Not Racist At All

Jay in England sent this via e-mail:

From the Daily Telegraph (UK):

Notebook
By W F Deedes

(Filed: 28/07/2006)

It is not racist to worry about immigration---

Here is a excerpt:

Our immigration policy is in a mess partly because we have been discouraged for so long from criticising any aspect of it. It is more than 30 years since Ted Heath sacked Enoch Powell from his shadow cabinet for an intemperate speech on immigrants, leaving many to feel that even informed comment, finding fault with our policy, was racist and ammunition for the British National Party.

The principal victims of this silence have been Commonwealth citizens and foreign nationals who entered this country legitimately. They experience overcrowding, language problems in schools and resentment because the uninformed lump them together with those whom we have carelessly been allowing to cheat the system.

We feel free to praise the skills that immigrants bring us, the jobs they are ready to take on that our British society feels beneath it, and the unquestionable contribution of Asians to our prosperity. But to remark on the adverse consequences of unchecked immigration is treated as racist.

It is time we dropped this silliness. The future composition of this country's population is serious policy. It is wrong for this Government, perpetually nervous of losing votes, to nod indulgently at forced marriages and other faults that give immigration a bad name. Criticism is the prerogative of democracy; without it, authoritarianism takes over.

How do we criticise without sounding racist? Migration Watch sets an example. It sets out the facts, then exposes the lack of political will to face up to them. Planting all the blame for our loss of control on Home Office staff is misleading. Ever since we passed immigration control over to Europe, ministers have given the impression that such were the advantages of immigration, the more the merrier. How did they expect their officials to maintain vigilance?

I would be happy to see birching, if not flogging, restored for thugs who torment people from other lands. But leave the rest of us freer than we are at least to try to keep this Government on the rails.

The United States is obviously not the only country struggling with immigration problems. And, it isn't wrong to set controls, limits, and regulations on who can immigrate to one's country and when---and who cannot and when they cannot. Rather, any sensible person will agree that allowing uneducated people to pour in to a country unchecked will only create problems.

We need to stop allowing illegal aliens to run roughshod over us and our laws. We also need to treat those who legally try to come to this country with the same respect they show us by following our laws, rather than sneaking across the border.

Until we do this, we will not control our own destiny. And, if Britain doesn't do the same, she will vanish as the golden Britannia of history. That would be a sad day indeed.

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