Demonisation

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“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

These are the words on the Statue of Liberty, the sight that greeted over 12 million immigrants as they approached Ellis Island to start their new lives in America. Those immigrants, often starting off with nothing more than they could carry, went on to make America an economic powerhouse. They came only with hope and the determination to make a better life for themselves and their children.

It wasn’t easy. People struggled but communities were formed. Italians, Irish, Polish, all formed their own towns within towns while they found their feet. Slowly they integrated until their children could barely speak the language of their ‘mother’ country and while people dispersed, the memory of those strong community ties remain. You only have to see Boston on St Patrick's Day to be reminded of this.

How is it that we can have such a powerful example of the benefits of immigration and yet still be scared of it?

How is it that when a Brit moves overseas they’re an ‘ex-pat’ who is allowed to complain about the ‘extortionate’ cost of a packet of Bisto found in the ‘British’ food section of the supermarket and can join ‘ex-pat clubs' without anyone batting an eyelid, but when a Polish person moves to the UK they’re an ‘immigrant’ whose strange foods are ‘trying to take over’ and by seeking out people from their home country they’re ‘failing to integrate’?

I wonder about this.

I wonder, too, about memes like this.

[Before I get going I should point out that this is a fake. And if you think about it for more than a second you’ll realise that of course it is. This is a road sign in the outback, not exactly where an island nation will be putting its border control notices.]

I can see why it’s popular. After all, who can argue with it? Who wants people coming to their country just so they can mooch of the State? We don’t get free hand-outs so why should foreigners? It’s just common sense.

Well, it may be common sense, but it’s wrong. Wrong on so many levels. Wrong on the fact that this is what’s happening and wrong on the fact that even if it was happening it would necessarily be a bad thing.

First: the reality. The reality is that people are not coming over here to scrounge (wherever ‘here’ is. Though the sign is Australian in origin - created by the Aussie version of UKIP, I might add - I know more about the UK so I’ll focus on there). Economic migrants - by which I mean all those Polish people you see working in cafés, hairdressers, and in your office - are here to work. They do a job and they get paid for it. That is not scrounging. That is the opposite. Now you may argue that by their very presence they are hurting British people because they are taking jobs from more deserving locals. And if that were true it would be a valid argument. But it’s not. Unemployment is not negatively affected by economic immigration. So they’re not “coming over here and taking our jobs”, they’re “coming over here and adding to the economy” which, to me, sounds like a very good thing.

“Ahh, but I’m not talking about Irena in Accounting, I’m talking about all those people in Calais, trying to sneak in through the Channel Tunnel. Why didn't they stop in Greece? It’s because they’ve heard about how the government here will give them a big house and a handout.”

Such a common lament and yet with so little understanding.

Europe is currently undergoing a refugee crisis.

Source

The majority of refugees are from Syria. I can’t get into the details of why this is because it’s too complicated and frankly I don’t understand it enough, though this is a good little primer. The point is that there is a very bad war going on in Syria with no real ‘good guy’ for the West to support. People are fleeing. When you have the government blowing things up on one side and ISIS blowing things up and executing people on the other, getting the hell out seems an incredibly sensible idea. And if you think I’m exaggerating, then have a look at these before and after photos, or these, or these. Be honest, if this was your home town would you stay?

So people flee. They flee to other parts of Syria. They flee to neighbouring countries. But those neighbouring countries aren’t exactly stable themselves. Don’t believe me? Let's have a little geography lesson.

From Google Maps

The red outlines Syria. It is bordered by Turkey (not exactly the bastion of freedom right now). Then there’s Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan, none of which are on anyone’s ‘let’s move to. . .’ list. Despite this, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have all taken in over a million refugees each (Turkey has taken over 2.7 million). Greece is the first proper European country that you’d hit if sailing from Syria and, guess what, Greece has taken more than any other European country bar Germany. And where does the UK fit in this? We rank 30^th, with a mere 8,792 applicants as of February this year. That’s a massive 0.01% of our population. (There may be some sarcasm in the previous sentence.)

