multiculturalism europe

[satchseven]

2 coroner's reports say otherwise.

bullshit back this guy said he was working in a crime infested area, ferguson only had 20 homicides in the last 15 yrs. I lived in stl county twice I bet know what heck going on there more than you. go read the doj report on ferguson then try to tell me those cops would not lie

 

[satchseven]

Darren Wilson was fired with the rest of Jennings mo PD for being a bunch of racist assholes.they disbanded the whole *******. look I have been in ferguson at least 100 times .when I heard about the bs I was shocked,then when I heard they hired a bunch of those racist fucks from Jennings, I said no wonder.

 

[MikeD]

Darren Wilson was fired with the rest of Jennings mo PD for being a bunch of racist assholes.they disbanded the whole *******. look I have been in ferguson at least 100 times .when I heard about the bs I was shocked,then when I heard they hired a bunch of those racist fucks from Jennings, I said no wonder.

And Mike Brown was a pillar of the community? Hahahaha don't dive in a police suv and try to take a cops gun.

 

[MikeD]

eric holder was not and did not do *******
you know the da had someone testifying who was caught lying about what she saw. I tell you what brother I lived in st louis county twice plus my wife grew up 100 yds from the ferguson border. did you read the doj report on ferguson? read that ******* and then you tell me those fuckers told the truth. do not get it twisted there are white folks who do not give ******* about brothers and st louis is full of them. I can post all kinds of reputable stories on st louis county police bs.70 different police depts in a 20 mile radius from my house there in stl county preying on blacks with bs tickets to support ******* that should not exist

Never said Ferguson wasn't full of racist cops and administrators. But Mike Brown was a fuck up raised by hood rats. Period! On the flip side, I'm hoping karma catches up with George Zimmerman and the 2 Cleveland cops who got off with murdering a 12yo. And take "karma" to mean whatever you want it to.

 

[satchseven]

Never said Ferguson wasn't full of racist cops and administrators. But Mike Brown was a fuck up raised by hood rats. Period! On the flip side, I'm hoping karma catches up with George Zimmerman and the 2 Cleveland cops who got off with murdering a 12yo. And take "karma" to mean whatever you want it to.

bs the kid did not have juvenile record, had just graduated from hs and was due to enter trade school the next monday. that does not sound like a fuck up to me. darren wilson was a known asshole to folks who live there. you better believe if mike brown had a juvenile record, some asshole would have leaked it.
those indian store owners gave him the wrong quality cigar for the money he paid,but the Indians are scared of white folks and will cake out in a flash. if mike brown folks were hoodrats the rednecks would have plastered crap everywhere.

 

[MikeD]

bs the kid did not have juvenile record, had just graduated from hs and was due to enter trade school the next monday. that does not sound like a fuck up to me. darren wilson was a known asshole to folks who live there. you better believe if mike brown had a juvenile record, some asshole would have leaked it.
those indian store owners gave him the wrong quality cigar for the money he paid,but the Indians are scared of white folks and will cake out in a flash. if mike brown folks were hoodrats the rednecks would have plastered crap everywhere.

Hmm, guess the coroners reports were all lies, too.

 

[satchseven]

the report means jack ******* darren wilson would not have pulled that stunt in ladue,town and country,Frontenac areas of St Louis county. darren wilson killed that kid to cover up for the fact he escalated a trivial incident into a bad shooting,dead men tell no tales. he knew the racist folks he worked with would help him lie and their own e-mails proved they were racist fucks. it took a week for him to turn in an incident report. my cop friend told me you do that the same day. go read the civil suit there is a whole lot of info there, that whole deal stunk. the reason this ******* goes on is folks like you condone lying trash who are on these police depts

 

[bm_from_southjersey]

How did a thread entitled "Multiculturalism Europe" spin off into a discussion of Ferguson, Missouri?

 

[Daphne&D]

The Failure of Multiculturalism
Community Versus Society in Europe
By Kenan Malik
Purchase Article

Thirty years ago, many Europeans saw multiculturalism—the embrace of an inclusive, diverse society—as an answer to Europe’s social problems. Today, a growing number consider it to be a cause of them. That perception has led some mainstream politicians, including British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to publicly denounce multiculturalism and speak out against its dangers. It has fueled the success of far-right parties and populist politicians across Europe, from the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands to the National Front in France. And in the most extreme cases, it has inspired obscene acts of violence, such as Anders Behring Breivik’s homicidal rampage on the Norwegian island of Utoya in July 2011.

How did this transformation come about? According to multiculturalism’s critics, Europe has allowed excessive immigration without demanding enough integration—a mismatch that has eroded social cohesion, undermined national identities, and degraded public trust. Multiculturalism’s proponents, on the other hand, counter that the problem is not too much diversity but too much racism.

But the truth about multiculturalism is far more complex than either side will allow, and the debate about it has often devolved into sophistry. Multiculturalism has become a proxy for other social and political issues: immigration, identity, political disenchantment, working-class decline. Different countries, moreover, have followed distinct paths. The United Kingdom has sought to give various ethnic communities an equal stake in the political system. Germany has encouraged immigrants to pursue separate lives in lieu of granting them citizenship. And France has rejected multicultural policies in favor of assimilationist ones. The specific outcomes have also varied: in the United Kingdom, there has been communal violence; in Germany, Turkish communities have drifted further from mainstream society; and in France, the relationship between the authorities and North African communities has become highly charged. But everywhere, the overarching consequences have been the same: fragmented societies, alienated minorities, and resentful citizens.

As a political tool, multiculturalism has functioned as not merely a response to diversity but also a means of constraining it. And that insight reveals a paradox. Multicultural policies accept as a given that societies are diverse, yet they implicitly assume that such diversity ends at the edges of minority communities. They seek to institutionalize diversity by putting people into ethnic and cultural boxes—into a singular, homogeneous Muslim community, for example—and defining their needs and rights accordingly. Such policies, in other words, have helped create the very divisions they were meant to manage.

THE DIVERSITY MYTH

Untangling the many strands of the multiculturalism debate requires understanding the concept itself. The term “multicultural” has come to define both a society that is particularly diverse, usually as a result of immigration, and the policies necessary to manage such a society. It thus embodies both a description of society and a prescription for dealing with it. Conflating the two—perceived problem with supposed solution—has tightened the knot at the heart of the debate. Unpicking that knot requires a careful evaluation of each.

Both proponents and critics of multiculturalism broadly accept the premise that mass immigration has transformed European societies by making them more diverse. To a certain extent, this seems self-evidently true. Today, Germany is the world’s second most popular immigrant destination, after the United States. In 2013, more than ten million people, or just over 12 percent of the population, were born abroad. In Austria, that figure was 16 percent; in Sweden, 15 percent; and in France and the United Kingdom, around 12 percent. From a historical perspective, however, the claim that these countries are more plural than ever is not as straightforward as it may seem. Nineteenth-century European societies may look homogeneous from the vantage point of today, but that is not how those societies saw themselves then.

Consider France. In the years of the French Revolution, for instance, only half the population spoke French and only around 12 percent spoke it correctly. As the historian Eugen Weber showed, modernizing and unifying France in the revolution’s aftermath required a traumatic and lengthy process of cultural, educational, political, and economic self-colonization. That effort created the modern French state and gave birth to notions of French (and European) superiority over non-European cultures. But it also reinforced a sense of how socially and culturally disparate most of the population still was. In an address to the Medico-Psychological Society of Paris in 1857, the Christian socialist Philippe Buchez wondered how it could happen that “within a population such as ours, races may form—not merely one, but several races—so miserable, inferior and bastardised that they may be classed as below the most inferior savage races, for their inferiority is sometimes beyond cure.” The “races” that caused Buchez such anxiety were not immigrants from Africa or Asia but the rural poor in France.

In the Victorian era, many Britons, too, viewed the urban working class and the rural poor as the other. A vignette of working-class life in East London’s Bethnal Green, appearing in an 1864 edition of The Saturday Review, a well-read liberal magazine of the era, was typical of Victorian middle-class attitudes. “The Bethnal Green poor,” the story explained, were “a caste apart, a race of whom we know nothing, whose lives are of quite different complexion from ours, persons with whom we have no point of contact.” Much the same was true, the article suggested, of “the great mass of the agricultural poor.” Although the distinctions between slaves and masters were considered more “glaring” than those separating the moneyed and the poor, they offered “a very fair parallel”; indeed, the differences were so profound that they prevented “anything like association or companionship.”

Today, Bethnal Green represents the heart of the Bangladeshi community in East London. Many white Britons see its inhabitants as the new Bethnal Green poor, culturally and racially distinct from themselves. Yet only those on the political fringes would compare the differences between white Britons and their Bangladeshi neighbors with those of masters and slaves. The social and cultural differences between a Victorian gentleman or factory owner, on the one hand, and a farm hand or a machinist, on the other, were in reality much greater than those between a white resident and a resident of Bangladeshi origin are today. However much they may view each other as different, a 16-year-old of Bangladeshi origin living in Bethnal Green and a white 16-year-old probably wear the same clothes, listen to the same music, and follow the same soccer club. The shopping mall, the sports field, and the Internet bind them together, creating a set of experiences and cultural practices more common than any others in the past.

A similar historical amnesia plagues discussions surrounding immigration. Many critics of multiculturalism suggest that immigration to Europe today is unlike that seen in previous times. In his book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, the journalist Christopher Caldwell suggests that prior to World War II, immigrants to European countries came almost exclusively from the continent and therefore assimilated easily. “Using the word immigration to describe intra-European movements,” Caldwell argues, “makes only slightly more sense than describing a New Yorker as an ‘immigrant’ to California.” According to Caldwell, prewar immigration between European nations differed from postwar immigration from outside Europe because “immigration from neighboring countries does not provoke the most worrisome immigration questions, such as ‘How well will they fit in?’ ‘Is assimilation what they want?’ and, most of all, ‘Where are their true loyalties?’”

Yet these very questions greeted European immigrants in the prewar years. As the scholar Max Silverman has written, the notion that France assimilated immigrants from elsewhere in Europe with ease before World War II is a “retrospective illusion.” And much the same is true of the United Kingdom. In 1903, witnesses to the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration expressed fears that newcomers to the United Kingdom would be inclined to live “according to their traditions, usages and customs.” There were also concerns, as the newspaper editor J. L. Silver put it, that “the debilitated sickly and vicious products of Europe” could be “grafted onto the English stock.” The country’s first immigration law, the 1905 Aliens Act, was designed principally to stem the flow of European Jews. Without such a law, then Prime Minister Arthur Balfour argued at the time, British “nationality would not be the same and would not be the nationality we should desire to be our heirs through the ages yet to come.” The echoes of contemporary anxieties are unmistakable.

RACE TO THE TOP

Whether contemporary Europe really is more plural than it was in the nineteenth century remains subject to debate, but the fact that Europeans perceive it to be more diverse is unquestionable. This owes in large part to changes in how people define social differences. A century and a half ago, class was a far more important frame for understanding social interactions. However difficult it is to conceive of now, many at the time saw racial distinctions in terms of differences not in skin color but in class or social standing. Most nineteenth-century thinkers were concerned not with the strangers who crossed their countries’ borders but with those who inhabited the dark spaces within them.

One of the most prevalent myths in European politics is that governments adopted multicultural policies because minorities wanted to assert their differences.

