To:    Guardian CiF
Re:    An amnesty for illegal immigrants? Definitely not! (except for the one I've befriended)
Date: Sunday 6 May 07

In response to the Guardian article, "We need an amnesty for illegal migrants" by Polly Toynbee

Link to article and thread at The Guardian.
 

There is a real dilemma when it comes to the question of who should and who should not be granted British citizenship.

At the personal, face-to-face level, it is virtually impossible for any humane person (let alone someone with a heart the size of Polly's) to send anyone back to their own country when they (let alone their children) would be so much better off staying in Britain. Even I would find it difficult, and I'm a bit of a "racist" misanthrope.

At a national level, however, which because of the scale and numbers involved is necessarily impersonal, allowing everyone who wants to stay to do so would be MADNESS, because their numbers are endless. They are now hugely attracted by the immigrant communities already here and won't stop coming until conditions in Britain are no better than the conditions back home.

And an amnesty would be an open invitation to even more illegal immigrants (in hope and expectation of the next amnesty) to come to our natively already overpopulated country.

On the MADNESS of mass immigration: http://www.spaceship-earth.org/Letters/Editor/Index-non-pc.htm

2nd Post

"Look at the history of Europe and you'll see many instances of violent expulsions of foreigners. I'm not sure if there's been a single century in European history where there haven't been pogroms, genocides or democides so don't think it won't happen again.

That, [Waspy], is a very important, but much neglected, point.

One of the huge mistakes that "progressives", like Polly, make is to believe that we Europeans have "progressed" so far that the horrors of our history cannot be repeated - provided they (the "progressives") are in charge of things, I suppose they rationalize.

By dismissing all opposition as "racist", the ideology of transforming Britain (and Western Europe) into a multiracial/multicultural "melting pot" of humanity (which most people, native and immigrant, if they dare to be honest, do not want to see their ethnic and cultural identities dissolve and disappear into) dominates at the moment, not least because it also concurs with powerful economic interests, not just of the immigrants themselves, but of capital and globalization.

But it will not last. Sooner or later the natives (and there are still several 100 million of us between the Atlantic and the Urals) are going to assert their rights as the indigenous populations, and moreover, as the essential creators and natural heirs of Western civilization.

The only question is whether we will do so in a civilized, just and humane fashion, or repeat our brutal and bloody history.

A ruthless Mother Nature, with the job of achieving sustainability in the coming decades, which she is already "warming up" for, because we are still refusing to face up to it ourselves, will choose the latter as another means of culling the population (along with famine and disease), while personally, I'd opt for the former.
 

3rd Post

[smurfs75], I'll overlook your dismissal and condemnation of me and others on this thread as "xenophobes" and "racists" and attempt to engage you in civilized discussion.

"Where is all this civil unrest these people so desperately crave? No evidence of it in my multicultural melting pot of a back yard".

Two of the reasons for there having been no civil unrest so far from the side of the indigenous population, I suggest, are the following:

1) Most of us are tolerant, easy-going people who put up with a great deal in order to avoid giving offence (especially to the immigrants themselves, who one can hardly blame from coming here given the chance, and even more so when you get to know and like some of them).

2) We are all terrified of being branded "racists" - which, as you yourself have demonstrated, is what happens to anyone who objects to mass immigration or the multiracial/multicultural melting pot of a society that results. This is because racism is associated such evil societies as Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa and pre-civil rights America.

The kind of society that is resulting from mass immigration is obviously to your liking, which is fine, but what makes you believe that you have the right (perhaps the moral duty?) to impose it on everyone else, whether they like or not?

A great many of us (natives AND immigrants who have been here a long time and don't want things spoiled by overdoing them) don't like it - prefer society the way it was (hideously monoracial and monocultural) - and want to put a stop to any more immigration. Quite apart from the argument that our country is already, natively and unsustainably overpopulated.

4th Post

[Wirralien]:  "why do people simply because they are born in britain have a right to be relatively wealthier and more secure than fellow human's who feel compelled to come here illegally to escape poverty or insecurity?"

[Function]'s pleasing response: "Why do you lock your door when you go out when there are people sleeping in cardboard boxes and who have a lot less possessions than you?"

I was struggling to find the words. Although it doesn't address the fundamentally important question as to why you and I have got nice houses to live in and possessions, while others are living in boxes on the street, or of how their situation might be improved, and ours made sustainable.

Certainly not by simply allowing them all to share our house and possessions with us. Not having built it themselves, they would lack the self-satisfaction of having done so, and an appreciation of the knowledge, effort and skills (over generations) that went into it; they would thus quickly turn it into a slum, which in the long run would help no one.

[joepublik], I agree with what you say about [notmelphilips]' comments being thuggish and offensive. He provides a good example of how similar the extreme right and extreme left are: diametrically opposed ideologically, but the same brutish thugs at heart.

[notmelphilips], I apologize for that last comment. I'm sure you are not really a brutish thug - but you do express yourself like one.

I'm interested in understanding why people who mean well, as I'm sure [notmelphilips] does, can behave so disrespectfully and aggressively towards others.

