People migrate for many reasons, but these can generally be classified under two basic headings: to escape persecution and/or to enhance economic status. This has effectively always been the case, under many different guises, and so a brief look at history – and prehistory – may be useful.
Pre-historical and historical immigration
As the very first humans spread across the globe, ‘Out-of-Africa’, they would have encountered no artificial barriers to their progress; it would only be after the concept of territoriality and ‘nationhood’ became established that simple ‘migration’ became e-migration or moving out of one’s own territory, or the converse im-migration, or others moving into one’s claimed lands.
Thus, the definition of an immigrant will always necessarily be based on this concept of nationhood. Nationhood itself has always been founded upon a number of other artificial concepts including where one was born, where one’s parents and grandparents were born, the colour of one’s skin or other physical characteristics, the particular avatar that one believed was responsible for creation.
Military acquisition continued right into the modern era with Britain being a prime example, its citizens travelling overseas with its armies to suppress other cultures and to enrich the migrants involved; but most of the nations of Europe had their own empires.
When Europeans began to spread across what they insisted were empty lands, they did so by convincing themselves that the indigenous peoples were of a lesser species and were not worthy of consideration. It is only in very recent times that the UK has begun to recognise culpability for its role in trans-Atlantic slavery. The vast majority of those people who now own historically enormous fortunes gained from these practices, have yet to acknowledge the fact or to make real reparation. One or two modern families have, however, made token gestures in this direction.
At the same time, it is true that there were numerous small religious sects that sought to escape persecution in Europe and who genuinely attempted to co-exist in harmony with the people they encountered in their New Worlds.
Historical attitudes
The history of the attitude of this country to groups of individuals who seek to settle here can best be described as mixed. The past thousand years are full of accounts of individuals and whole communities who have sought refuge in Britain, including those fleeing the Tsarist pogroms and both protestant and catholic groups from Europe. There are many instances of UK communities working together to accommodate Jewish asylum seekers in the years leading up to the second world war as these people fled the increasingly virulent activities of the nazis.
It must not be forgotten that at the height of the slave trade, thousands of people from Africa were forcibly transported to this country as well as to America and the Caribbean colonies; nor that in 1834, when the trade in human beings itself was abolished, these former enslaved people were, for the most part, assimilated into the general working population of the country.
Post-war Britain
The 1948 Windrush voyage was not the first of its kind – there were numerous other ships that brought people from the Caribbean to live and work in this country, and from the late-1950s to fill the need for workers in the new NHS, for example.
The people who came here from the Caribbean may have been invited by the government, but they faced the most appalling opposition, hostility and racist behaviour imaginable from some of the citizens of this country. A succession of laws became necessary to forbid outright and overt displays of discrimination in terms of housing, employment, access to education, and to basic justice; these areas of provision still have a long way to go before they can properly claim to be free from prejudice.
Present-day immigration
It is important to distinguish between people who come to this country by their own volition, for whatever reason, and those who have been duped in a number of ways by criminal gangs. It is believed that the most prolific of such gangs currently operate in Albania, where gang members work in communities where they may even be known, persuading very young people to travel with them to new promised lands of riches and opportunity – often for monstrous fees.
The truth then proves to be quite different, and actual slavery is often the end destination, with the victim’s travel and identification documents being held by the traffickers. Almost invariably, once discovered, the victims respond to UK authorities by wishing to be returned to their own communities, and this most certainly needs to be the course of action adopted. Further, much more needs to be done by UK law enforcers in cooperation with, for example, Albanian and French authorities to eliminate these activities.
Politicians and others in this country who wish to end immigration will seek to blame the slave gangs but is it important to distinguish the victims of this practice from those who are self-motivated in their desire to come here.
Objections to immigration
Opponents of immigration offer a number of overt reasons for their attitude, while rarely stating some of the covert reasons such as xenophobic or racial prejudice. These objections include:
- The country is full, we have no more room.
- Immigrants come here taking the jobs of UK workers.
- They use our NHS facilities and we have to wait, and likewise for scarce housing provisions.
- They are simply economic migrants who want to make piles of cash to send home.
- They are not like us and don’t fit in.
- They always create separatist ghettoes which squeeze out white people.
To answer some of these
To claim a full country with no more room blatantly ignores the distribution of British territory. The vast majority of Britons occupy a tiny proportion of the land area, concentrated as they are into cities and other urban sprawls (including the road and rail infrastructures which enable movement and communication).