Over the past few decades, however, class has diminished in importance in Europe, both as a political category and as a marker of social identity. At the same time, culture has become an increasingly central medium through which people perceive social differences. The shift reflects broader trends. The ideological divides that characterized politics for much of the past 200 years have receded, and the old distinctions between left and right have become less meaningful. As the working classes have lost economic and political power, labor organizations and collectivistic ideologies have declined. The market, meanwhile, has expanded into almost every nook and cranny of social life. And institutions that traditionally brought disparate individuals together, from trade unions to the church, have faded from public life.

As a result, Europeans have begun to see themselves and their social affiliations in a different way. Increasingly, they define social solidarity not in political terms but rather in terms of ethnicity, culture, or faith. And they are concerned less with determining the kind of society they want to create than with defining the community to which they belong. These two matters are, of course, intimately related, and any sense of social identity must take both into account. But as the ideological spectrum has narrowed and as the mechanisms for change have eroded, the politics of ideology have given way to the politics of identity. It is against this background that Europeans have come to view their homelands as particularly, even impossibly, diverse—and have formulated ways of responding.

UNDER MY UMBRELLA

In describing contemporary European societies as exceptionally diverse, multiculturalism is clearly flawed. What, then, of multiculturalism’s prescription for managing that supposed diversity? Over the past three decades, many European nations have adopted multicultural policies, but they have done so in distinct ways. Comparing just two of these histories, that of the United Kingdom and that of Germany, and understanding what they have in common, reveals much about multiculturalism itself.

One of the most prevalent myths in European politics is that governments adopted multicultural policies because minorities wanted to assert their differences. Although questions about cultural assimilation have certainly engrossed political elites, they have not, until relatively recently, preoccupied immigrants themselves. When large numbers of immigrants from the Caribbean, India, and Pakistan arrived in the United Kingdom during the late 1940s and 1950s to fill labor shortages, British officials feared that they might undermine the country’s sense of identity. As a government report warned in 1953, “A large coloured community as a noticeable feature of our social life would weaken . . . the concept of England or Britain to which people of British stock throughout the Commonwealth are attached.”

The immigrants brought with them traditions and mores from their homelands, of which they were often very proud. But they were rarely preoccupied with preserving their cultural differences, nor did they generally consider culture to be a political issue. What troubled them was not a desire to be treated differently but the fact that they were treated differently. Racism and inequality, not religion and ethnicity, constituted their key concerns. In the following decades, a new generation of black and Asian activists, forming groups such as the Asian Youth Movements and the Race Today Collective, acted on those grievances, organizing strikes and protests challenging workplace discrimination, deportations, and police *******. These efforts came to explosive climax in a series of riots that tore through the United Kingdom’s inner cities in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

At that point, British authorities recognized that unless minority communities were given a political stake in the system, tensions would continue to threaten urban stability. It was in this context that multicultural policies emerged. The state, at both the national and the local level, pioneered a new strategy of drawing black and Asian communities into the mainstream political process by designating specific organizations or community leaders to represent their interests. At its heart, the approach redefined the concepts of racism and equality. Racism now meant not simply the denial of equal rights but also the denial of the right to be different. And equality no longer entailed possessing rights that transcended race, ethnicity, culture, and faith; it meant asserting different rights because of them.

Consider the case of Birmingham, the United Kingdom’s second most populous city. In 1985, the city’s Handsworth area was engulfed by riots sparked by a simmering resentment of poverty, joblessness, and, in particular, police harassment. Two people died and dozens were injured in the violence. In the aftermath of the unrest, the city council attempted to engage minorities by creating nine so-called umbrella groups—organizations that were supposed to advocate for their members on matters of city policy. These committees decided on the needs of each community, how and to whom resources should be disbursed, and how political power should be distributed. They effectively became surrogate voices for ethnically defined fiefdoms.

The city council had hoped to draw minorities into the democratic process, but the groups struggled to define their individual and collective mandates. Some of them, such as the African and Caribbean People’s Movement, represented an ethnic group, whereas others, such as the Council of Black-Led Churches, were also religious. Diversity among the groups was matched by diversity within them; not all the people supposedly represented by the Bangladeshi Islamic Projects Consultative Committee, for example, were equally devout. Yet the city council’s plan effectively assigned every member of a minority to a discrete community, defined each group’s needs as a whole, and set the various organizations in competition with one another for city resources. And anyone who fell outside these defined communities was effectively excluded from the multicultural process altogether.

The problem with Birmingham’s policies, observed Joy Warmington, director of what was then the Birmingham Race Action Partnership (now BRAP), a charitable organization working to reduce inequality, in 2005, is that they “have tended to emphasize ethnicity as a key to entitlement. It’s become accepted as good practice to allocate resources on ethnic or faith lines. So rather than thinking of meeting people’s needs or about distributing resources equitably, organizations are ****** to think about the distribution of ethnicity.” The consequences were catastrophic. In October 2005, two decades after the original Handsworth riots, violence broke out in the neighboring area of Lozells. In 1985, Asian, black, and white demonstrators had taken to the streets together to protest poverty, unemployment, and police harassment. In 2005, the fighting was between blacks and Asians. The spark had been a rumor, never substantiated, that a group of Asian men had raped a Jamaican girl. The fighting lasted a full weekend.

Why did two communities that had fought side by side in 1985 fight against each other in 2005? The answer lies largely in Birmingham’s multicultural policies. As one academic study of Birmingham’s policies observed, “The model of engagement through Umbrella Groups tended to result in competition between BME [black and minority ethnic] communities for resources. Rather than prioritizing needs and cross-community working, the different Umbrella Groups generally attempted to maximize their own interests.”

The council’s policies, in other words, not only bound people more closely to particular identities but also led them to fear and resent other groups as competitors for power and influence. An individual’s identity had to be affirmed as distinctive from the identities of those from other groups: being Bangladeshi in Birmingham also meant being not Irish, not Sikh, and not African Caribbean. The consequence was the creation of what the economist Amartya Sen has termed “plural monoculturalism”—a policy driven by the myth that society is made up of distinct, uniform cultures that dance around one another. The result in Birmingham was to entrench divisions between black and Asian communities to such an extent that those divisions broke out into communal violence.

SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL

Instead of welcoming immigrants as equals, German politicians dealt with the so-called Turkish problem through a policy of multiculturalism.

Germany’s road to multiculturalism was different from the United Kingdom’s, although the starting point was the same. Like many countries in western Europe, Germany faced an immense labor shortage in the years following World War II and actively recruited foreign workers. Unlike in the United Kingdom, the new workers came not from former colonies but from the countries around the Mediterranean: first from Greece, Italy, and Spain, and then from Turkey. They also came not as immigrants, still less as potential citizens, but as so-called Gastarbeiter (guest workers), who were expected to return to their countries of origin when the German economy no longer required their services.

Over time, however, these guests, the vast majority of them Turks, went from being a temporary necessity to a permanent presence. This was partly because Germany continued to rely on their labor and partly because the immigrants, and more so their children, came to see Germany as their home. But the German state continued to treat them as outsiders and refuse them citizenship.

German citizenship was, until recently, based on the principle of jus sanguinis, by which one can acquire citizenship only if one’s parents were citizens. The principle excluded from citizenship not just first-generation immigrants but also their German-born children. In 1999, a new nationality law made it easier for immigrants to acquire citizenship. Yet most Turks remain outsiders. Out of the three million people of Turkish origin in Germany today, only some 800,000 have managed to acquire citizenship.

Instead of welcoming immigrants as equals, German politicians dealt with the so-called Turkish problem through a policy of multiculturalism. Beginning in the 1980s, the government encouraged Turkish immigrants to preserve their own culture, language, and lifestyle. The policy did not represent a respect for diversity so much as a convenient means of avoiding the issue of how to create a common, inclusive culture. And its main consequence was the emergence of parallel communities.

First-generation immigrants were broadly secular, and those who were religious were rarely hard-line in their beliefs and practices. Today, almost one-third of adult Turks in Germany regularly attend mosque, a higher rate than among other Turkish communities in western Europe and even in many parts of Turkey. Similarly, first-generation Turkish women almost never wore headscarves; now many of their daughters do. Without any incentive to participate in the national community, many Turks don’t bother learning German.

At the same time that Germany’s multicultural policies have encouraged Turks to approach German society with indifference, they have led Germans to view Turkish culture with increasing antagonism. Popular notions of what it means to be German have come to be defined partly in opposition to the perceived values and beliefs of the excluded immigrant community. A 2011 survey conducted by the French polling firm Ifop showed that 40 percent of Germans considered the presence of Islamic communities “a threat” to their national identity. Another poll, conducted by Germany’s Bielefeld University in 2005, suggested that three out of four Germans believed that Muslim culture did not fit into the Western world. Anti-Muslim groups, such as Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA, are on the rise, and anti-immigration protests held in cities across the country this past January were some of the largest in recent memory. Many German politicians, including Merkel, have taken a strong stance against the anti-Muslim movement. But the damage has already been done.

SUBCONTRACTING POLICY

In both the United Kingdom and Germany, governments failed to recognize the complexity, elasticity, and sheer contrariness of identity. Personal identities emerge out of relationships—not merely personal ties but social ones, too—and constantly mutate.

Group identities are not natural categories; they arise out of social interaction.

Take Muslim identity. Today there is much talk in European countries of a so-called Muslim community—of its views, its needs, its aspirations. But the concept is entirely new. Until the late 1980s, few Muslim immigrants to Europe thought of themselves as belonging to any such thing. That wasn’t because they were few in number. In France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, for example, there were already large and well-established South Asian, North African, and Turkish immigrant communities by the 1980s.

The first generation of North African immigrants to France was broadly secular, as was the first generation of Turkish immigrants to Germany. By contrast, the first wave of South Asian immigrants to arrive in the United Kingdom after World War II was more religious. Yet even they thought of themselves not as Muslims first but as Punjabis or Bengalis or Sylhetis. Although pious, they wore their faith lightly. Many men drank alcohol. Few women wore a hijab, let alone a burqa or a niqab (a full-faced veil). Most attended mosque only occasionally. Islam was not, in their eyes, an all-encompassing philosophy. Their faith defined their relationship with God, not a sacrosanct public identity.

Members of the second generation of Britons with Muslim backgrounds were even less likely to identify with their religion. The same went for those whose parents were Hindu or Sikh. Religious organizations were barely visible within minority communities. The organizations that bound immigrants together were primarily secular and often political; in the United Kingdom, for example, such groups included the Asian Youth Movements, which fought racism, and the Indian Workers’ Association, which focused on labor rights.

Only in the late 1980s did the question of cultural differences become important. A generation that, ironically, is far more integrated and westernized than the first turned out to be the more insistent on maintaining its alleged distinctiveness. The reasons for this shift are complex. Partly they lie in a tangled web of larger social, political, and economic changes over the past half century, such as the collapse of the left and the rise of identity politics. Partly they lie in international developments, such as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Bosnian war of the early 1990s, both of which played an important role in fostering a more heightened sense of Muslim identity in Europe. And partly they lie in European multicultural policies.

Group identities are not natural categories; they arise out of social interaction. But as cultural categories received official sanction, certain identities came to seem fixed. In channeling financial resources and political power through ethnically based organizations, governments provided a form of authenticity to certain ethnic identities and denied it to others.