I suspect it is because he assumes the likes of [joepublik] and I to be "racists". And it is not just acceptable, but praiseworthy and noble to be disrespectful and aggressive towards "racists". He is treating us in the same way that Jesus treated the money lenders in the temple, giving expression to his (self)-righteous indignation at our evil ("racist") ways (of thinking).

There are Christian, Islamic (and no doubt other) fundamentalists who sincerely believe that anyone who refuses to accept their understanding of God and His holy scriptures is evil. There is something similar going on, I think, psychologically, with fanatical "anti-racists" like [notmelphilips]. If you disagree with them they damn you as an infidel - a non-believer in the sacred doctrines of "progressive" leftwing liberalism (or whatever they see it as), particularly in respect to race, immigration and the "promised land" that is the melting pot of multi-racial/multicultural society.


[Sluijser]: " [(uncontrolled) mass immigration] will dissolve solidarity between people, because people rightly don't like to shoulder unlimited responsibility for unknown numbers of people, . . . will tear this society to pieces . . ."

I agree entirely. Only I think that we have already gone so far down this road (and for other reasons, as well, which have nothing to do with immigration) that social solidarity will continue to dissolve and destroy the human fabric of our society.

The most corrosive solvent (even more so than mass immigration) is MONEY. Who needs solidarity (family, community, "one's own people" etc), when everything you need or want can be bought (directly or indirectly) with money? All we need is a powerful (eternally growing) economy that produces (ever more of) it and government that regulates and administers its distribution, using it to provide the services people require or demand.

Apart from creating a soulless (Maggie Thatcher type) society, it is also utterly unsustainable on our finite and vulnerable planet.

 
5th Post
 
[yakaboo], Hi, we meet again. Your use of the word "racist" is simply wrong. It's like calling someone with leftwing leanings a "Stalinist", someone with rightwing leanings a "fascist" or "neo-Nazi", or someone who refuses to believe that the Bible is the word of God an "irreligious and amoral atheist". Maybe you'd understand me better if we could discuss it over a beer.
 
It seems to me that for your nephew's sake you want us ALL to become mixed-race. I prefer ethnic diversity, and without using force or compulsion to do so, will attempt, in a humane and civilized fashion, to preserve it, along with my own ethnic identity, from the melting pot of multi-racial/multicultural society. And that does NOT make me a "racist" - anymore than Tony Benn or Michael Foot were Stalinists, or than Albert Einstein and the philosopher Spinoza (whom I've just learned about on In Our Time) were "irreligious and amoral atheists".
 
I'm seeking to preserve ethnic and cultural diversity, along with my own ethnic and cultural identity - that's all.
 
[Wirralien], you are right about what I said being a generalization, which will certainly not apply to all immigrants, nor to all groups of immigrants, but I do believe that it has some general validity for some groups of immigrants.
 
6th Post
 
[yakaboo], I thought I'd sufficiently answered your questions by saying that I wish to preserve and cultivate ethnic diversity (and my own ethnic identity), i.e. limit and contain the "melting pot", WITHOUT force or compulsion, but in a humane and civilized fashion.

I cannot tell you exactly how, or whether it will happen at all. Perhaps it won't and our descendents will all dissolve and disappear into the melting pot as you desire and predict they must. I just find that prospect rather depressing.

What's wrong with mixed-race people? Nothing. Nothing at all. I just don't want everyone to be mixed-race - any more than I'd want everyone to be white. I want diversity! Which the "melting pot", if nothing is done to constrain it, will consume and destroy. As I've pointed out on other threads, all human diversity (ethnic, cultural, linguistic) is the result of populations having been essentially isolated from each other in the past. End that isolation, as we have done through mass immigration, and after a brief flash of increased diversity (which we are experiencing at the moment), it will rapidly decrease and eventually disappear into an increasingly homogenous "melting pot".

Just as I am recognizably a descendent of the people living in Europe 500, 1000, even 2000 or 5000 years ago, I would like my descendents in 500, 1000, perhaps even 2000 or 5000 years time to be recognizably descended from me and my native European relatives. A vain wish, perhaps, but a deeply felt one nevertheless. And if it can be achieved in a civilized and humane fashion, why not? I certainly intend to go for it (how, I will try to explain in another post, if not on this, then on another thread). Others, I suspect (and fear), will attempt to achieve it by ANY means at all, with little or no regard for humane or civilized behaviour.

It's hard to believe that [Waspy]'s shocking data, above, can really be true, but I've checked some of the links he provides and they seem authentic enough.

Not only is the data shocking; if true, it is shocking that we hear so little about it in the media or from our politicians, who are still allowing high levels of immigration from Africa and the West Indies. And it is shocking that we cannot even discuss it without being accused of "racism". Which, I suppose, is why the Guardian, assuming it's true, doesn't publish it.

 

7th Post
 
Steady on, [yakaboo]. [Waspy] presents some shocking statistics about your favourite ethnic group and your knee-jerk response is to vilify and insult him, while dismissing their importance out of hand (providing a classic example of the denial of "inconvenient truths", which we are familiar with from other areas). I suggest you read through what you wrote, because it destroys any basis for discussion. Discussing race issues with you, not for the first time, is beginning to remind me of discussing the Bible with a Jehovah's Witness (you are not one, by any chance, are you?). One can have a very pleasant conversation with them, but they don't budge an inch. Not for a moment do they question their own understanding of the Bible or their belief that anyone who doesn't pretty much share it is damned.

