WHILE SOME OF the extremely wealthy Gulf states are proving less than brotherly to refugees from Syria’s civil war, David Cameron has just announced that Britain will accept another 20,000 over the next five years.
Quite how the country is to cope with this influx when its public services are already over-stretched and there is a housing shortage, nobody cares to answer. Not least those Labour politicians who just a few months ago were complaining about the situation but are now in a virtuous bidding war amongst themselves about how many immigrants they think we should take.
Cameron’s record on legal immigration is in tatters anyway, with figures for this last year reaching a third of a million. Acceding to the moral blackmail of the EU (ie Angela Merkel) in taking so many extra immigrants just adds to the failure and humiliation. At least he’s tried to minimise the blow by taking refugees only from camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, rather than from the crowds of illegals pushing their way through Europe.
“Illegal” is a word that has completely disappeared from public discourse in this matter. We’ve seen the word “immigrant” vanish as well, presumably because it only summon bad emotions in the electorate, who can remember the lies told them to them by politicians. It was smoothly reduced to “migrant”, which is more neutral and inoffensive — because less precise.
Such linguistic legerdemain has not been enough for the bien pensants, of course, who have criticised the media for using “migrant’ when, they say, “refugee” would be better. How handy for the BBC and others to have so many useful idiots helping them!
All through the crisis the BBC has acted as a cheerleader for the cause of the “migrants”, wasting no time in painting them as desperate fugitives from the horrors of war. The plight of women and children has always been at the forefront of their coverage, most egregiously of all that of the poor child washed up on the Turkish beach. This child’s corpse has been used as the icon for the pro-immigration movement. He has became a symbol of people risking their lives to get to the freedom and safety of Europe.
What the BBC has failed to do is point out that the child’s family had been living in the safety of Turkey for three years, that the father (who miraculously survived the drowning that took away his wife and children) had a part-time job, and that they were attempting to enter Europe illegally.
The majority of Britons seem to have been unpersuaded by the relentless propaganda of the mainstream news outlets…
THE MAJORITY OF Britons, however, seem to have been unpersuaded by the relentless propaganda of the mainstream news outlets, and have noticed that the overwhelming number of immigrants are able-bodied young men – who have left their families behind. They are beginning to wonder why these fit young men aren’t back in Syria fighting for their freedom there, rather than fighting police, fighting amongst themselves, blocking roads, and generally being obnoxious and ungrateful here in Europe.
Meanwhile the EU has proved what a useless shambles it really is, prepared at the first sign of difficulty to abandon its own rules and give the green light to immigrants demanding unobstructed passage to Germany without going through the necessary screening procedures. That’s not just a green light to them but also to the thousands of others wanting to do the same – and the people smugglers (Islamic State among them). When a member state, such as Hungary, has tried to hold immigrants back and process them properly they’ve been met with recrimination.
Neither the media nor the politicians (with a few exceptions) have given a moment’s thought to the consequences of this influx: nothing about the strain on housing, schools, public services, health care, etc, and absolutely nothing on the cultural consequences. Television correspondents are eager to talk to immigrants but not to local people affected by what’s happening to their countries. I think they probably know they wouldn’t get the kind of positive reaction they’d like.
Germany has basically declared itself open house despite the fact that it has a housing shortage. Like Sweden it is prepared to evict its own citizens to accommodate incomers. Whether the German people will prove as supine on this matter as the Swedes remains to be seen. Most of the immigrants are Muslim, and Europe already has real problems with its current Muslim populations. We can only expect the tensions to increase.
To soften the immediate financial blow in Britain, the government has said it will divert some of its foreign aid budget to help immigrants settle here. Fixing a legal requirement to devote 0.7% of the nation’s Gross National Income has not been popular, so this actually adds insult to injury. Britain has thus become a recipient of its own foreign aid. It’s like being in a Marx Brothers movie.
