From the international establishment, warnings about British immigration

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a Paris-based grouping of wealthy Western nations, has issued a report that in the context of today’s seemingly terminally wimpish West seems positively Powellian: it says that that there is something amiss about Britain’s current immigration policy. But what this something is, isn’t exactly clear. The report, summarized in The Daily Mail, is explicit about the fact that Britain is taking in far more immigrants than any other EU member: a whopping 494,000 during 2004. In addition, since eight Eastern European countries joined the EU in May 2004, Britain has received 500,000 immigrants, most of them Polish, compared to tiny fractions of that number that have gone to other EU members: 12,562 Eastern Europeans to Germany, 20,000 to Holland, and 12,731 to Sweden. The report avers that further immigration into Britain on this scale

will only be possible if past and current immigrants, who are more and more numerous, are seen to be integrating without difficulty in the host country. Immigrant performance on the labour market, however, for both past and recent arrivals in many countries and even for their offspring, is not as favourable as in the past.

In other words, the immigration and the staggering scale of it are not the problem. Rather, (1) the problem is a perceived failure of the immigrants to “integrate” with British society; (2) this failure to integrate is defined solely in terms of whether the immigrants are finding jobs; and (3) the consequence of such failure to find jobs is that the large scale immigration will not continue. Thus the only bad effect of the huge immigration influx that matters for its own sake is that the influx may result in a reduction of the influx.

The report then moves to a Churchillian peroration:

Countries that demonstrate an even-handed management of migration movements that is at once welcoming but firm, and in accordance with national needs, will be in a more favourable position to profit from the benefits of international migration.

“Even-handed management of migration movements … welcoming but firm … in accordance with national needs … a more favourable position … the benefits of international migration …”

What is missing in all the above? What is missing is any notion that Britain is a nation, a concrete historical entity with its own character, identity, and interests. Instead, Britain is assumed to be nothing more than an economy, plus a process for receiving foreigners who will help that economy, a process the smooth functioning of which can only be threatened by the perception that not enough of the immigrants are finding jobs.

But how can such an abstract economic entity care about itself and act to preserve itself? The answer is, it cannot. What I once said about America is even more true about Britain. Britain no longer exists—and it will not exist again unless the British rediscover themselves as a nation and a people.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 03, 2006 06:06 PM | Send