A Thought on Immigration

Just a thought inspired from a snippet I read this morning. It's "interesting" how people get worried about immigration and "all those people coming into our country to take jobs away from us."

My husband is a UK citizen with a British accent living in the US. For 21 years, I was a US citizen with an American accent living in the UK.

Maybe people were too polite to say so, but no one ever complained to me that I was taking a job away from a native-born British citizen. Quite the opposite. A number of times, people complained to me at length about immigrants and then when I'd point out that I was an immigrant they said "Oh, but I don't mean you!"

In the same way, no one has yet challenged my husband about his immigration status to the US. OK, it's relatively early days, but I bet they don't mean him - that nice white man with a British accent - when they are worried about all those people coming over here and taking our jobs.

However, the ironic thing is that we were and are the people who are coming over here and taking away jobs from the native born. We are not doing the hard-grafting work that most immigrants do because native born sons and daughters don't want to do such hard work.

I'm pretty sure that it helps being white.

Fear of the Other

I'm linking to two posts at other blogs on the general subject of 'fear of the other'.

There is something that is very easy and very wrong about scapegoatting those who are different from us. Richard's post about the deported Ghanaian woman who is terminally ill is making me sick to my stomach at the moment. Writing to our MPs seems an excellent suggestion.

Richard Hall's post on: Deporting the Dying

Doorman-Priest's post on: A Little Matter of Islamophobia

Immigration and Presuppositions

It’s interesting how our presuppositions can affect the conclusions that we come to.

According to a group called “Migrationwatch UK”, the average immigrant benefits the UK economy by 4p a week or £2.10 a year. I’m not going to dignify this group by giving them a link but you can read the BBC’s coverage here.

Now, it seems that those of us already here are supposed to throw our arms up in horror and exclaim “Only £2.10 a year benefit to the economy per immigrant! That’s not enough! Keep ‘em out!”

The default presumption seems to be that we will all want to keep immigrants out of the country unless there is some sort of huge economic benefit to us. Why?

I come to this issue thinking like a Christian minister (a Jewish rabbi would think the same way). I come with the thought that “hospitality” is our obligation as followers of God. I come to the issue with the thought that I’m obliged to help someone in need even if it costs me money.

So “Migrationwatch UK’s” statistics sound like good news to me. These statistics mean that each immigrant is paying his or her own way. Not only that, but each immigrant is actually adding something to the economy! Someone tell me why this is supposed to be bad news?