[Waspy], thanks for providing all that information, shocking though it is - although that is why it's so important.

It is difficult, though, knowing how to respond to it. Obviously not in a racist fashion, but also without going to the opposite extreme that [yakaboo] takes. Maybe it is important to remember that these figures apply to a statistical group, rather than to individuals.

The difficulty is that individuals tend to identify themselves (and be identified by others) with "their group". Evolution adapted our brains to do this, so I don't think it is a difficulty we are going to eliminate any time soon. We are going to have learn - a lot better than we have so far - to live and deal with it.

This difficulty is central to the whole issue of race, which [yakaboo] would have us solve by denying or suppressing feelings of racial identity until such a time that we are so thoroughly mixed we are all essentially the same. It won't work though, because we need to discriminate between "our group" and others - its hard-wired into our brains. If there are no important differences, we invent them! As the Nazi's did when they distinguished fundamental racial differences between Germans, Slavs and Jews. All I see are Europeans (German, Slav and Jew).

This, of course, is where [yakaboo] and I differ so profoundly. He identifies equally with all human races, whereas I don't. I'm quite capable of identifying with "individuals" of different races, but the only ethnic group I identify with is European - even though, like many important concepts, it cannot be defined precisely. Naturally enough, since I myself am a European, as are all my family and ancestors, and it is pretty central and essential to my personal sense of identity and belonging.

Thus, I no longer identify myself "emotionally" as being "British", multiracial and multicultural as it now is, but as "native European".

British identity I've recognized for what it is: an artificial group identity created and cultivated to support the power structures of our nation state and insisted upon (with force, when necessary) by those who benefit most from them. The trouble is that we ALL depend on these power structures. It's just that some are in a far better position to exploit them than others. Some exploit them by helping others (immigrants, for example) to exploit them, or by defending some "moral high ground" for the "good of society" (Polly is probably a good example). The details are very complicated, but the principles it's all based on are quite simple.

Britain is the name given to a fenced-off section of the artificial "socio-economic environment" which, with the advent of civilization, replaced the natural environment as the venue of our continuing, blind, dumb-animal (Darwinian) struggle for survival and advantage.

Social Darwinism isn't just an unpleasant (and thus largely rejected) theory, but a harsh - though largely unrecognised - reality.

But only by recognizing reality we can face up to the challenge of changing it.

 

8th Post
 
[yakaboo]: ". . . more intelligent posters . . . . instantly see that those figures are to do with poverty rather than race."

That doesn't sound to me like a rational or helpful way of assessing the data: "instantly" to assume that they are the result of poverty rather than race. The data needs to be analyzed and compared with other data, before such a sweeping and important conclusion can be made.

I don't know, but suspect that the figures might well have something to do with race. You cannot rationally rule out the possibility, but you do, because such a conclusion would be ideologically unacceptable - even (i.e. especially) if it were true.

I don't know [Waspy]'s motivation for finding out and post such data, but have seen no evidence for it being racist. I'm thankful to him for making me aware of it. Putting it all down to poverty doesn't seem very credible to me.

Why shouldn't it have anything to do with race? Where is the evidence that all races are the same? Why shouldn't racial differences extend beyond the physical characteristics we are all familiar (or not so familiar) with, or the genetic differences that medical science is discovering? Why shouldn't they also extend to behavioural differences? Why are you so terrified of admitting even the possibility? What would be so terrible about it if it were true?

I think I know the answer to my last question: you are afraid that if racial differences, other than the purely physical and thus undeniable, were admitted to it would open the door to racist discrimination. Right?

Your attitude, I think, has the very opposite effect to the one you desire, because it concedes that racial differences are valid grounds for racist behaviour and discrimination. In contrast, I do not believe there are any valid grounds for racist behaviour or discrimination, irrespective of how different races may or may not be. Just as with individuals, we are certainly not all the same (some are more talented than others), but we are all equal: God's children, if you will.

If there are significant (average) differences in racial behaviour and character (as I suspect there are) it is vitally important that we acknowledge them. Maybe it is our refusal to acknowledge the differences between us that creates many of the dire problems and glaring inequalities suffered by black people in Western society, which is after all almost entirely the creation of Europeans, and thus dominated not just by our science and technology, but also by our European temperaments, culture, history, values, attitudes, philosophy, religion, languages, virtually everything.

You, [yakaboo], rashly assume that all this simply doesn't matter. But perhaps it does. Perhaps it matters a lot. Especially since, unlike most Asian people, many black people do not have an ancient civilization, language and culture of their own to fall back on, as a basis from which to negotiate their relationship with white European society. Perhaps they suffer far more than we (or they) realize from being completely dependent on a civilisation that is essentially, or at least not entirely, their own.

Surely, for everyone's sake, we should at least check these ideas out, rather than dismissing any consideration of them as "racist".

I think your attitude, [yakaboo], though so well intended, does a lot more harm than good.

 

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