Multicultural policies seek to build a bridge between the state and minority communities by looking to particular community organizations and leaders to act as intermediaries. Rather than appeal to Muslims and other minorities as citizens, politicians tend to assume minorities’ true loyalty is to their faith or ethnic community. In effect, governments subcontract their political responsibilities out to minority leaders.

Such leaders are, however, rarely representative of their communities. That shouldn’t be a surprise: no single group or set of leaders could represent a single white community. Some white Europeans are conservative, many are liberal, and still others are communist or neofascist. And most whites would not see their interests as specifically “white.” A white Christian probably has more in common with a black Christian than with a white atheist; a white socialist would likely think more like a Bangladeshi socialist than like a white conservative; and so on. Muslims and Sikhs and African Caribbeans are no different; herein rests the fundamental flaw of multiculturalism.

ASSIMILATE NOW

France’s policy of assimilationism is generally regarded as the polar opposite of multiculturalism, which French politicians have proudly rejected. Unlike the rest of Europe, they insist, France treats every individual as a citizen rather than as a member of a particular racial, ethnic, or cultural group. In reality, however, France is as socially divided as Germany or the United Kingdom, and in a strikingly similar way.

Questions surrounding French social policy, and the country’s social divisions, came sharply into focus in Paris this past January, when Islamist gunmen shot 12 people dead at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and four Jews in a kosher supermarket. French politicians had long held multicultural policies responsible for nurturing homegrown jihadists in the United Kingdom. Now they had to answer for why such terrorists had been nurtured in assimilationist France, too.

It is often claimed that there are some five million Muslims in France—supposedly the largest Muslim community in western Europe. In fact, those of North African origin in France, who have been lumped into this group, have never constituted a single community, still less a religious one. Immigrants from North Africa have been broadly secular and indeed often hostile to religion. A 2006 report by the Pew Research Center showed that 42 percent of Muslims in France identified themselves as French citizens first—more than in Germany, Spain, or the United Kingdom. A growing number have, in recent years, become attracted to Islam. But even today, according to a 2011 study by Ifop, only 40 percent identify themselves as observant Muslims, and only 25 percent attend Friday prayers.

Those of North African origin in France are also often described as immigrants. In fact, the majority are second-generation French citizens, born in France and as French as any voter for the National Front. The use of the terms “Muslim” and “immigrant” as labels for French citizens of North African origin is not, however, accidental. It is part of the process whereby the state casts such citizens as the other—as not really part of the French nation.

As in the United Kingdom, in France, the first generation of post–World War II immigrants faced considerable racism, and the second generation was far less willing to accept social discrimination, unemployment, and police *******. They organized, largely through secular organizations, and took to the streets, often in violent protest. The riots that swept through French cities in the fall of 2005 exposed the fractures in French society as clearly as had those that engulfed British cities two decades earlier.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the French authorities took a relatively laid-back stance on multiculturalism, generally tolerating cultural and religious differences at a time when few within minority communities expressed their identities in cultural or religious terms. French President François Mitterrand even coined the slogan le droit à la différence (the right to difference). As tensions within North African communities became more open and as the National Front emerged as a political *******, Paris abandoned that approach for a more hard-line position. The riots in 2005, and the disaffection they expressed, were presented less as a response to racism than as an expression of Islam’s growing threat to France. In principle, the French authorities rejected the multicultural approach of the United Kingdom. In practice, however, they treated North African immigrants and their descendents in a “multicultural” way—as a single community, primarily a Muslim one. Concerns about Islam came to reflect larger anxieties about the crisis of values and identity that now beset France.

A much-discussed 2013 poll conducted by the French research group Ipsos and the Centre de Recherches Politiques, or CEVIPOF, at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (known as Sciences Po) found that 50 percent of the French population believed that the economic and cultural “decline” of their country was “inevitable.” Fewer than one-third thought that French democracy worked well, and 62 percent considered “most” politicians to be “corrupt.” The pollsters’ report described a fractured France, divided along tribal lines, alienated from mainstream politics, distrustful of national leaders, and resentful of Muslims. The main sentiment driving French society, the report concluded, was “fear.”

In the United Kingdom, multicultural policies were at once an acknowledgment of a more fractured society and the source of one. In France, assimilationist policies have, paradoxically, had the same result. Faced with a distrustful and disengaged public, politicians have attempted to reassert a common French identity. But unable to define clearly the ideas and values that characterize the country, they have done so primarily by sowing hostility toward symbols of alienness—by banning the burqa, for example, in 2010.

Instead of accepting North Africans as full citizens, French policy has tended to ignore the racism and discrimination they have faced. Many in France view its citizens of North African origin not as French but as Arab or Muslim. But second-generation North Africans are often as estranged from their parents’ culture and mores—and from mainstream Islam—as they are from wider French society. They are caught not between two cultures, as it is often claimed, but without one. As a consequence, some of them have turned to Islamism, and a few have expressed their inchoate rage through jihadist violence.

At the same time, French assimilationist policies have exacerbated the sense of disengagement felt by traditional working-class communities. The social geographer Christophe Guilluy has coined the phrase “the peripheral France” to describe those people “pushed out by the deindustrialization and gentrification of the urban centers,” who “live away from the economic and decision-making centers, in a state of social non-integration,” and have thus come to “feel excluded.” The peripheral France has emerged mainly as a result of economic and political developments. But like many parts of the country’s North African communities, it has come to see its marginalization through the lens of cultural and ethnic identity. According to the 2013 Ipsos-CEVIPOF poll, seven out of ten people thought there were “too many foreigners in France,” and 74 percent considered Islam to be incompatible with French society. Presenting Islam as a threat to French values has not only strengthened culture’s political role but also sharpened popular disenchantment with mainstream politics.

In the past, disaffection, whether within North African or white working-class communities, would have led to direct political action. Today, however, both groups are expressing their grievances through identity politics. In their own ways, racist populism and radical Islamism are each expressions of a similar kind of social disengagement in an era of identity politics.

ANOTHER WAY

Multiculturalism and assimilationism are different policy responses to the same problem: the fracturing of society. And yet both have had the effect of making things worse. It’s time, then, to move beyond the increasingly sterile debate between the two approaches. And that requires making three kinds 
of distinctions.

First, Europe should separate diversity as a lived experience from multiculturalism as a political process. The experience of living in a society made diverse by mass immigration should be welcomed. Attempts to institutionalize such diversity through the formal recognition of cultural differences should be resisted.

Second, Europe should distinguish colorblindness from blindness to racism. The assimilationist resolve to treat everyone equally as citizens, rather than as bearers of specific racial or cultural histories, is valuable. But that does not mean that the state should ignore discrimination against particular groups. Citizenship has no meaning if different classes of citizens are treated differently, whether because of multicultural policies or because of racism.

Finally, Europe should differentiate between peoples and values. Multiculturalists argue that societal diversity erodes the possibility of common values. Similarly, assimilationists suggest that such values are possible only within a more culturally—and, for some, ethnically—homogeneous society. Both regard minority communities as homogeneous wholes, attached to a particular set of cultural traits, faiths, beliefs, and values, rather than as constituent parts of a modern democracy.

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The real debate should be not between multiculturalism and assimilationism but between two forms of the former and two forms of the latter. An ideal policy would marry multiculturalism’s embrace of actual diversity, rather than its tendency to institutionalize differences, and assimilationism’s resolve to treat everyone as citizens, rather than its tendency to construct a national identity by characterizing certain groups as alien to the nation. In practice, European countries have done the opposite. They have enacted either multicultural policies that place communities in constricting boxes or assimilationist ones that distance minorities from the mainstream.

Moving forward, Europe must rediscover a progressive sense of universal values, something that the continent’s liberals have largely abandoned, albeit in different ways. On the one hand, there is a section of the left that has combined relativism and multiculturalism, arguing that the very notion of universal values is in some sense racist. On the other, there are those, exemplified by such French assimilationists as the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who insist on upholding traditional Enlightenment values but who do so in a tribal fashion that presumes a clash of civilizations.

There has also been a guiding assumption throughout Europe that immigration and integration must be managed through state policies and institutions. Yet real integration, whether of immigrants or of indigenous groups, is rarely brought about by the actions of the state; it is shaped primarily by civil society, by the individual bonds that people form with one another, and by the organizations they establish to further their shared political and social interests. It is the erosion of such bonds and institutions that has proved so problematic—that links assimilationist policy failures to multicultural ones and that explains why social disengagement is a feature not simply of immigrant communities but of the wider society, too. To repair the damage that disengagement has done, and to revive a progressive universalism, Europe needs not so much new state policies as a renewal of civil society.

 

[Daphne&D]

Tiya Miles Become a fan
Professor, Department of Afro-american and African Studies, University of Michigan

Black Women, Interracial Dating, and Marriage: What's Love Got to Do With It?

Posted: 11/05/2013 3:46 pm EST Updated: 01/23/2014 10:52 am EST

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I cannot help but dwell on who might be coming to dinner. Last holiday season gave me plenty of food for thought on this all too familiar and often uncomfortable racially-tinged question. One of my male relatives brought home a date for Thanksgiving who could have been Barbie's twin sister. She was blonde, thin, big-bosomed, and even had a Germanic name. She was probably very nice; but I cannot say for sure. She was shy and didn't talk much in what was likely an unfamiliar and perhaps overwhelming African American social setting. Another of my male relatives brought home a woman for Christmas who seemed like a modern-day, socially progressive southern belle. She was blonde, full figured, outgoing, and outspoken with a saucy southern accent and friendly, expressive manner. Two of my younger male relatives have recently been engaged to white women, and one tied the knot last summer. This is a pattern that I have observed in my professional life for years: successful black men pairing up with white women, but now that the practice has come home to roost, so to speak, I cannot help but admit to feeling a bit demoralized.

I wish my male relatives luck and joy in their relationships, but I also feel a pinch when I watch them with their girlfriends. It is the same sharp tug of disappointment that gets me every time I see a black man with a white woman on his arm. Try as I might to suppress the reaction, I experience black men's choice of white women as a personal rejection of the group in which I am a part, of African American women as a whole, who have always been devalued in this society.

Certainly my reaction links back to a few bad apples in my own young dating years. Once I overheard my black boyfriend telling his buddies how he preferred white women; on another occasion (with a different black boyfriend) a guy told me he didn't care that I was breaking up with him because he could go out and get a white woman, which was what he really wanted anyway. For both these men (and to be fair, they were not much older than 20 at the time and thus had plenty of maturing to do), white women were the pinnacle of womanhood -- the prize that they secretly coveted, the emotional weapon that they knew they could wield. But personal moments of rejection are not the driving ******* behind my resentful feelings about black male-white female relationships now. The driving ******* is, instead, my awareness of all of the (straight) African American women -- beautiful, smart, good women, some of them my own family and friends -- who might not have a honey to bring home this Thanksgiving holiday because they cannot find a date, even as rising numbers of eligible African American men will be wooing white women.