But if they’re all getting free houses and benefits then even a small population increase could be economically costly, couldn’t it? Well, yes, except the free houses we’re ‘giving’ them are generally the really shitty ones that are “hard to let”. In other words, these are houses that are so bad that, even in our ‘housing crisis’ they can’t find tenants. Oh, and we'll do things like make all the doors the same colour so that everyone knows that you're an asylum seeker so they can hurl abuse at the right house.  

Then there’s those benefits. Figures from last year (the most recent I could find) show that single people get £36.95/week. Single parents with one child get £73.90 and a couple with one child get £110.85, the same as a single parent with two children. That’s not a top-up. That’s it. Less than £37 to live on each week. To buy food, toiletries, new clothes and to travel. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t live on that. I don’t know how anyone could. Yet that’s what we expect these people to do while we process their asylum applications. If they take longer than a year then we’ll let them work. Can you imagine living on 36.95/week for a year? That’s less than £2,000/yr! That’s not £2,000 of discretionary spending, that’s £2,000 to keep yourself dressed, shod, clean and fed, plus get you to any meetings you might need to attend while your application is being processed or (given that you’ve had to flee your country due to it being torn apart by bloody civil war) how about getting to some counselling sessions? Nah, that’s a luxury you can’t afford. After all, who needs mental health when you’ve got a roof over your head and £36.95 in your pocket?

So why are asylum seekers coming here, instead of abiding by the Dublin Regulation and handing over their passport to the first border guard they see? Well, lots of reasons. We speak English, for one. It’s a global language and that means that lots of people speak it as a second language. If you already speak Arabic and English do you really want to have to learn French or Hungarian when there’s a country where you can already communicate? Then there’s the fact that the UK is already pretty multicultural, which means that a lot of people already have family here. When you’ve fled your home in terror, moving somewhere where you know people is one way for things to be a little less daunting. Then there’s the fact that the UK is a pretty decent place to live. We’re known for our education and fairness (admittedly something the government is doing its best to consign to history) which means that people think the UK offers them the best chance of starting over. And yes, there is, for some, the knowledge that they will get housed and fed while their application is processed, though it’s not so much that we’re a soft touch but more than we’re maybe not quite as bad as some of the other EU countries.

So neither economic migrants nor refugees are coming here to rip us off. They aren’t coming for a free handout. But even if they were, so what? I know there’s this belief that as soon as people are given the chance they’ll live on government handouts and never do an honest day’s work again but the truth is the number of people who actually do that is really small. And it’s not just because the opportunities aren’t there. People like to work. They may not like their specific job but people like to have something to do. Working not only brings income but self-worth and socialisation. It may be fun to take time off and just lounge around all day but anyone who’s been unemployed for a decent length of time knows that after a certain point that gets really, really boring. Really boring. You get to a point where getting a job isn’t just about getting money (though that’s a big part of it) but getting a job gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. To brush your hair and teeth. To get dressed. It's not a coincidence that unemployment and depression are correlated.

The people coming here aren’t looking for a free handout but even if they got one, the chances of them abusing it are slim. More likely what will happen is what has happened for time immemorial. People will come and try and make a go of things. If they got a handout all it would mean is that they could maybe take a bit more time - get themselves a bit more settled - before they started looking for work. It might give them the confidence to try and set up their own business. It might give them time to find somewhere else to live rather than move into that flat above their cousin’s shop. It might give them time to get some English lessons so they communicate a bit better. One of the big complaints against immigration is that there’s a lack of integration but if you don’t give people any support then they’ll go where they can find it, which is to communities made up of people in similar situations to themselves, who share a culture and a language. 

Immigration has been a net positive for this country. It’s a cliché, but we are a nation of immigrants. From the Romans, Angles, Saxons and Normans through to the Commonwealth Immigrants of the mid-20^th century and beyond, we are a nation whose borders have always been open (intentionally or not). That immigration has brought chaos and catastrophe but also innovation and entrepreneurship. It has brought new ideas and new food (thank goodness!). After more than 2,000 years of immigration, well, you’d have thought we’d learned not to be so scared.