Said By Brad

I watched a program on television last night that was titled ‘Immigration - An Inconvenient Truth’. It presented, I felt, a rather biased account of the current state of Britain as a community and argued that immigration is ‘fragmenting’ our community and is harmful to the nation as a whole. They even went as far as quoting lines from Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech and implied his controversial opinion was being vindicated.

My opinions on immigration are rather mixed. The majority of the people I know, friends and family, follow the stereotypical ‘I don’t want them coming over here and stealing our jobs’ view. I don’t agree with this so much. I’m all for legal immigration, I believe it should be moderated, but if immigrants want to work, I see nothing wrong with this. I don’t believe just because I was born in this country it gives me a right to a job here more than a Somali or an Indian immigrant. I think for the most part immigrants ’steal’ jobs is because a great deal of young English people who go out looking for work are lazy bastards. They’ve grown up in a semi comfortable family environment and have never really learned the value of hard work. Minimum wage and a menial job isn’t exactly going to get them salivating. Where as an immigrant from a much poorer country who has probably had a much more difficult life would be much more willing and dedicated. I’m not saying this is the hard and fast rule, but I think it applies in a great number of situations. It’s not about immigrants ’stealing’ jobs. It’s just about them having a better work ethic, mostly.

Where I do start to object to immigration is when communities of immigrants become so large that they almost.. form a ‘parasite’ community if you will, within a larger pre-existing community. When there are so many immigrants they have no need to mix and socialize and fit in to this countries way of doing things. I strongly believe if you move to another country and intend to work and live there for a long time you should do your best to fit in. You shouldn’t segregate yourself and split yourself off from the pre-existing residents. You should do your best to mix, and you should certainly be able to speak the language. That should go without saying but it never ceases to amaze me how many people you come across in this country with little to no grasp of basic English.

I think this is why most people are against immigration. The majority of immigrants in this country don’t integrate themselves. They stay separated. They don’t mix, they don’t seem like a part of the community. They isolate themselves in effect. And in addition to this they also want to bring in laws and rules from their own countries. This is mostly motivated by religion and only adds to the segregation.

This segregation, in my opinion, is what puts the majority of people off immigration.

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