Britain is a beautiful, welcoming country that has for centuries embraced newcomers fleeing persecution or poverty. Our gradual affirmation of religious tolerance after the English Reformation and the Scottish Enlightenment, our individualism, our early adoption of capitalism, our commitment to the rule of law, our pioneering role in eradicating slavery, have all helped create a culture that continues to this day. is still more open to outsiders than that of its European neighbors.
It’s a reason why so many first- and second-generation immigrants love this country, why so many are doing so well and contributing so much to politics, business, medicine, academia, sports and entertainment, and why it’s utterly It is undisputed that Rishi Sunak is our first Hindu Prime Minister.
When Voltaire visited Britain in the 1720s, he was astounded. “Go to the London Stock Exchange… and you will see representatives of all nations coming together for the benefit of man,” he wrote in Letters philosophies. “Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian treat each other as if they all have the same faith, and apply the word infidel only to people who are going bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker.”
Fast forward three centuries and we continue to integrate immigrants far better than the French or Germans, an ability that has been called Britain’s “superpower”. Throughout Western Europe, the children of immigrants perform worse than those of natives; In Britain, children of immigrants are better at maths than children of natives, and foreign-born children do almost as well, the Pisa tests show.
British Chinese, Indian, black African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi children all get better grades in GCSEs than their white British counterparts. Ethnic minorities are now in the majority at some of the best private schools in Britain – and conversely, Muslim Bangladeshi children who receive free school meals do better at GCSEs than the average white British child.
White children are the least likely of all ethnic groups to go to college. On average, there even appears to be a reduction in the geographic segregation of minority communities, according to an analysis of the past four censuses.
It is tragic that our ruling elites – first New Labor and then the Tories, supported by the cultural and business establishment – instead of building on this by embracing controlled, rational immigration policies to create a modern, united, multi ethnic British nation. blundered so seriously that the entire multicultural structure could now collapse. What could have been a model for others to follow has been ruined by carelessness.
The first fraudulent claim was that we could process net figures for hundreds of thousands of migrants year in and year out. On which planet? The state’s staggering inability to build infrastructure, or to allow free enterprise to do so, means that large-scale immigration imposes enormous costs on existing populations (including previous migrants) through congestion, rationed health care, and smaller, unaffordably expensive homes.
Robert Jenrick and Neil O’Brien process the data in their brilliant Taking back control, from the Center for Policy Studies. England’s population grew by 6.6 per cent between 2011 and 2021 (without migration it would have grown by 2.7 per cent), but in that time the main road network grew by just 2.3 per cent, the rail network by 1 per cent and GP practices by 4 percent. (at a time of population aging), the number of secondary schools has collapsed by 4.9 percent, the net capital stock of machinery and equipment has collapsed by 4 percent and, maddeningly, our electricity generation capacity has collapsed by 14.2 percent.
High immigration has diluted our per capita capital stock: we have actually become poorer. Housing construction has grown faster – by 9.6 percent – but even that is not enough to meet the huge pent-up demand resulting from years of underconstruction and the concentrated geography of immigration. Home ownership is collapsing, quality of life is deteriorating, and the institutional foundations of conservatism and capitalism are being fatally undermined.
The second untruth was that large volumes of migration – as opposed to small-scale, targeted migration of highly skilled people – would boost productivity growth and insulate us from the baby bust. Yet productivity has leveled off, even though Britain now has more foreign-born residents than the US; labor availability may have discouraged automation.
Many immigrants contribute much more to government spending than they receive, but some do not, especially if they do not work or do not earn enough. No meaningful data exists to conduct a proper cost-benefit analysis of mass migration as a whole, or even for different nationalities. But we urgently need to be much more critical and only bring in migrants whose skills and values are such that they are likely to make a net contribution to the public purse over their lifetime.
The third mistake was using mass immigration to camouflage other problems. More and more foreign students – many of whom stay permanently – are subsidizing domestic tuition fees. Foreign healthcare workers allow authorities to grossly underpay staff. We don’t train enough doctors and health workers, or anyone else for that matter: it’s easier to import ready-made workers. The 5.5 million people on unemployment benefits have been sent to the memory hole. The success of immigrant children allows the complacent to ignore the atrocious educational achievements of the white working class.
The government’s latest blunder was ignoring the rise of Islamist extremism, out of cowardice and stupidity, while tolerating the Wake Critical Race Theory (CRT), an ideology that rejects color-blind integrationism and pits racial groups against each other.
Yes, Britain’s superpower is integration, but it turns out that Islamism and the CRT are its kryptonite. Authorities in Batley did nothing to protect a teacher driven out by extremists. They have failed to tackle radical preachers and have been useless in promoting moderate, reformist Muslim voices.
A poisonous anti-Semitism that had been largely eradicated from British life is spreading again. The return of Israelophobic sectarian parties – including the Greens – is the final straw.
We must drastically reduce migration. We have to be much more critical about who we let in. We can no longer allow our righteous openness to immigration to be perverted and manipulated.