by Britain is a wonderfully welcoming country that has welcomed newcomers fleeing persecution or poverty for centuries. Our gradual assertion of religious toleration after the Reformation in England and Scotland, our individualism, our early acceptance of capitalism, our commitment to the rule of law, our pioneering role in the abolition of slavery, all helped to create a culture to this day. it is even more open to outsiders than those of its European neighbours.
It is why so many first and second generation immigrants love this country, why they are doing so well and contributing so much to politics, business, medicine, academia, sports and entertainment , and why it is not at all controversial that Rishi Sunak is our first Hindu Prime Minister.
While visiting Britain in the 1720s, Voltaire was stunned. “Enter the London Stock Exchange … and you will see representatives of all nations assembled for the good of men,” he wrote in Lettres Philosophiques. “Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as if they were all of the same faith, and they only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a commitment from the Charismatic.”
Fast forward three hundred years and we continue to integrate immigrants far better than the French or the Germans, an ability known as the British “superpower”. Across western Europe, children of immigrants fare worse than children of the native-born; in the United Kingdom, children of immigrants do better in maths than children of native people, and children born abroad do almost as well, Pisa tests show.
British-Chinese, Indian, black African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi children get better marks at GCSEs than their white British counterparts. Ethnic minorities are now in the majority in some of Britain’s best private schools – and, conversely, Muslim Black children who get free school meals do better at GCSEs than the average white British child.
White children are the least likely of any ethnic group to go to university. Even the geographic segregation of minority communities appears to be decreasing, on average, an analysis of the past four censuses shows.
Tragically, instead of building on this by including a controlled, rational immigration policy to create a modern, united, multi-ethnic British nation, our ruling elite – first New Labour, and then the Tories, have supported from the cultural and business establishment – resigned. blundered so much that the whole multicultural edifice could fall down now. What could have been an example for others to follow has been ruined by uncertainty.
The first fraudulent claim was that we could deal with net figures of hundreds of thousands of migrants, year after year. Which planet? The state’s massive inability to build infrastructure, or allow free enterprise to do so, means that large-scale immigration has enormous costs on the existing population (including earlier migrants) through traffic congestion, rationed healthcare and smaller houses, which are too expensive.
Robert Jenrick and Neil O’Brien sharpen the details brilliantly Taking Back Control, from the Center for Policy Studies. England’s population increased by 6.6 per cent between 2011 and 2021 (it would have grown by 2.7 per cent without migration) but during that time the major road network increased by just 2.3 per cent, 1 per cent the rail network, GP surgeries by 4 per cent. (at a time when the population is aging), the number of secondary schools by 4.9 percent, the net capital stock of machinery and equipment by 4 percent and, unfortunately, our electricity generation capacity fell by 14.2 percent.
High immigration has diluted our capital stock per capita: we are actually poorer. Housing has grown faster – 9.6 percent – but even that is not enough to combat the huge demand released from years of underbuilding 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 undermined.
The second fallacy was that mass migration – as opposed to smaller-scale, targeted, high-skill migration – would boost productivity growth and insulate us from the child. But productivity is flat, even though the UK now has more foreign-born residents than the US; the availability of labor may have discouraged automation.
Many immigrants contribute far more than they take out in government spending, but some do not, especially if they do not work or do not earn enough. Meaningful data do not exist for a cost-benefit analysis of mass migration as a whole, or even for different nationalities. But we need to be much more discerning, and only bring in migrants whose skills and values are such that they are likely to be net contributors to the Exchequer over their lifetime.
The third error was leveraging mass immigration to mask other problems. More foreign students – many of whom stay permanently – subsidize domestic fees. Foreign care workers allow the authorities to grossly underpay staff. We do not train enough doctors and health workers, or anyone else for that matter: it is easier to import ready workers. The 5.5 million people on benefits out of work have been consigned to the memory hole. The success of migrant children allows the complacent to ignore the appalling educational performance of the white working class.
The Government’s ultimate mistake was to ignore the rise of Islamic extremism, out of confusion and prudence, while at the same time awakening critical race theory (CRT), an ideology that rejects colour-blind assimilation and pits racial groups against each other.
Yes, the British superpower is cohesive, but it turns out that Islamism and CRT are their kryptonite. The authorities in Batley did nothing to protect a teacher who was kidnapped by extremists. They have not engaged in radical preaching and have been useless in promoting moderate, reformed Muslim voices.
Toxic anti-Semitism that had been largely eradicated from British life is spreading again. The return of sectarian Israelophobic parties – including the Greens – is the ultimate.
We must reduce migration significantly. We need to be much more discerning about who we let in. We can no longer distort and manipulate our rightful openness to immigration.
