People Pollution.

The immigration issue keeps cropping up. Politicians keep telling us that immigration has to be controlled for economic reasons. The country simply can’t afford them, they say.

Well, it hasn’t escaped my notice that politicians seem able to justify any amount of expenditure when it suits their personal or dogmatic agendas. But, let’s leave that one aside. Maybe there are good economic reasons to control the level of immigration; I’m not sufficiently conversant with high economic theory to argue the point. What I have noticed, however, is this:

I’ve heard a lot of people down here at grass roots level railing against immigrants and immigration, and they always trot out the economic justifications. ‘These people are taking our jobs.’ ‘These people are eating up our taxes by claiming benefits.’ ‘These people are just a drain on the state.’

It’s that phrase ‘these people’ that interests me. As you go further down the line of discussion, it becomes obvious that the complainer’s real motivation isn’t actually economic at source. That argument is just the politically correct cover. The real motivation is the continuing notions in British society that:

1) Black and brown people are inferior to white people.

2) Non-English speakers are inferior to English speakers, or at least those who have made the effort to learn the superior language to a fluent degree.

3) Poor people are inferior to rich people.

4) Unemployed people are inferior to employed people.

5) Manual workers are inferior to those in brain-oriented occupations.

And which side of those lines do the immigrants usually fall? So then all this gets distilled down to the fundamental objection:

6) Allowing inferior people (as defined above) into our country pollutes our culture.

It all comes down to pollution. I don’t quite see it that way.