In a perfect world, love would be blind. Individuals would choose each other for kindness, intelligence, perseverance, courage, and a host of other mysterious reasons that make attraction so magical. Race and the characteristics that have come to represent it -- like skin color, eye color, and hair texture -- would not be factors in matters of the heart. This is the way things would be if our love lives actually mirrored recent scientific findings, which tell us the human family is so genetically close that we share more than 99 percent of our DNA. Genetically speaking, there are no racial categories; race is merely skin deep. Dating and marrying across racial lines should therefore be natural, common and acceptable. But this is not a perfect world. This is the United States, where a deep-seated notion of racial difference has been the rationalization for oppression, the rallying cry for discrimination against people who are not white. Within this racialized landscape in which whiteness has reigned supreme, the line between white and black has been the starkest marker of racial difference, with the white side of the line representing all that is positive, and the black side of the line representing all that is negative. Whiteness has been a privileged and prized identity in the U.S.; our national culture has made it this way. So when black men select white women and de-select black women, they are doing so in a context of charged racial meanings.

This is not a cut and dried issue. It is tangled and difficult. I recognize that many people form loving relationships across the black-white color line. Some of the people I admire and respect most in my professional life are black men married to white women and white women married to black men. These relationships are caring and genuine, and surely bring happiness to the individuals involved in them. I have even dated outside of my racial group, and I married someone who isn't black -- a Native American man (with, I must add, distant French and African ancestry). But this collection of happily ever after stories does not mean that love is blind. Romantic attraction is subject to the larger social forces of racial prestige and stigma that swirl all around us, and in this environment, black women are losing out. Despite the steamy scenes on ABC's hit show, Scandal (and yes, I am a fan), most single black women are not dating white men (and certainly not hunky white men who hold high government offices and are willing to risk all they have achieved for illicit love). Many single black women are instead finding themselves ignored in today's dating scene.

While interracial marriage rates in this country have grown remarkably to 8.4 percent in 2010, Americans still marry within their own racial group the majority of the time. And when people do venture across the color line to date, they do so in ways that continue to affirm a social hierarchy based on race in which whiteness is prized. White men are the most sought after dates by women of all groups (except for African American women, who, researchers speculate, may rule out white men due to the fear of being stereotyped). White men can therefore afford to be the pickiest group in the online dating market; they respond to fewer overtures than other men on dating websites, and they have a strong preference for white women. White women are less willing than white men to date outside of their racial group, but heavier-set white women are more willing to date black men, because, researchers Cynthia Feliciano, Belinda Robnett, and Golnaz Komaie of UC Irvine posit, of "racial-beauty exchange theory" -- the notion that a white woman who is less attractive by the measure of dominant Euro-American beauty standards is willing to "trade down" on the racial hierarchy by dating a black man. By the same token, black men who date white women are "trading up" on the American racial hierarchy.

Most striking to me in recent sociological studies about interracial dating and marriage, is that on every measure, African American women seem to come out at the bottom of the pile. Black people as a whole intermarry with whites less frequently than other people of color do; and black women intermarry far less than black men. This is due in part to the unsettling evidence that many groups of men do not prefer black women. According to data released by the online dating site OkCupid, black women (perhaps due to politeness; perhaps due to the recognition of their less desirable status) respond to more initial overtures than other groups; at the same time, black women's initial contacts are ignored most often. In today's dating market black women are less preferred -- and here is the kicker -- sometimes even by black men. Social science researchers posit that black men's attraction to white women as evidenced by dating behavior and growing intermarriage rates is in part historically rooted. Because white women were taboo for black men for centuries in this country to the extent that black men could be lynched for the appearance of involvement with white women, access to white women may be more alluring for black men now. Sociologists also find that because white Americans as a whole are still the most powerful racial group in this country (politically, economically, and socially), non-whites seek to marry into that group in order to increase their own social status. As UC Berkeley sociologist Gerald Mendelsohn put it in an interview: "One theory is that blacks are acting like other minority populations in the history of this country . . . They are interested in moving up in the power structure, and one way you do that is through intermarriage with the dominant group."

These racial and gender preferences and the reasons behind them may not be conscious to people in the dating world, who, by and large, would probably decry bias against black women. Nevertheless, these preferences have real effects. While more black men date and marry white women than ever before, more black women cannot even get a first "chat" on Internet dating sites. African American women are plagued by persistent, age-old stereotypes that represent them as too strong, argumentative and unfeminine. And as wonderful as they are, African American women can never measure up to the narrowly defined beauty ideals based on Euro-American aesthetics that are so firmly entrenched in this culture. Even after the Black is Beautiful seventies, it is still the case that when African American women are upheld as beautiful in popular media, they usually have lighter skin, longer hair, and thinner body types that adhere more closely to those dominant standards.

First Lady Michelle Obama is a glowing exception to these daunting data and a beacon of beauty in this skewed aesthetic environment. The person who would become one of the most successful black men in the history of the world chose her, and she him. So to all of the African American women out there who feel like your shine is not being recognized, who feel a little pinch of rejection each time you see an accomplished black man with a white woman on his arm: take heart. We may be down in this cultural contest for love and appreciation, but we are not out.

 

[Daphne&D]

Malcolm Forbes and Ryan Anderson The Mating Game
Mixed Ethnicity Relationships: The Way of the Future?
Why are we so attracted to people from a different race?
Posted Jan 05, 2015

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian

Source: Jackson Lee /Splash News
Recent events have resulted in tense race relations in the United States at present. In view of this, we have decided to focus on positive relationships that can occur between individuals of different ethnicities, and some of the benefits of these relationships.

We tend to form relationships with individuals similar in ethnic background, political and religious beliefs, social and economic status, intelligence, attractiveness and personality characteristics.

In Western society, as communities become more diverse, mixed ethnicity or interracial relationships are increasing in prevalence. In the United States (link is external), one in ten married couples are interracial, an increase of 28% over ten years. This trend is reflected in Europe (link is external) and Australia (link is external).

A recent Pew survey (link is external) found nine in ten Americans viewed mixed ethnicity marriage as neutral or a change for the better in society. Younger age and higher levels of education were associated with favorable views of mixed relationships.

Despite these figures, there remains significant public opposition and stigma associated with mixed ethnicity relationships. Only last year, a Cheerios ad (link is external) in the United States showing an interracial family sparked a vocal racist backlash. This stigma is reflected in individual relationships. Evidence suggests that adolescents who are dating interracially are less likely to tell their family and friends about their relationships than those dating a same-race partner, and are less likely to be publicly affectionate. (1)

Studies suggest that interracial interactions are associated with higher levels of stress and anxiety than same-race interactions. (2) However, such stress can be reduced by communication between individuals of different ethnicity that focuses on their similarities. (3) This is especially the case for individuals who view racial bias (implicit beliefs we have about our own and other races) as malleable and able to change over time. (4)

Jessica Alba has Danish-French Canadian and Hispanic heritage

In the United States Pew study, gender patterns of interracial marriage were found to vary widely. In 2010, 24% of all black male newlyweds married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. The opposite trend was seen among Asians, with 36% of females marrying outside of their race compared to 17% of males.

There have been a number of theories put forward to explain this phenomenon, based on social status, racial and gender stereotypes, and height differences. (5,6) One compelling explanation for this gender asymmetry relates to facial attractiveness, with white women rating black male faces as the most attractive, and white men rating Asian female faces as most attractive. (7) Previous research has demonstrated a link between genetic diversity and facial attractiveness, with women rating men with greater diversity in a set of genes critical to immune system function to be more attractive. (8)

On the topic of physical attraction, a number of studies have shown that children of mixed ancestry are perceived to be more attractive than those who are born of same-race relationships. (9) Evolutionary psychologists suggest that this increased attractiveness relates to greater genetic fitness in these individuals. It is known that greater genetic variation is associated with reduced incidence of certain diseases – cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs disease and hemophilia – all which can occur when an individual inherits two copies of the relevant defective gene. Greater genetic variation may also be associated with a greater ability to ward off infection and greater resilience to stress.

Racial discrimination is reduced among children of interracial relationships, and adults who have been in interracial relationships are less prejudiced. (10) Those who oppose interracial relationships are fighting a rearguard action, as this trend is set to increase as the world becomes increasingly globalized. Based on the evidence available, this is probably a good thing.



References:

1. Herman MR, Campbell ME. I wouldn't, but you can: Attitudes toward interracial relationships. Social science research. 2012;41(2):343-58.

2. Trawalter S, Richeson JA, Shelton JN. Predicting behavior during interracial interactions: a stress and coping approach. Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc. 2009;13(4):243-68.

3. West TV, Magee JC, Gordon SH, Gullett L. A little similarity goes a long way: the effects of peripheral but self-revealing similarities on improving and sustaining interracial relationships. Journal of personality and social psychology. 2014;107(1):81-100.

4. Neel R, Shapiro JR. Is racial bias malleable? Whites' lay theories of racial bias predict divergent strategies for interracial interactions. Journal of personality and social psychology. 2012;103(1):101-20.

5. Feliciano C, Robnett B, Komaie G. Gendered racial exclusion among white internet daters. Social science research. 2009;38(1):41-56.

6. Galinsky AD, Hall EV, Cuddy AJ. Gendered races: implications for interracial marriage, leadership selection, and athletic participation. Psychological science. 2013;24(4):498-506.

7. Lewis MB. A facial attractiveness account of gender asymmetries in interracial marriage. PloS one. 2012;7(2):e31703.

8. Roberts SC, Little AC, Gosling LM, Perrett DI, Carter V, Jones BC, et al. MHC-heterozygosity and human facial attractiveness. Evolution and Human Behavior. 2005;26(3):213-26.

9. Lewis MB. Why are mixed-race people perceived as more attractive? Perception. 2010;39(1):136-8.

10. Hauser, M. It seems biology (not religion) equals morality. Edge. 2009.

 

[Daphne&D]

The rise and fall of multiculturism in Europe.

 

[Freffy]

we have too many immigrants here in the UK.
they're ruining our country stealing, robbing, killing, etc...
our government should do something...maybe get out of the EU would be the first step

 

[BigBlackBull76]

we have too many immigrants here in the UK.
they're ruining our country stealing, robbing, killing, etc...
our government should do something...maybe get out of the EU would be the first step

Sounds like a description of the British Empire's foreign imperialistic dealings in India, China, South Africa, America, and everywhere else the sun didn't set where the British flag was being flown for over 100 years. One should be careful to only view the world through one set of European or British centrist lens that they become blind to their own nationalistic faults as well. But if one is of feeling a superiority complex toward another group of people probably doesn't matter to them anyway.

 

[Daphne&D]

Sounds like a description of the British Empire's foreign imperialistic dealings in India, China, South Africa, America, and everywhere else the sun didn't set where the British flag was being flown for over 100 years. One should be careful to only view the world through one set of European or British centrist lens that they become blind to their own nationalistic faults as well. But if one is of feeling a superiority complex toward another group of people probably doesn't matter to them anyway.

British centrist lens?????? Britain isn't the EU. The EU is a collective of countries under one flag so to speak. Its their policies and Governance that have allowed the British to overwhelmed by the small minded meddling of the EU short sighted egotistics and clueless politicians.

I suggest you read this as it shows your thoughts on the British is out of date and a little blinkered concerning immigration.




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10
United Kingdom: A Reluctant Country of Immigration
July 21, 2009
Profile
By Will Somerville, Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, Maria Latorre

Southall, in the London Borough of Ealing, has a large South Asian community. The United Kingdom had about 6.9 million foreign born in 2008.

