IMMIGRATION AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
#wewantourcountryback
Tonight, I witnessed a rather trashy piece of BBC programming about the far right group Britain First, who have 933k followers on Facebook. They have 933k followers because they circulated a lot of soft and cuddly pictures of babies and kittens in their early days, and because many people in Britain are concerned about multiculturalism. The tweets on this topic have been fascinating.
Thankfully, Britain is quite far past its empire building phase, and has handed most of its acquisitions back to their rightful owners, also successfully negotiating favourable relationships with many, on both sides. The military relationship with the USA in its empire building phase, is, in my view a mistake which has eroded the UK’s reputation abroad enormously. The public are footing the bill for enormous defence spending, for a cause which benefits a far richer country. You cannot really be British and anti-war, since defence income and expenditure overall constitutes a rather large proportion of our GDP. War has become an economic exchange X number of lives for Y percentage increase in income due to international deals we are never informed about as members of the public, funding a limited number of defence producers and associated business.
Although Britain seems to have a strong sense of culture, the reality is very different. Scotland is a vastly different country from England, for example, and Wales and Northern Ireland also have very different views on everything from immigration, militarism, our relationships with Europe and the USA. It is for this reason that Britain First, really ought to be called England First, since the idea of our being a Christian country with basic common values appears rather alien in Scotland. Scottish people are very factional, we love arguing, and the idea of us all having the same values is somewhat laughable since our internal history involves us feeding each other excellent dinners and then brawling over some imaginary slight. We fight a lot, and then laugh a lot, making us excellent candidates for cannon fodder for the English masters in a military situation.
Having said this, people that I know, living only ten minutes down the road from me, are also concerned about multiculturalism. The local area that they live in has always been home to immigrants, but the proportion of immigrants has risen to more than 40%, with the local social housing being allocated at a rate of 27%. Scottish culture is so strong, and so fractious, that it is probably a good thing that our local council was so keen to attract the funding that goes with these immigrants, since they are treated far better here and it is a lot easier to integrate. Having said this, the influx of new inhabitants has put rather a lengthy strain on an area which also has a higher proportion of alcohol and drug hostels than the rest of the city. This melting pot has resulted in an area which is now dangerous at night, and on my last visit, walking down a main road in broad daylight resulted in a spot of mild sexual assault.
From a sociological perspective, racism is caused by concentrating immigrants in such areas. New residents often have little money, are not property owners and are placed in often poorly kept rented property. This leads the people in the lower income brackets to perceive them as competition for limited resources, who do not keep their properties well and generally drag down an area. This is not a new thing, and from the data I have looked at, is fairly common to any newly formed community of competing interests.
Britain First would like this to become a nationwide view. It would be a lot smarter of them if they examined what is happening across Europe, rather than relying on an antiquated idea that ‘we don’t want your sort here.’ As someone who specialised in ethnic minorities in my former employment, I can tell you that immigrants are, in fact a form of respectable poor, brought in to sustain benefits and mask the ineffectiveness of the minimum wage by being forced into employment situations that the native long term unemployed would be shocked by. And yet they manage, because all those scruffy shops that the locals complain about make sure these people can still eat. One group that I interviewed, were working for less than most people spend on football shirts and Sky TV, still managing to send money home, and sleeping four to a room. Employed by their landlord/uncle, they were also socially isolated by the hours they worked, meaning that it was news to them that this was not how most people live in Scotland. It is by no means an easy decision to make, to leave your country and head for another to start again.
The real problem is that the systems put in place, and explanations given to people as to why these people are coming, are somewhat lacking and open to exploitation by local government, quangos and ‘charities’ alike, creating even more resentment from the struggling locals. The streets are not paved with gold, instead the streets hide the underground economy, which does not pay well but maintains everyone else’s pensions whilst breeding the next generation of natives.
So much for the micro view, the macro view seems to be that we are rapidly headed for a one world government, dictated to by large companies, requiring a cheap labour force. This means that the entire structure of political economy itself is under reconstruction. TISA TPP and TTIP are the first steps towards this, which is why we should be concerned.
Join the dots – cultural dilution through mass immigration weakens the sense of community, making it much easier to make massive changes to the global economy without much resistance. Mass immigration is likely to cause the public to swing to the right, making it easier for business to influence government. Giving large business interests carte blanche to legally force us to do their bidding, however much they try to mask it as regulation to somehow benefit us, is a really really bad idea, which we enable when we decide that we really do not like immigration and vote to the right.
As I have been saying, spending your money with big businesses is also a bad idea, because you are paying for your own destruction, not only in terms of opportunities for self employment, as the barriers to entry will swiftly follow the ‘super-regulation’ they are introducing; Health will be dictated by pharmaceutical companies, the food you eat dictated by large manufacturers and chemical/GMO company interests, so unless you take up a fresh diet of premium quality food, the products on offer will be available from the same six or so companies you probably buy 80% of your shopping from right now.
The idea of us embracing diversity becomes rather laughable when you consider the lack of diversity our collective futures hold in the hands of the interests of a very few, very rich people. It all comes down to the same thing – You created the one percent, and very soon you will not be able to destroy it, unless you decide to take action by protesting your nation’s trade deals and redirecting your money away from the real villans; defence manufacturers, chemical, pharmaceutical, big brand manufacturers of food, retailers who support the exploitation of people who would really rather live in their own country, thanks all the same.
Forget immigration as being the problem – division is the problem. The one percent are rubbing their bellies, smoking their cigars and imagining that you cannot see the wood for the trees. Getting sucked into a culture of mutual blame and division about immigration will definitely not save you. Waking up and doing something about the political economy that you vote for, the money you spend and your attitude to the person standing next to you might.