A Short Note on Immigrants.

One of the main features filling the media and parliamentary debate at the moment is the question of illegal immigrants. I gather there’s a complex economic argument on both sides of the equation, but the objection I’ve mostly experienced has favoured the emotional response. ‘There are just too many of them,’ say even those who see themselves as kind and liberally minded. ‘These people are uncouth foreigners invading our country and swamping our civilised culture.’ And they’re usually inclined to presume a proclivity for criminal intent as well.

I wonder how many of them realise that the people we now call the English came here in boats as what we would now term ‘illegal immigrants.’ And the same is true of white people in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. And when they did, they didn’t just swamp the existing culture, they took ownership of it.

And let’s not also forget that major population shifts have been happening all over the world since time immemorial, usually in pursuit of better opportunities and living standards, and we just happen to be living through the latest of them.