Immigration to the United Kingdom in the 21st century is larger and more diverse than at any point in its history. As the global recession bites, early evidence shows a reduction in the numbers of immigrants coming to work. However, fundamental dynamics indicate sustained net immigration is here to stay.

Although the United Kingdom has received immigrants for centuries, the country has traditionally been a net exporter of people; only from the mid-1980s did the United Kingdom become a country of immigration.

The last decade nevertheless differs markedly because of high levels of net immigration, a surge generated in large part by sustained economic growth for the last 15 years. Since 2004, immigration levels have been boosted by an extraordinary wave of mobility from Eastern European countries, particularly Poland, whose citizens have free movement and labor rights following European Union (EU) enlargement.

Public anxiety about immigration, fueled by media attention, has risen in parallel to the numbers. Monthly polling data from the IpsosMORI agency shows that beginning in the late 1990s, people identified race and immigration as one of the top three most important issues facing the country for all but a couple of months.

Opinion polling data from different sources shows a similar picture, with between two-thirds and four-fifths of the public indicating a preference for less immigration.

In this context of rising numbers and rising anxieties, UK policymakers have attempted to draw up policies to manage migration. They have responded imaginatively, implementing a Points-Based System for Migration and new institutional arrangements, for example. But they continue to face a complex set of challenges — from securing borders and convincing the public that government is in control to meeting labor market needs and accelerating immigrant integration.

Historical Background

After World War II, two contrasting trends changed the nature of UK immigration. First, Irish nationals and the countries of the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, and Wales) have consistently enjoyed free movement and settlement rights.

Similarly, as the United Kingdom has deepened its ties with European partners, mostly through what is now the European Union, Europeans have enjoyed free movement and exemption from UK immigration control.

Second, nationals of many other countries, particularly former British colonies like India and Jamaica, have had their access to the United Kingdom progressively eroded.

These trends did not happen immediately after the war. Immigration policy remained embedded in the structures and systems of the British Commonwealth (also known as the British Empire) until the 1960s, with Commonwealth citizens guaranteed the right of entry.

The high watermark of this approach was the British Nationality Act of 1948, which tried to assert Britain's role as leader of the Commonwealth and affirmed the right of Commonwealth citizens (including those of newly independent Commonwealth countries like India) to settle in the United Kingdom.

The Postwar Policy Model

The British Nationality Act was a sandy edifice against the tides of change that broke the British Empire apart. Instead, a new migration policy emerged based on two pillars: limitation and integration.

Limitation followed immigration flows of workers from Commonwealth countries in the 1950s and early 1960s. The three laws that make up this pillar together had the goal of "zero net immigration." The relevant laws were enacted in 1962, 1968, and 1971.

The 1971 Immigration Act, with a few minor exceptions, repealed all previous legislation on immigration. It still provides the structure of current UK immigration law, which accords the Home Secretary with significant rule-making powers on entry and exit.

The core of the legislation was strong control procedures, which included new legal distinctions between the rights of the UK born/UK passport-holders and people from former British colonies — notably India, Pakistan, and the Caribbean — who became subject to immigration controls.

The second pillar, integration, was inspired by the U.S. civil rights movement. The approach mainly took the form of antidiscrimination laws: in a limited form in the 1965 Race Relations Act, in an expanded form in the 1968 Race Relations Act, and in a more comprehensive form in the 1976 Race Relations Act.

The Conservative Era

From 1979 to 1997, policy continued on much the same track, albeit with a stronger emphasis on limitation and restriction. The British Nationality Act of 1981 ended centuries of common-law tradition by removing the automatic right of citizenship to all those born on British soil, for instance.

The target of policy changed from the late 1980s onwards, when asylum-seekers became the greater concern. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union — together with conflicts in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s — led to increased humanitarian flows to the United Kingdom and other European countries. Policymakers, unused to flows of asylum seekers, began to legislate change.

Two major Acts of Parliament encapsulated the changes. The 1993 Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act was restrictive, creating new "fast-track" procedures for asylum applications, allowing detention of asylum seekers while their claim was being decided, and reducing asylum seekers' benefit entitlements.

The 1996 Immigration and Asylum Act continued in the same vein with new measures and concepts designed to reduce asylum claims, such as further welfare restrictions.

Immigration Policy since 1997

When the Labour party came to power in 1997, migration policy shifted course.

The direction of policy has been one of "selective openness" to immigration, with a commitment to economic migration on one hand and development of a tough security and control framework on the other. The change in economic migration has been accepted across the political divide, and, consequently, limiting and restricting immigration is no longer a prerequisite for UK migration policy.

The security approach, which accelerated after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, has been built on greater efforts to combat illegal immigration and reduce asylum seeking through various measures, but especially new visa controls.

In addition, the Labour government has also altered the second postwar pillar of integration. Labour has reinforced antidiscrimination measures under an agenda of equality and has developed ideas and policies around "community cohesion," which roughly means bringing together segregated communities and fostering shared values and belonging.

In order to make such changes, Labour has passed six major pieces of legislation on immigration and asylum over the last 12 years, alongside a number of policy strategies (see the Table 1 in The Immigration Legacy of Tony Blair).

The benefit of hindsight suggests that legislation in 2002 was a turning point. The government expanded economic immigration and, for the first time, introduced visas for highly skilled economic immigrants to come to the United Kingdom without a job offer, but simply on the basis of their skills.

However, many changes, some not immediately of great import, together have fundamentally altered how government approaches immigration.

Among these are policies to encourage international students, new labor market programs that have culminated in the development of a Points-Based System, and above all the government's decision to allow labor market access to citizens of a newly enlarged Europe.

By tightening up visas, the government has built a more restrictive framework for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants. Reinforcing this framework are institutional changes, especially the creation of an enlarged arm's-length agency, the UK Borders Agency (UKBA), which has greater powers than its predecessor, the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND).

UKBA encompasses visa responsibilities from the Foreign Office and detection responsibilities from Customs, and has greater operational freedom than IND had.

Recent Immigration Flows

The policy changes described above have affected the flows and patterns of immigration, both reactively (e.g., on asylum) and proactively (e.g., on Eastern European migration).

In 2007, the United Kingdom received a gross flow of 577,000 people and a net flow of about 237,000. Net immigration contributed 1.8 million people to the UK population from 1997 to 2007 (see Table 1).

This 1.8 million figure is comprised of growing numbers of workers, international students, asylum seekers (applications spiked between 2000 and 2002), and family members reunifying with those already in the country.

Throughout this period, both the inflow of non-British nationals and the outflow of British citizens (mainly to Australia and Spain) have risen. Consequently, since the mid-1990s, net immigration has exceeded 100,000 people per year, and in some years since 2000, has exceeded 200,000 (see Figure 1).

Table 1. Migration to Britain, 1997 to 2007
British Non-British Total
Gross immigration 1,054,000 4,412,000 5,466,000
Gross emigration 1,867,000 1,747,000 3,614,000
Net migration -813,000 2,665,000 1,852,000
Note: Numbers may not round; minus sign refers to net outflow and plus sign refers to net inflow.
Source: Total International Migration, Office for National Statistics, 2008.

UK Immigrant Population

The sustained inflows of immigrants have resulted in increases in the United Kingdom's stock of foreign born and foreign citizens; the latter group has nearly tripled in size since the early 1980s. The current picture shows that the United Kingdom had about 6.9 million foreign born in 2008, 11 percent of its population, and 4.4 million foreign citizens, about 7 percent of the population. The latter figure is lower primarily because of naturalizations.

The five largest foreign-born populations were from India (639,000), Poland (526,000), Pakistan (436,000), Ireland (424,000), and Germany (293,000).

Yet the Polish are the United Kingdom's largest foreign-national group. According to the Labor ******* Survey (LFS), in the fourth quarter of 2008, 522,000 Polish nationals were living in the country. The next-largest groups were from Ireland (355,000), India (307,000), Pakistan (202,000), France (133,000), and the United States (127,000).

The rankings differ because EU citizens are less likely to apply for British citizenship.

The key analytical point remains the increasing diversity of immigrants to the United Kingdom. Many have come from European countries and former settler colonies, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, while immigration from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, and African countries including Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda have continued.

Recent asylum and refugee inflows from other parts of the world (notably Somalia, Afghanistan, China, and Iraq) have contributed to increasing ethnic diversity. It is therefore unsurprising that diversity has grown (see Table 2).

Table 2. Britain's Growing Ethnic Diversity, Various Years
1991 2001 2008 2008
Percent total population Percent total population Percent total population Percent population under age 16
White 94.1 91.3 89.9 80.9
Mixed n.a. 1.3 1.1 2.8
Asian 3.3 4.4 4.9 7.2
Black 1.9 2.2 2.3 3.6
Chinese 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.3
Other 0.6 0.4 1.4 1.7
Sources: 1991 and 2001 are decennial census data for England and Wales; 2008 data are for England, Wales, and Scotland from Platt (2009).

A second characteristic of the UK immigrant population is its transience. Research has found that about 40 percent of male immigrants and 55 percent of female immigrants who arrived in the early 1990s and stayed for at least a year returned home within five years. These percentages have likely increased since the beginning of large-scale immigration from Eastern Europe.

Economic Migration, Enlargement, and the Recession

The United Kingdom, until it hit the wall of the global recession, enjoyed high growth, low unemployment, and large numbers of unfilled job vacancies. Consequently, significant numbers of foreign workers filled the gap. Foreign-born workers from different entry categories made up more than 13 percent of the country's labor ******* in 2008 — up from 7 to 8 percent a few decades ago (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Share of Immigrants in the UK Working-Age Population

Source: Labour ******* Survey and authors' calculations.

In response to public and media disquiet over such high levels of economic migration, the government introduced a new approach in 2008 that it first announced in 2005: a Points-Based System (PBS) incorporating revised and consolidated versions of existing labor migration schemes.

PBS has five tiers. Tier 1 is aimed at the highly skilled and does not require a job offer. Instead, it is based on applicants' skills and characteristics for which points are awarded. Points allocations show a strong commitment to youth and to certificated qualifications.

Tier 2 incorporates the main body of the work permit system and offers entry to those with a confirmed job offer in a sector of labor market shortage. Such shortage is designated by an independent, new body — the Migration Advisory Committee — that provides the government with nonbinding advice on areas of labor market shortage. It is expected that Tier 2 will account for the majority of non-EU economic migrants.

In 2006, around 141,000 work permits were issued. The leading source country was India, with over a third of all work permits. One in 10 came from the United States, the next biggest source country for work permits. Approximately half of work permit holders come to take up jobs in professional occupations.

The government envisages Tier 3, aimed at filling "lower-skill" jobs, as a highly restricted migration route. This route has been suspended indefinitely because of intra-EU migration; indeed, all low-skilled migration schemes, such as the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS), have been slated for closure.

Tier 4 is dedicated to student visas. It differs from the previous system by compelling colleges and universities to act as "sponsors" for which they must undertake obligations, such as checking student attendance.

Tier 5 is aimed at a variety of exchange programs including five subcategories under temporary workers and a youth mobility scheme.

PBS makes the route to permanent settlement open only to those from Tiers 1 and 2. Lower-skilled workers will not be eligible; instead the country will rely on workers from the European Union.

Overall, with its focus on points and sponsors, policy has moved away from an employer-led system to one that is increasingly government led and more focused on control.

