On the radio this morning David Cameron was interviewed about the Tory party’s immigration policy. Among the points made by the interviewer (I forget who) was that limiting immigration as Cameron described was racist. We’re required as a member of the EU to accept any EU citizen (just as British citizens can work anywhere in the EU), and Europeans are predominantly white. Any limitations, therefore, must come from non-EU countries that are predominantly non-white. And that, the argument went, is racist.
It’s a fair point, I guess, but the interviewer seemed to ignore the fact that any immigration policy can be seen to be racist. You are apportioning a scarce resource to people not of your nationality, and to the degree that nationality is a proxy for race, that is arguably racist. But this completely ignores the importance of intent; if a country is trying to control immigration because it doesn’t want any of those horrible {insert group here} coming in then it’s racist however it’s done. In contrast, if you decide that your country is functionally full (public services are overwhelmed, for example) then a policy might be racist (“we’re pretty full, so no more {group}”) but it isn’t automatically so.
For example, I might choose to allow in only the 10,000 most intelligent applicants each year. That might appear racist – intelligence as commonly defined is a function of education, which is more widely available to some than others based in part on nationality – but if the intent is simply to welcome the most ‘profitable’ people it isn’t racist. In fact it’s arguably the opposite, as such a policy arguably lowers the overall status of existing citizens.
What’s the link with the ‘complaining’ of the title? The British are excellent at complaining, almost to the level of a national sport. A reporter making the mistake of skimming the surface appearance of an issue, such as the guy this morning, switches from being a probing investigator to a whiner with a radio show.
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I was going to suggest that Britain keeps people out who complain, but then realized that there would be nobody left except for Australians and Americans.
On the Now Show they once had Tony Blair declaring war on Australia because their culture of happiness, health, being outdoors, being good at sport, having a good time and generally making the best of things was clearly a threat to the British Way Of Life
If you had a quota of only the “smartest” people then your country would become almost all Asian in only 3-4 generations (which is what is happening in New Zealand now). It’s not a racist statement I just made, it’s a statistical one. The upper 10% academic performers in University in China outnumber the entire University population of England by a factor of five. Nations that breed will beat nations that don’t, because as a civilization we value growth over all other things.
Col – you highlight why we can’t reflexively label things as racist. A policy based on intelligence (which I don’t advocate, btw) does have a racial element, just as one based on poverty, or family ties, or pretty much anything else we can think of. And to quote one of my favourite phrases, if something is everything then it’s nothing.