A number of academic studies have been carried out in recent years to compare the average ‘cost’ to this country’s social provisions (education, healthcare, social security, pensions, etc) with the average contribution made to our economy by immigrants and their communities. In every single study carried out, the balance was on the positive side as far as benefit to the UK economy is concerned.
As for disproportionately consuming healthcare – none of our provisions could possibly survive without the ongoing, continuous contribution of workers from other countries; this has been true throughout the 75 years of the NHS.
If people don’t ‘fit in’ and create exclusive communities, they are simply echoing what Britons have been doing for centuries in other countries (and continue to do in holiday and retirement communities around the Mediterranean), but they are also reacting to hostility from white communities and estates. The appearance of what seemed to be exclusively Caribbean churches happened because people coming here on the Windrush and its successors were denied access to many UK white-only churches.
Present-day politics
The most immediate ‘problem’ in the eyes of most UK citizens is the stream of people crossing the Channel in small inflatables. Suella Braverman is still steadfastly pursuing the Rwanda scheme despite the obvious practical, financial and moral arguments against it, and despite the fact that our UK high court has ruled that it would be an illegal practice.
Rwanda claims good human-rights credentials, but UN reports indicate very much the contrary. The UK itself is one of the UN members who have initiated formal investigations. Rwandans fleeing persecution for political reasons have in certain cases ‘disappeared’ once repatriated.
Ministers display a curious lack of awareness of human nature when they state that they can ‘deter’ would-be immigrants by threats such as deportation. Another such threat is the declaration that those now here and awaiting processing are being treated too well; they should not expect to be accommodated one to a hotel room – they must expect to share with two or three others; they can be housed in floating barges unfit for human habitation.
Such policy positions are very unlikely to reach the ears of those crossing continents and, if they do, they are most unlikely to change the person’s determination to reach the UK. The Rwanda scheme has been around for some time, yet numbers crossing the Channel have not declined.
‘Illegal’ vs ‘legal’ immigrants
A common (false) distinction is made between legal and illegal immigrants. The difference between the two is simply what our artificial laws say it is. We are very selective about who we define as legal, in that we insist that the person should have in place a job that we feel is needed in this country and should also have a place of residence pre-determined; we also define as legal certain, but not all, family members of existing British citizens. So we want to bring here who we choose, and will take such people whether or not their emigration from their home country would be to the economic detriment of that country.
Much has been made about so-called illegal gang smuggling across the Channel, and resources have been allocated to providing liaison facilities between the British and French authorities. The focus is very much on the operators, not on the travellers. Once a boat is launched, some want our navy to intercept and turn them back, threatening to break international maritime law.
If the UK had extensive registration facilities in the north of France, then all asylum seekers could be processed in a humane way and then transported by safe means across the sea.
At this point it should be accepted that it is possible to oversimplify the situation. Asylum seekers who cross any of the European seas in small boats have, almost certainly, paid significant sums of money to the boat operator; accounts speak of varying sums, usually several thousand euros. Whole families must clearly have paid the sort of sums that the average worker in this country can only dream about as they buy their lottery tickets, although many are subject to debt bondage.
Solutions and a look to the future?
There may, in fact, not be any easy, immediate, knee-jerk solution to the ‘problem’. If this is the case, then we should not be afraid to say so. This would be the honest scientific approach.
If people perceive the possibility of economic betterment, then that is simply because the standard of living in the UK is considerably higher than that, for example, in Sudan, and the only long-term ‘solution’ would be to level out that difference. The UN path toward its sustainable development goals will go some way to ameliorate this, but we must continue to articulate such ideas and advocate for these obvious truths at the risk of change remaining glacial.
Further migrations to be expected with climate change
Waves of emigration from poorer nations will continue to increase in the coming decades as they are more geographically susceptible to natural disasters and crop failure. The numbers of people who will find themselves displaced by climate change is difficult to estimate – thinktanks estimate that they could exceed a billion by 2050. This is already a given, with an average of 21.5 million displaced every year since 2008.
Nominally, we might say we are entering the era of the ‘refugee’. There is a prevailing urgency for the nations of the world to work together to accommodate those of us who will be left bereft of a liveable environment. In all contexts this remains a civilisationally unprecedented crisis faced by all, and crucially, one that has no conception of borders.