It is important to point out that PBS has no control over intra-European movement — yet the most dramatic increase in economic migration in living memory came from Europe.

When eight Eastern European countries joined the European Union in May 2004, the United Kingdom, along with Ireland and Sweden, allowed nationals from these new Member States to work without any restrictions; this group of countries is known as the accession eight or A8. Nationals of Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, face restrictions.

The booming UK economy proved an attractive destination for many A8 citizens. Together with restrictions elsewhere in Europe, high unemployment at home, favorable exchange rates, and pent-up demand, a wave of immigration was unleashed.

About 1.3 million people from the A8 arrived in the United Kingdom between May 2004 and May 2009. Analysts estimate about half left by the end of that period. The sheer size of the inflow has meant that Polish nationals, despite the high churn, jumped from being the United Kingdom's 13th-largest foreign-national group at the end of 2003 to number one by the end of 2008.

Eastern European migrants have worked mainly in low-paid jobs in sectors such as hospitality and catering, administration, and construction. In 2008, only 12 percent of Eastern European immigrants worked in highly skilled occupations, and more than half worked in "routine" ones.

The full effect of the current recession on economic migration from Eastern Europe will not be clear for some time.

However, some preliminary trends can be established. Data from the Worker Registration Scheme (which gives an indication of the number of arrivals from the A8) shows a substantial drop-off in applications. The number of approved applications in the first quarter of 2009 was the lowest since EU enlargement in 2004 and represented a drop of 53 percent from one year earlier (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Number of Initial Work Applications from A8 Immigrants, 2004 to 2009

Source: Home Office et al., various years.

Evidence from past recessions suggests some changes in certain categories of immigration during a downturn, but overall flows do not seem highly responsive to the economic cycle or to changes in unemployment.

Historically, inflows have declined more than outflows have increased during periods of high unemployment. Econometric analyses confirm this pattern. The analyses show that trends in unemployment and relative income (of source and host countries) had only a modest impact on net immigration to the United Kingdom.

Other factors, such as the level of inequality relative to source countries, immigration policies, and the size of the migrant community from a given source country (a predictor of future family reunification flows), had significantly greater influence over the volume of net migration.

Thus, the recession appears unlikely to have major impacts on future flows of immigrants. A temporary blip in volume is more likely than a permanent adjustment, although immigrants from the A8 countries and immigrants coming under Tier 2 (which requires a job offer) will be affected most; the inflow of A8 nationals in particular may not fully recover.

Asylum Numbers

The United Kingdom received between 20,000 and 40,000 asylum applications per year in the early and mid-1990s, a time when Germany saw hundreds of thousands of applications from people fleeing war in the former Yugoslavia. The numbers rose rapidly in the late 1990s, peaking in 2002 (see Figure 4).

Not including dependents, the United Kingdom received 15.2 percent of the worldwide total of 555,310 asylum applications in 2002, more than any other country, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Figure 4. Number of Asylum Applications (Excluding Dependents) Received in the United Kingdom, 1997 to 2008

Source: Home Office, various years.

The increase in 2002 partly reflected major conflicts and persecution as claims worldwide jumped. That year, the main origin countries of asylum applicants were Iraq (4,375), Zimbabwe (2,750), Somalia (1,835), Afghanistan (1,350), and China (905).

The Sangatte crisis (where prospective asylum seekers massed at the French Port of Calais, a short journey through the Channel Tunnel to the British city of Dover) provided a media staple of a chaotic scene at the border: desperate young men regularly attempting to enter the United Kingdom.

As numbers rose and the "Sangatte crisis" framed the issue, public pressure to curb asylum seekers grew. The government subsequently passed successive pieces of legislation aimed at "pressing down" the number of asylum applications, as well as speeding up processing and achieving more effective removals (deportations) of failed asylum seekers (i.e., those who had not been granted refugee status after the appeals process had concluded).

Effective policy measures included tougher visa regimes; financial penalties on air and truck carriers; juxtaposed controls at various European ports (e.g., when British border guards are physically stationed in Calais, with immigration powers, and vice versa); and British immigration liaison officers posted abroad. The measures, when taken together, can best be described as expanding the UK border.

A combination of such measures and a worldwide drop in asylum claims (now on the upturn) reduced the number of people claiming asylum. Applications totaled 30,545 (including dependents) in 2008 and came mainly from those fleeing Afghanistan (14 percent), Zimbabwe (12 percent), Eritrea (9 percent), Iran (9 percent), Iraq, (7 percent), and Sri Lanka (6 percent).

Probably less effective in curtailing claims, but intensely consequential to asylum-seeking communities, have been policy moves to reduce access to benefits and the labor market, increase surveillance and detention, and ******* relocation outside of London in a policy known as "dispersal."

For example, as of 2002, asylum seekers are not permitted to work; they receive social benefits at levels below those accorded to British citizens and legal residents with entitlement. To be eligible for government-funded housing, they must accept dispersal outside of London. Over 100,000 asylum seekers have been relocated so far, typically placed in cheap housing in deprived areas.

Furthermore, there has been a steady rise in asylum seekers in detention centers. Over the last five years, there has been an average number of 1,453 asylum seekers in detention per year.

The number of asylum claims has dropped, but these latter measures have come at the expense of social cost and disruption. There is widespread destitution among some asylum-seeking groups, and a range of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are troubled by various aspects of their lives and government treatment.

For example, NGOs have raised concerns over asylum seekers' employment and access to quality housing, health, and education. They have also campaigned vigorously against several aspects of asylum-seeker hardship, including detention — particularly of children and families — destitution, and access to justice.

Asylum seeking and concerns over illegal migration are inextricably bound up in UK policy. The question of illegal immigration climbed the policy agenda at much the same time and was often deliberately conflated.

The issue received distinct national attention in 2000, when 58 Chinese people died while locked in the back of a truck en route to the United Kingdom. The national consciousness was again punctured in 2004 with the deaths of 22 Chinese cockle pickers at Morecambe Bay in northwest England, an event that pressured Parliament into passing legislation regulating gangmasters (employers who hire and deploy short-term agricultural workers).

The Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA), the body tasked by Parliament to reduce exploitation, was established in 2005. But GLA works only within certain labor market sectors, namely the agriculture and fish-processing industries.

Illegal Migration and Policy

Estimates of the illegal immigrant population vary. The only officially commissioned estimate, and the one most widely accepted, was published in 2005.

The report estimated the size of the illegally resident population at 430,000, based on census data from 2001. That number is about 9 percent of the 4.9 million foreign born in 2001 and less than 1 percent of the total UK population.

A more recent report from the London School of Economics, using a similar methodology but based on figures through the end of 2007, estimates a higher figure of 618,000 illegal residents, with a range between 417,000 and 863,000. London has about 70 percent of this total, with a central estimate of 442,000 and a range between 281,000 and 630,000.

Government policy on illegal migration has developed incrementally since 2002. In addition to external measures, such as tougher visa regimes, the government has also developed internal measures to combat the problem. These measures can be loosely categorized into four areas: identity management, increased employer compliance, more public service compliance, and regularization.

First, in response to September 11 and for other security concerns, the government introduced compulsory biometric identification data for all migrants who intend to stay in the country for longer than six months.

The rollout for "Biometric Identity Cards" for all non-EU foreign residents began in November 2008 for certain foreign students and expanded in March 2009 to other visa categories. By April 2011, it is expected to cover all those coming from outside the European Union.

Though these measures have controversial civil-liberties implications, the government has argued they reduce the scope for illegal entry and working and that more secure identity documents will prevent the entry of people who may pose a security threat.

Second, the government has imposed increasing sanctions on those who employ unauthorized workers. New legislation has allowed fines of 5,000 pounds sterling ($7,500) per illegal employee to be levied on employers, for example. Research suggests that the number of civil penalties (91 firms in the six months through September 2008) has increased.

The third category in the government's effort to reduce illegal immigration has been compliance measures placed on public service providers. Restrictions have been placed on access to nonemergency health care, for example.

Similarly, schools have been asked to check the status of children and report those not legally resident to the immigration authorities although the United Kingdom guarantees the right of all children, illegally resident or not, to attend public school.

Finally, through administrative changes and ad hoc decisions, the government has regularized between 60,000 to 100,000 people over the last decade. Those regularized have tended to be in the country for 13 years or more (seven if in a family), and have often made asylum claims that have not been resolved.

The effectiveness of such measures is difficult to judge given the nature of the issue. However, with a mass amnesty unlikely, illegal immigration is likely to dominate much of the UK migration debate in the future.

Multiculturalism, Integration, and British Muslims

Over the last five years, the United Kingdom has seen significant debate about the multicultural or race relations model of immigrant integration, which has come under sustained criticism, including from within government.

It is first worth describing the "multiculturalist" or "race relations" model, for which the United Kingdom has been known. The classic definition of this model comes from the 1970s Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, who described it as "not a flattening process of assimilation but equal opportunity accompanied by cultural diversity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance."

In practice, this meant new antidiscrimination laws and some enforcement and promotion work — especially the creation of an independent, publicly funded body, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), which combined both unique enforcement functions and a promotional role of encouraging "good race relations."

The kindling for the change in mood dates to 2001 when three events shook official policy: riots involving minority communities in the northern towns of Bradford, Burnley, and Oldham; the peak of the Sangatte refugee crisis; and the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The next stage in altering entrenched multiculturalist policies occurred when the July 7, 2005, attacks on London's transit system led to concerns about white and minority ethnic and religious groups (especially Muslims) leading segregated lives.

In parallel, rising support in some areas for far-right political parties like the British National Party (BNP), which saw two of its most high-profile members elected in to the European Parliament in June 2009, further heightened concern about attitudes toward diversity, immigration, and race.

Thus over the last five years, there have been passionate debates about national identity and concerns over radicalization in Muslim communities. This has led to four semidistinct strands of policy: refugee integration policy; community cohesion; active promotion of citizenship; and a strong and broad emphasis on equality.

Until recently, formal "integration" policy concerned settlement services for recognized refugees. The refugee integration strategy — first introduced in 2000 and strengthened in 2005 — makes refugees eligible for orientation services and some financial assistance for integration.

Community cohesion is concerned with bringing (segregated) communities together through a variety of local level initiatives, such as school twinning projects, which encourage education and pastoral links between schools with ethnically different student bodies, and mixed-housing policies. Unsurprisingly, questions remain as to whether the promotion of "cohesion" is an appropriate way to accommodate social and cultural differences.

The promotion of citizenship has involved "activating" the naturalization process through new citizenship tests, language tests (also mandatory for long-term residence), and citizenship ceremonies.

The Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill 2009, currently going through Parliament, seeks to create a year-long "probationary citizenship" stage under which migrants would not be able to pass until they successfully meet such integration criteria as proven English language ability. Achieving full citizenship could be accelerated by other acts, such as volunteering.

Finally, major equal opportunity measures introduced under Labour have reinforced and extended the antidiscrimination framework. The 1998 Human Rights Act enshrined the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law. The 2000 Race Relations (Amendment) Act aimed to eradicate institutionalized racism by obligating certain public authorities, including the police and immigration services, to take action to correct ethnic inequalities in recruitment, employment, and service delivery.

Most recently, the government has begun to address immigrant incorporation more directly. In 2008, the Department of Communities and Local Government published a nascent national immigrant integration strategy that complements the existing strategy for refugees.

