Heard an unpleasant story the other day: a woman was viciously attacked in a quiet road near our local High Street in the early hours of the morning. The police, apparently, suggested – unofficially, of course – that it was probably due to a recent influx of asylum seekers from a certain “European” country. I would normally dismiss this as racist tattle, but the source – a single woman living near the scene of the attack – was an impeccably honest person not given to gossip or invention. (She only mentioned the incident to highlight the necessity of holding meetings early in the evening now that the nights were drawing in.)
This story was swirling around my head yesterday as I entered my favourite local corner shop in a bit of an anti-immigrant funk. The proprietor, whom I’ll refer to as Mr. L, a big Ugandan Asian with a relentlessly cheerful disposition, a deep, booming voice, and a personality to match, gave me his customary greeting when I haven’t been in for a while - “Hello, my friend!” – accompanied by a vigorous handshake. (If I’ve been in recently, he bellows “Hello, mite! Nice day, innit!” instead, and the handshake becomes optional).
I have no idea what religion Mr. L practices, but I know he enjoys a drink with his friends in his local (somewhere in North West London – he doesn’t live above the shop, as our area’s too pricey), and used to be a heavy smoker (imagine kicking the habit when you’re surrounded by fags!). He now visits the gym regularly and is a sports fan. He’s as good with kids as he is with adults. Despite being a shopkeeper, there is not a trace of servility about him: he honours his customers by treating us as equals, but gets very grumpy if someone dithers and holds up the pre-work queue. One of his daughters has just graduated from university, and the other is about to attend. His brother minds the shop sometimes, and, while he is much quieter – he has a somewhat academic air about him – he is Mr. L’s equal in natural charm.
I have no idea what Mr. L’s politics are, either, but I’ve always suspected that corner shop owners tend vote Conservative – after all, they understand market economics, no doubt have to comply with ludicrous bureaucratic directives (home-grown and European) and probably have the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise regularly poring over their returns. Not a fan, one imagines, of officialdom. They work long hours, and probably resent their taxes supporting the lifestyles of bone idle welfare scroungers or being used as Danegeld to mollify the representatives of minorities who threaten riot or murder if they don’t receive special treatment. Given that they’re subject to random attacks from the mad and the malevolent, I’d be surprised if they weren’t also dead keen on law and order. They’re also, I suspect, as fond of asylum seekers who commit crimes as any other hard-working, honest, tax-paying Briton.
When the admirable Mr. L retires – which we all hope won’t be for a long time – it will leave behind a gap in this community as obvious as a missing front tooth. There are plenty of other corner shops and what the Americans call “convenience stores”, and Mr. L’s shop if no better stocked and his prices no lower than the competition, but it’s the man himself, the human being – with all his bawling, hail-fellow-well-met, in-your face robustness - we’ll really miss. I never leave his shop without feeling happier than when I went in, and I expect everyone else feels the same way.
Now, when Mr. L’s family were kicked out of Africa by that arch-racist, Idi Amin, there were no doubt complaints about another wave of immigrants arriving in Britain – I probably voiced such opinions myself – but, of course, Ugandan Asians, already a displaced people, proved to be hugely successful at fitting in and making a living. This would have been a poorer country, in all senses of the world, if it hadn’t taken them in. (And after all, we created the monster who expelled them).
Vince Cable, our ghastly, Eeyorish, left-wing Business Secretary has been railing against his own government’s plan to cap immigration, on the grounds that British business needs imported labour (he only speaks up for business if he can knife his coalition partners in the back at the same time). I tend to agree with him – after all, the sort of education policies his own party supports seem to have turned vast swathes of our “working” class population into listless welfare-junkies who could barely organise a trip to the lavatory, let alone hold down a steady job.
And I’m also, on reflection, not a fan of an arbitrary cap on immigration. The real problem is the kind of immigrant who seems to be able to stroll into the country when the fancy takes them. But the “come one, come all” approach to immigration adopted by Labour and the LibDems meanssomething has to be done. But if not a cap, then what?
What we need to do is introduce prejudice into the process. The majority of applicants would melt away to become some other country’s problem (maybe even their own!) and we’d be welcoming aboard the able, solvent, adaptable, and hard-working minority to invigorate the economy without further degrading what little is left of our national culture. If Vince genuinely wants to help business and isn’t just trying to embarrass the Tories (whom he evidently loathes) he might champion this new, practical approach.
Of course, Labour eventually woke up to the electorate’s concerns - too late, thankfully - and introduced a “points” system. But I’m sure this worked just as brilliantly as all their other measures.
Now, I understand that, thanks to the stupidity of our governing classes, we are signatories to various monstrous, one-sided agreements which make it hard to exclude undesirables. But if you can prevent a Dutch politician from paying a flying visit to London on the grounds that he holds views of which you don’t fully approve – as that ridiculous pimple of a Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, once did – you can certainly figure out a way of excluding people whose racial or geographic origins or religious beliefs, experience has shown, make them disproportionately more likely to indulge in gang warfare, shooting, stabbing, robbery, mugging, drug trafficking, human trafficking, pimping, welfare sponging, rioting, honour killing and suicide bombing than members of the indigenous population. A propensity for respecting the habits, traditions and religious beliefs of host nations should also be considered.
And if we can’t figure a way round the rules, we could always adopt the sensible French approach and simply ignore them.
First things first: is the applicant likely to be a net financial contributor or a drain on the public purse of this country? If the answer is the latter, they don’t get in. Secondly, does the racial and/or religious group to which they belong have a history of successfully rubbing shoulders with other cultures, without their hosts having to tread on eggshells the whole time? If the answer is negative, it’s really hard to see why you’d welcome them. Thirdly, does the applicant’s racial and/or religious group have “form” – i.e. do its representatives have a recent history of indulging in criminal activities, all the way from petty thieving to terrorist attacks, in the countries which so generously admit them? If the answer’s yes, why in the name of all that’s holy would you lay out the welcome mat?
Fourthly, if the applicant is a member of one of the less cuddly groupings, does the applicant strike our razor-sharp border authorities as a typical representative of their nation/race/religion? And, last, if they’re seeking asylum, do we have any recent ties to the country involved - in the case of Somalia, for instance, the answer would always be a firm “no”.
Well, that should take care of most of those who pose a risk.
Such a system would have guaranteed Mr. L and every Muslim with whom I’m acquainted (quite a few, as it happens) guaranteed entry. Sikhs would do fine as well - I like Sikhs. (It would also have worked for me, which some might see as a distinctly mixed blessing.)
Finally, and most importantly, we must prevent bleeding-heart liberals - a group whose whole approach to life is based on an absolute refusal to learn from experience and the automatic acceptance of everything they’re told by anyone who isn’t English or American as gospel truth - from playing any part in deciding who does and who does not get into this country.
Of course, the EU would be in an uproar. And the UN. And Barack Obama.
But that would be a plus, surely?
As for some of the pseudo-European countries affected, well, isn’t it about time they started taking care of their own degenerates? As for Muslim countries, they shouldn’t really have a problem with an intolerant attitude towards antipathetic cultures, given how many of them seem to turn a blind eye to the destruction of churches and the persecution of Christians within their own borders, and their eagerness to flog and imprison foreigners for the slightest infraction of their savage laws.
Surely, what’s good for the goose…
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