Comment by pjc50
10 years ago
Indeed. See also the ongoing sagas of people being deported from Scotland (Brain family, Zielsdorf family). The policy is brutal because people demand that "something must be done" about "immigrants". The system is made ever tighter, but it does nothing to dampen the complaints, because the people who the rightwing public actually want deported are either EU residents or second-generation nonwhite Muslim "immigrants". Neither of which are going anywhere soon.
I agree, but I have to say this: "second-generation" cannot be "immigrants", I hate this pseudo-definition with all its jus sanguinis connotations. Second-generation means you were born and bred in whichever country your parents happened to live in. You are from that country, period. You may or may not have a passport (because jus sanguinis is a terrible, terrible weed growing on law systems the world over), but you are not an immigrant.
I am an immigrant; my children, who were born in UK, are not. They might be second-generation this or that (lasagne lovers from Cheshire? Northern-England pizza connoisseurs?) but they cannot be immigrants because they. did. not. immigrate. anywhere. Logic and reason are very clear on the matter.
I think you just wanted to say "second generation nonwhite Muslims", which is correct as well as much clearer on the matter and nature of the hatred.
Sorry, that was part of the point I was trying to make but while using the language of the anti-immigrant campaigners. I've stuck it in scare quotes now. As you say, someone who was born in the country cannot sensibly be called an immigrant.
Like some anti-immigrant campaigner who is himself a "second-generation immigrant"?
I vote close to extreme right in EU. The only people I want deported are illegal immigrants. I also want talent/work-based immigration and fewer visas for familial regroupement (as in, get one member in EU, get all your relatives in EU).
I have been a migrant in Australia. I know what that is. I expect my country to require the same respect from people we welcome.
Mainstream parties do absolutely nothing in this direction.
I do not mind about nationals who have been French for more than one generation, who belong here, provided they don't burn the French flag like they do so often. Burning the flag is only the emerged part of the iceberg for the little respect some have for their host country - They feel like they belong to the Arabic cause more than they belong to country who provides the free schools they've been to). Burning the French flag should be cause for prison or visa cancellation, but y'know, "we need diversity"...
Even our French Minister of Justice refuses to sing the Marseillaise. I'm really fed up with the floppiness of mainstream parties.
The hilarity, as pointed out by Lord Hesseltine on Any Questions this week, is that around half the immigrants to the UK come from outside the EU (it's a 50/50 split with 180k each). The EU has no control over them, and even if we totally blocked EU migration the government would still be 600% over its target.