This move away from multiculturalism toward "shared values" does not indicate a wholesale regression to the acculturation overtures of a previous generation. Further, this is not simply rhetorical, as the implementation of equality measures makes clear.

The exception to this picture may involve the treatment of British Muslims, estimated at 2.4 million in 2008 according to the Labour ******* Survey.

On the one hand, concerns over segregation and radicalization have led the government to expand the equality agenda. The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, which has had important symbolic value, made it illegal to stir up hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds.

On the other hand, much of the increased attention to Muslim populations falls explicitly under the heading of "preventing extremism."

Pressures have also been placed on Britain's traditionally liberal religious accommodation policies: Islamic schools, Sharia law, and religious dress have all provoked serious public debate, the last when, in 2006, Minister Jack Straw publicly called the headscarf "a visible statement of separation and of difference." The reframing of Muslim integration as a security issue may have implications for incorporation outcomes in the future.

Looking Ahead

The Office for National Statistics assumes a net immigration level of 190,000 people per year in the next decade. Forecasts have been lowered in light of the current global recession, but analysts expect continued net immigration at high levels. British policymakers should expect to work with a high-immigration scenario.

The Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill 2009 is likely to become law in the current parliamentary session. The bill would increase the length of time (and cost) associated with becoming a British citizen by introducing a "provisional citizenship" stage into the process. The details regarding these markers and milestones are yet unclear.

There is also likely to be much change on the political scene, both with the seismic impacts on public spending expected as a result of the recession and an expected change in government in the general election that must be held by June 2010. Although it is unclear where budget cuts will bite, it seems likely that no government department or agency will escape a funding squeeze in the years ahead.

Sources

Communities and Local Government. 2008. "Managing the impacts of migration: A cross-government approach". London: CLG.

———. 2009. "Projections of migration inflows under alternative scenarios for the UK and world economies." Economics Paper 3. London: CLG.

Gordon, Ian, Kathleen Scanlon, Tony Travers, and Christine Whitehead. 2009. Economic impact on London and the UK of an earned regularisation of irregular migrants in the UK. London: Greater London Authority (GLA).

Home Office. Various years. Asylum Statistics. London: Home Office.

———. Various years. Control of Immigration Statistics. London: Home Office.

———. Various years. Persons Granted British Citizenship United Kingdom. London: Home Office.

Home Office, Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs, and Communities and Local Government. Various years. Accession Monitoring Reports. London: HMSO. Available online.

House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. 2003. Fourth Report of Session 2002-03, Asylum Removals (HC 654-I).

IpsosMORI. 2008. Long Term Trends: The Most Important Issues Facing Britain Today.

Kyambi, Sarah. 2005. Beyond Black and White: mapping new immigrant communities. London: ippr.

National Audit Office. 2004. "Improving the speed and quality of asylum decisions." HC535, session 2003-4.

Office of National Statistics. Various years. "International Passenger Survey." London: ONS.

———.2008. "Labour Market Statistics: July 2008." Available online.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Various years. Trends in International Migration. Paris: OECD Publications.

Papademetriou, Demetrios G. and Will Somerville. 2008. Regularisation in the United Kingdom. London: CentreForum.

Platt, Lucinda. 2009. Ethnicity and family. Relationships within and between ethnic groups: An analysis using the Labour ******* Survey. London & Manchester: Equality and Human Rights Commission. Available online.

Pollard, Naomi, Maria Latorre, and Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah. 2008. Floodgates or turnstiles: Post-EU enlargement migration flows to (and from) the UK. London: ippr. Available online.

Prime Minister's Strategy Unit. 2003. Ethnic Minorities and the Labour Market. London: Prime Minister's Strategy Unit.

Rees, Phil. 2006. What is happening to the UK population in a global mobility system. Paper presented to the ESRC/ONS Policy Seminar Series, London, July 21, 2006. Available online.

Rees, Phil and Faisal Butt. 2004. Ethnic change and diversity in England, 1981-2001. Area 36, no. 2: 174-186.

Salt, John. 2008. International Migration and the United Kingdom. Report of the United Kingdom SOPEMI Correspondent to the OECD, 2008. Paris: OECD. Available online.

Somerville, Will. 2007. Immigration under New Labour. Bristol: Policy Press.

Somerville, Will and Madeleine Sumption. 2009. Immigration in the UK: the recession and beyond. London: Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Sriskandarajah, Dhananjayan and Catherine Drew. 2006. Brits Abroad: Mapping the scale and nature of British emigration. London: ippr. Available online.

Woodbridge, Jo. 2005. Sizing the unauthorised (illegal) migrant population in the United Kingdom in 2001. Home Office online report 29/05. London: Home Office. Available online.


IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS ABOUT THIS ARTICLE, CONTACT US AT Source@MigrationPolicy.org






4.2K1

we have too many immigrants here in the UK.
they're ruining our country stealing, robbing, killing, etc...
our government should do something...maybe get out of the EU would be the first step

Freffy. The statistics really do not back your statement up.concrning crime.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/crime-statistics

Immigration could ******* Britain’s EU exit, warns Hammond
Published time: 27 Nov, 2015 17:20
Get short URL

© Yannis Behrakis / Reuters
4.2K1
Immigration to the UK could ******* Britain to leave the European Union, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has warned, as the number of individuals entering the UK throughout the year hit a record 636,000.
Figures from the Office of National Statistics released on Thursday showed that nearly 920 individuals arrive in the UK each day – a level which Hammond called “unsustainable.”

However, foreign nationals arriving in the UK in the past year accounted for three-quarters of the increase in employment levels, with young, skilled migrants contributing to tax revenue, as almost 300,000 individuals arrived to work.

Hammond said the influx of migrants into the country is putting undue pressure on schools and hospitals and will be likely to foster anti-EU spirit among the British public.

Read more
Fortress Britain? EU open borders policy under threat after Paris terror attacks
In a speech made in Rome on Thursday, Hammond warned that Prime Minister David Cameron had to secure a “tangible outcome” on migration as part of a renegotiation deal with the EU.

Cameron has said he will hold a nation-wide referendum before the end of 2017 after renegotiating Britain’s relationship with the bloc. He has previously said it is “crucial” that immigration laws are reformed.

In the speech, Hammond said many Brits are in favor of a Brexit because Europe is being overwhelmed by “what appears to many people to be an uncontrollable wave of immigration.”

“Since the migration crisis began earlier this summer, the poll numbers have changed and the most recent poll showed that by a small margin a majority are now in favor of leaving the EU. This reflects the effect of the migration crisis and fear of the future and fear that Europe is losing control of the situation,” he added.

But the issue of immigration has divided the Conservative Party, with one anonymous MP saying he is in favour of the free movement of people and labor.

“I support the free market, and freedom of movement is part of that. We should, as a party, be relaxed about mass migration – it’s a fact of modern life,” they said.

Immigration minister James Brokenshire said immigrants are responsible for ousting Brits from jobs in the UK.

“Too many British employers are still overly reliant on foreign workers,” he said.

“In the past it has been too easy for some businesses to bring in workers from overseas rather than to take the decision to train our workforce here at home.”

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/united-kingdom-reluctant-country-immigration/

 

[Daphne&D]

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2...look-like-after-the-british-exit-from-the-eu/

The trouble with devising a post-EU immigration policy
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What impact would Britain leaving the EU have on UK immigration policy? Jonathan Portes writes that exiting the EU would not be a magic solution to immigration problems. For a start, the UK would have to accept an exit from the single market and make alternative plans. He argues that difficult policy questions would still remain, as recent data debunk the myth that unskilled migrants flock to the UK from other EU member states. Furthermore, hosting fewer migrants from the EU might ‘make room’ for migrants and refugees from non-EU countries.

August 20015 immigration statistics showed net migration to the UK rising to 330,000 last year, a record – and far in excess of the government’s “aspiration” (downgraded from a “target”) to reduce migration to the tens of thousands.

Net migration from within the EU, at 183,000, has been largely responsible for the recent rise. Substantial net migration from within the EU to the UK is is a recent development. Free movement was one of the founding principles of the EU, but only in the last decade – when central and eastern European countries joined the Union in 2004 – has it become of major economic and social significance.

While non-EU migrants still outnumber those of EU origin within the resident population, an increasing proportion of new arrivals (especially those coming to work rather than study) is from elsewhere in Europe.

Not surprisingly, then, politicians who favour “Brexit” say that only leaving the EU would enable the UK to restore “control over our borders” and reduce migration. Ukip, for example, say that after leaving the EU they would introduce an “Australian-style points system” – an “ethical visa system for work and study, based on the principle of equal application to all people”.

The question of what EU exit could or should mean for immigration to the UK will be central to the referendum campaign.

The first point to note is that leaving the EU does not necessarily mean ending free movement, and hence large-scale, “uncontrolled” migration from elsewhere in the EU.

If we wanted to preserve access to the EU single market – as many of those who favour exit say they want – then the most obvious way to do so would be for us to join Norway (and Iceland and Liechtenstein) as members of the European Economic Area. But free movement actually applies to EEA members on pretty much the same basis.

Alternatively, we could emulate Switzerland, and negotiate bilateral agreements for market access. But not only do the Swiss have far more EU migrants than us, when they recently voted in a referendum to impose quotas, the EU told them bluntly that that wasn’t acceptable. Faced with the prospect of being (effectively) kicked out of the single market, the Swiss are thinking again.

So to genuinely go it alone on immigration policy might well require not just Brexit but an acceptance that we would be excluding ourselves from the single market. And even then we would almost certainly have to negotiate some bilateral arrangements with EU countries – if only to safeguard the position of the large numbers of EU nationals already here (we’re hardly going to deport them) and UK citizens in other European countries (repatriating large numbers of pensioners from Spain is equally impracticable).

But, supposing this could be achieved relatively painlessly, what would our new immigration policy look like? Ukip’s talk of an “Australian-style points system” begs more questions than it answers. In fact, as far back as 2008, the then government claimed that this was exactly what it was introducing. As Randall Hansen points out, the countries with fully-fledged points systems (Canada and Australia) introduced them as a way of targeting growth in both overall population and human capital; higher immigration is not necessarily the objective of those who want us to leave the EU.

That said, there is no doubt that, if we were no longer part of the EU free movement area, a sensible immigration policy would look quite different to current policy. There would be no rationale for, as we do now, offering completely free access to the UK labour market for workers, skilled or otherwise, from Bulgaria or Belgium, while imposing tight restrictions on even highly skilled workers with a job offer or scarce skills from India or Indonesia.

A new policy: answering difficult questions

First, would the new system be more generous to non-EU migrants than the current one? That is indeed what some opponents of free movement imply – for example Migration Watch here, saying fewer Europeans would “make room” for Syrian refugees, or Ukip here, making rules “fairer for the Commonwealth”. But this seems disingenuous at best.

Hitting the “tens of thousands” target would require both a very substantial reduction in EU migration and a further reduction in non-EU migration.

So either the new system will have to be just as restrictive towards Syrian refugees or Commonwealth doctors as the current one, or net migration will still remain at historically very high levels – not as high as at present, but still well above the government’s target. And now there would no longer be a convenient excuse for not hitting it.

Second, would we really ban unskilled migration for economic reasons entirely? At least in theory, it is possible to make a plausible economic rationale for doing so; while this would cut growth in the short term, it might over time incentivise firms into productivity-enhancing investment or training.

