On a minor side note, I’ll admit to being marginally confused about how immigration became such a huge part of our political discourse and how it’s become demonised as such a huge issue.
We need immigration, do we not? There are many vital parts of the UK workforce that rely heavily upon immigrant labour, and immigration will also be vital to prop up our aging population as the years go on. The country’s birth rate is sliding, and the cost of caring for our nation’s elderly is ever-increasing due to an ever-increasing number of pensioners. Due to the aforementioned sliding birth rate, the number of working taxpayers who can pay for this is decreasing, so something is going to have to give eventually. The way we can help to alleviate this is through immigration; immigrants are often young, which helps to boost the birth rate.
Also, I find it perplexing how the issue seems to be most feared in areas with very, very low levels of immigration. As an example, I live in an area with a reasonable degree of anti-immigration sentiment. For context, UKIP did pretty well here in 2015, polls suggest considerable support for Reform UK, and nearly 60% of people in this area voted for Brexit, which is quite markedly higher than the national average. I’ve heard a fair share of people in this area talk animatedly about clamping down on immigration, and although perhaps less than it once was, there does still seem to be a bit of… suspicion and fear towards non-local people in some circles around here. On Facebook, I’ve noticed that all of the sponsored posts I receive from Forest of Dean parliamentary parties have at least a couple of comments on there talking about “stopping the boats” and “stopping the immigrants”. This is despite the fact that the area where I live was logged as 98% white at the last census and is among the least ethnically diverse local authority areas in the UK. I could easily walk the hour from my house to the nearest large town and not meet a single person who wasn’t White British. Yet immigration seems to be seen as a considerable problem around here, despite the area’s considerable lack of immigrants.
I’m not saying that illegal immigration isn’t a problem, but I do feel that the issue has been considerably blown out of proportion by the Tories and Reform, and the tough rhetoric on it ignores the benefits that immigration and diversity brings to our society.
I think a major factor is when times are hard, someone has to be blamed.
I'm not sure how old you are Matt, but when I was younger people were a lot more chill about immigration, but the demonisation of people 'below' in the food chain was exactly the same, both in intensity and frequency. But the demons of my teenage years and 20s were "common council estate trash" sponging off taxpayers and living the dream on benefits. Frightfully, it moved on to the
genuinely disabled and people struggling to work, and it's moved on now to immigrants. Make no mistake, the anger and disgust towards
ALL of the worst off in our country is still there, but the spotlight shifts when the Tories and the Right Wing Media decides it needs something fresh.
To me it looks like this. When times are tough, people need explanation for the lack of infrastructure, the decay of the nation, the hardship they're feeling, the queues at the hospital, the waiting time for ambulances, the pot holes. And we're told, always, without fail, to look
down to work out who is sucking up all the resource. Never,
ever look
up.
The monsters of the week are immigrants. If we could just get rid of them all this resource would be freed up, and we'd be showered with the fruits of our hard earned taxes. It's not all being squandered on tax breaks for the rich, private enterprises and cronyism - it's getting hoovered up by the peasants on the bottom, we promise,
don't look up.
From living in a few countries, something else I suspect comes into play, is the UKs struggle with it's culture and identity. It's SO messy, it's so intangible and unclear. Ask a handful of Brits what British culture is and they'll spout a bunch of general statements common either to the rest of the continent, or to the US. I suspect, that people feel an intense desire to protect their culture, a totally normal thing for humans to feel, but aren't sure how to actually achieve it...because they're not sure what they're trying to save. And any attempt to highlight
English culture, just doesn't seem to sit right with a lot of people. Is that maybe a hangover of Empire? Is it a symptom of the set up of the UK's union? I'm unsure.
But I think that in lieu of laws, restrictions, education programs or cultural preservation efforts often used in other countries to protect language and dialect, cuisine, folk dance, dress, customs - the only thing left is just to get rid of anyone not 'from here'.
We can't resist the influence of incomers because we don't have a culture strong enough to push back, or for some reason we are reticent to even agree and explore what our culture is. It's a rough theory, and I'm not sure how much it rings true, but it's a gut feeling I have.