at yours Neo Jacobin Blog. The problem of immigration is a worldwide problem, and politician always look at the short term effect of immigration, but if we look at the developing of countries we will notice that the most developed ones are the ones that were more open (the last example is the growth of USA).
stran_ger,
The thing is, I don't see people coming and going as a 'problem'. I think that fact that our society even views the free movement of people as a problem, is the problem itself.
I do think our state has the right to know who is coming or going - what the state shouldn't have the right to do, is determine what nationalities can or cannot pass through our borders.
Another problem for me, is that there isn't near enough people who are willing to challenge the rising hostility towards the free movement of people with a call for the complete abolition of immigration controls.
Scrapping these controls is a strong challenge to an immigration system that is soley designed to deny people a basic human right - the right to move freely across borders, without hindrance.
Today, our government wants to deny a basic human right to Romanians and Bulgarians - my question is 'who's next?'
"The thing is, I don't see people coming and going as a 'problem'."
Me neither. But these movements can create problems as well as wealth.
I think people tend to blame the weakest link (it is not new to hear people blaming immigration for low wages, unemployment, etc...) but i would like to know what would happen to a country if, by magic, all immigrants left?
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