But these effects are lengthy and uncertain (and not obvious in previous periods of low migration). Meanwhile, business would suffer and would be vocal in saying so. And the incentives for irregular migration would increase significantly (remember that the vast majority of irregular migrants come to the UK perfectly legally and stay on – it is not primarily a question of border control).

Third, would a new system actually be an improvement on the current one, in terms of economic outcomes? Although our system is far from perfect or optimal in an economic sense, all the evidence suggests it has delivered surprisingly positive outcomes over the last two decades.

There is little or no evidence of negative impacts on jobs or average wages, and only small wage impacts even for low-skilled workers; productivity impacts are likely to have been positive; and, perhaps most surprisingly, despite the fact that most immigrants are not selected by skill, the UK does remarkably well in attracting skilled migrants. As this chart shows, immigrants to the UK are considerably more likely to be highly educated than either natives or migrants to other countries.

Chart: Proportion of natives and migrants with tertiary education

Source: OECD
So leaving the EU might – or might not – increase our degrees of freedom in immigration policy. But it would be no magic bullet – difficult policy questions would still remain.

Note: Featured image credit: Ωριγένης / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). This article was originally posted on the UK in a Changing Europe website.

About the Author

Jonathan Portes is director of the National Institute of Economic & Social Research and senior fellow at The UK in a Changing Europe.

 

[falcondfw69]

Interesting post Daphne. It seems like countries all over the world are dealing with various immigration/migration issues.

 

[Daphne&D]

Interesting post Daphne. It seems like countries all over the world are dealing with various immigration/migration issues.

Very true.

In the past twenty years one of the top three issues when surveyed in Europe and the Amercia's was immigration and the lack of government action.

 

[falcondfw69]

Very true.

In the past twenty years one of the top three issues when surveyed in Europe and the Amercia's was immigration and the lack of government action.

I know immigration is a very serious issue in this country. Especially the southern border with Mexico is a sieve and people just pour across it. I live in Texas, which shares the border with Mexico and there are miles and miles of unmanned border where people (like ISIS or Al-Qaeda) can cross into the USA illegally. Washington refuses to do anything about it and Obama has even encouraged the illegal immigration with some of his Executive Orders.

We need to secure our borders, round up the illegals and send them back - where they can go through the legal process to come here, and change our immigration laws to make it easier for people who should be here and make higher punishments and more difficulties for illegals.

 

[Daphne&D]

America’s borders, porous from the start
Our immigration debate ignores a key fact: the nation’s perimeter has never been secure.

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

A marker embedded in the pavement marks the imaginary line between the United States and Mexico at the San Ysidro border crossing between San Diego, Calif., and Tijuana, Mexico.

By Peter Andreas Globe Correspondent March 03, 2013
As the immigration reform debate in Washington heats up once again, a constant refrain is the necessity of “securing the border.” Many policy makers insist that we cannot deal with immigration until we come to grips with our porous borders, especially the 2,000-mile-long line dividing the United States and Mexico, which has for decades been the most important gateway for unauthorized entry. Implicitly, that porousness is treated as abnormal and unusual—and fixable. It’s easy to assume our borders were once a genuine barrier, and could be again.

History suggests otherwise. For better and for worse, America’s borders have always been highly porous, and to imagine a secure line around the country is to be falsely nostalgic for a past that never existed. The unauthorized movement of people is an American tradition, one that goes all the way back to the country’s founding and which originally fueled its settlement. Millions of people—not just of Latin American origin but also those whose ancestry is European, Slavic, Jewish, and Chinese—have forebears who broke some law in the process of settling in this country and becoming Americans.

Porous borders made the United States. To look at the country today is to see a nation that grew up and developed because of—not despite—leaky borders. And that suggests that the question today is not how to “seal our borders”—a fantasy that is neither viable nor desirable—but rather how to better manage them and cope with the inevitable consequences of unauthorized entry and settlement.

***

I n the colonial era, border control in North America had a largely different focus: Authorities worried about the cross-border movement of goods more than people. Strict imperial trade laws meant that economic relations with the Colonies’ southern neighbors were to a significant extent founded on various sorts of smuggling. For instance, the rum distilleries in Colonial New England (which produced the region’s most important export) were kept in business by the large-scale smuggling of molasses from the French West Indies in violation of British trade rules.

Essdras M Suarez/ Boston Globe

A border sign off Caswell Street in Derby Line, VT.

The first effort to impose border controls on the flow of people was actually aimed at the American Colonists themselves, as they relentlessly tried to push westward—and the restrictions came straight down from the top. With the British Proclamation of 1763, King George III imposed a frontier line separating the Colonies (which Colonists were allowed to move among freely) from the Indian territories west of the Appalachian Mountains. The king prohibited Colonists from moving across the line to settle, and deployed thousands of troops to try to enforce the law. The British feared loss of control over their subjects and also wished to avoid conflicts between Colonists and Indians.

In response, the Colonists simply ignored the proclamation, and thousands moved into what became Kentucky and Tennessee, seeking land and a better life. To them, the frontier controls were just another attempt by the British crown to tell Americans what they could or couldn’t do. Tensions between the Colonists and British authorities over freedom of movement intensified all the way up to the outbreak of the American Revolution.

After Independence, that tension persisted over a different kind of unauthorized migration: Thousands of ambitious British artisans smuggled themselves out of Britain in violation of their country’s strict exit controls. They were eagerly welcomed in the United States, and helped jump-start the American industrial revolution.

AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills

People at a beach next to the border fence separating Mexico from the US in Tijuana, Mexico.

The young country’s freedom from Britain opened up enormous new opportunities for illegal westward movement. In the 1780s, Congress passed ordinances enabling the national government to survey and sell off territory beyond the original states; the idea was to raise revenue, deter squatters, and promote orderly westward migration and settlement. But a flood of unlawful settlers undermined these plans. The laws became increasingly harsh as the problem persisted and grew. The Intrusion Act of 1807 criminalized illegal settlement and authorized fines and imprisonment for lawbreakers. But these measures were largely ineffective. In fact, some of the trespassers were ultimately rewarded for their pains: The territory that is now Vermont and Maine was settled by illegal squatters who refused to buy the land from the legally recognized owners and violently resisted government eviction efforts. Eventually, those territories won statehood.

That pattern repeated itself for decades: illegal settlement, intense (and sometimes violent) resistance to central government authority, and finally official resignation to the reality that illegal movement had created. The westward migration included European immigrants who entered the country legally but then settled illegally (in some ways not so different from the “visa overstayers”

AP Photo/Toby Talbot

Miguel Begin, the chief of operations for the Canada Border Services Agency's Stanstead sector, stood at the Canadian port of entry in Stanstead, Quebec.

who today represent as much as half of the country’s unauthorized immigrant population). Failing to deter and remove illegal settlers, Congress passed “preemption” acts, first in 1830 and again in 1841. These were essentially pardons for illegal settlement, providing legitimate land deeds at discounted prices. The law, in other words, adjusted to the facts on the ground.

Not until the 1880s did the federal government get into the business of controlling immigration in a serious and sustained way—triggered by worries about too many Chinese arrivals. Until then, immigration was largely left to the states to sort out. Starting in the 1850s, tens of thousands of Chinese laborers had been welcomed to the American West as a source of cheap labor, in particular to help build the railroads—but not given any means to become citizens. When the demand for Chinese labor dried up, an anti-Chinese backlash quickly followed. As political pressure to respond to the “yellow peril” intensified, Congress first passed the Page Act of 1875, followed by the far more sweeping Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred the entry of Chinese laborers (mostly through seaports such as San Francisco).

With this front door largely closed, Chinese immigrants turned to entry though a back door: Canada. Canadian officials knew full well that most of the arrivals from China were just passing through. As one Canadian official bluntly told an American journalist in 1891, “They come here to enter your country, you can’t stop it, and we don’t care.”

Bill Porter/Globe staff

Kevin Haskew, a field engineer with the International Boundary Commission, dug out a boundary marker in the town of Hodgdon, Maine.

Eventually, American pressure on the Canadians to deny entry to Chinese prompted the people-smuggling business to shift south—to Mexico and the Southwest border. The US-Mexico border already had a long history as a gateway for smuggling goods, in both directions; now, it became a gateway for smuggling people as well. Foreshadowing future developments, a January 1904 editorial in the El Paso Herald-Post warned, “If this Chinese immigration to Mexico continues, it will be necessary to run a barb wire fence along our side of the Rio Grande.”

Chinese immigrants were not the only “undesirables” coming in through Mexico. By the last decades of the 19th century, federal law also prohibited the admission of paupers, criminals, prostitutes, “lunatics,” “idiots,” and contract workers. Lebanese people, Greeks, Italians, Slavs from the Balkans, and Jews were especially targeted with these restrictions. When turned away at official ports of entry, they found the illegal Mexican crossing to be a convenient alternative. Worries over these immigrants became so acute that when the US Border Patrol was created, in 1924, its priority target wasn’t Mexicans but
Europeans.

Along with them came a growing influx of unauthorized Mexican workers. But these immigrants were largely tolerated, with employers in the Southwest informally recruiting large numbers of Mexicans to work in agriculture. Formal, legal entry was complicated, but crossing the border illegally was relatively simple and largely ignored. Strict controls against Mexicans crossing the border were widely perceived as neither viable nor desirable. As a substitute for European and Asian workers, Mexicans were considered an ideal labor *******: flexible, compliant, and temporary—a vital source of labor for agriculture and other sectors of the economy.

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Fast forward to today’s immigration debate, one deeply afflicted by historical amnesia. When politicians call for us to “regain control” of the border, they evoke the false notion that the border was ever “under control” in the first place. This amnesia also means we ignore what happened to those who were once America’s most dreaded “undesirables”: Many of those Chinese laborers and Europeans stayed on and reared families whose descendents are unremarkably American today. Meanwhile, the Mexican workers who were once tolerated and encouraged as a source of cheap labor have in recent decades prompted the greatest border enforcement crackdown in the country’s history.

HECTOR MATA/AFP/Getty Images

A sign on a freeway warned drivers of people crossing in Chula Vista, California.

Does our long history of porous borders mean we should simply throw up our hands and give up on the whole idea of border control? Of course not. All nations have the sovereign right to regulate who and what crosses their borders. There are legitimate border security concerns, ranging from the cross-border flow of weapons to the potential entry of terrorists. But our border expectations need to be tempered. Rarely is the border the real source of domestic problems or the most effective place for the solution. This is nowhere more evident than in the case of labor, where the conditions in the source countries, job opportunities in America, and lax workplace regulations are far more important factors.

Our nation’s borders can certainly be more effectively managed and regulated, including long overdue investments in improving and modernizing the infrastructure at our ports of entry. These improvements would not only help to discourage unauthorized crossings but also facilitate the mass volume of legal crossings that are part of the lifeblood of our economy. But by any historical standard, our borders today are far more heavily policed, closely monitored, and difficult to cross than ever. As with the “preemption acts” of the 19th century, our immigration laws need to adjust to the realities on the ground, in which millions of people have illegally settled in the country and are hardly likely to simply pick up and leave. To expect otherwise is to ignore a
centuries-old American tradition.

Peter Andreas is a professor of political science and interim director of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. This essay is adapted from his new book, “Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.”