Excessive Immigration

by Winston C Banks

  Arktos

  London 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Arktos Media Ltd.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means (whether electronic or mechanical), including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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  ISBN

  978-1-910524-01-5 (Softcover)

  978-1-910524-04-6 (Ebook)

  Editor

  Martin Locker

  Cover and Layout

  Tor Westman

  A Note on Sources

  The information given in this book is drawn from multiple sources, including scholarly and popular books, scholarly articles, newspaper stories and websites. I have reported data in good faith but I have no way of verifying all the details included. I have used a fairly conventional academic form of referencing, where relevant sources are provided in brackets. These can simply be ignored by readers with no need to follow up on sources, or with no such interest. There are many such references here and even more might be demanded by some academics but one has to draw a line somewhere. Most of these sources are interesting in their own right, and certainly more expansive than I can be here on specialist topics. Since this book presents a case that is highly sceptical of large-scale immigration, its references are biased in that direction. Although it is certainly true that any errors in this book are my responsibility, it is also the case that reporting, statistics and evidence in this field contain many inaccuracies and contradictions.

  A mixed multitude also went up with them.

  — Exodus, 12. 38

  *

  Treating others as we would like to be treated is one of our highest ethical rules. But so too is telling the truth.

  — J. P. Rushton (1997)

  Introduction

  It used to be said that ‘the sun never sets on the British flag’ because the British Empire was so vast. That is no longer true of course. Britain is a small, crowded island nation with a big past. Some believe we are now living in an era of payback for those colonial exploits. According to Laycock’s (2013) humorously presented account, the British have over time invaded or fought conflicts in 171 out of 193 UN member states (almost 90%). Britain’s long imperial past was not humorous however, being associated with an incalculable number of deaths and displacements; but disagreements persist as to its positive contributions. The current and problematic popularity of Britain as a destination for migrants is probably also linked to the English language being the second most spoken world language (after Mandarin Chinese), which is also commonly used in international media, academia and aviation (Northrup, 2013). The payback for this successful outreach now entails the transformation of what was a mainly white Christian nation into an overcrowded, multiracial country where declining, apologetic Christianity jostles with established atheism and an expanding Islam, and people of different colours and languages experience endless conflicts between themselves.

  The slogan about the sun never setting has an ancient history going back thousands of years and applying to many empires. Everything changes, for good and ill. People living in the United Kingdom are currently divided about race, immigration and religion, and sometimes violently so. There is also a sharp division of views about whether decent non-fascist British whites can reassert themselves or if the battle is already lost, and indeed whether transformation into a multicultural nation is a good and inevitable development or not. But in 2017, the celebrated Nigerian-heritage artist Chris Ofili, CBE, famous for painting with elephant dung, allowed his ‘Union Black’ flag to fly above the Tate Gallery in London, advertising pan-African themes.

  One of the biggest, most newsworthy and troubling phenomena of our time concerns race relations, mass migration, so-called multiculturalism, Islamist terrorism, and the political passions around ‘ethnic and social justice’ these arouse. It is a complex topic that is highly visible on an everyday level to most of us, that frequently finds its way into news media and academic publications, and sometimes leads to violence, riots and bombings in our cities. It involves the tragic plight of countless refugees whose dispersal often results in lifelong, tremendous sadness but also the irreversible social fragmentation of Britain. In the USA, racial stress and social divisiveness are now at an all-time high (APA, 2017). This is linked with the highest American rates of immigration in almost a century, with about 40 million immigrants from around the world, 11 million being illegal immigrants (Perez, 2014). Immigration-related divisiveness is probably similarly high in the UK, given the importance of social trust and its erosion (Putnam, 2007). Yet in the contemporary changing demographic the topic is virtually impossible to discuss amicably, is surrounded by misinformation, euphemisms and taboos, and seems rarely to lend itself to civilised honest debate. It is even fenced off by hate speech laws that are interpreted subjectively. But without doubt this is a fast-moving phenomenon with serious implications for the West, and especially for the UK.

  The focus in this book is on problems in the UK, although many are mirrored elsewhere in Europe, North America and Australia. My emphasis is on the worryingly negative, borderline dystopian aspects of mass immigration and multiculturalism and on interracial problems. White Westerners are probably as flawed as anyone else and created their share of havoc and suffering historically, but at this moment in time it is overwhelmingly non-whites and low-skilled people who are streaming into Europe and North America from poor countries, and not vice versa. In the summer of 2017, in the midst of sporadic Islamist terror attacks in Europe, illegal Mediterranean crossings were also ongoing. It is reported that 98,000 have crossed from Libya to Italy, and that about 700,000 migrants are waiting in Libya. A large part of this movement involves people-smuggling which also entails kidnapping, extortion, torture, slavery, rape, and prostitution (The Times, 23 August, 2017). Italy has been bearing the brunt of this particular wave of immigration, with many migrants disappearing as clandestini, begging, working opportunistically or seasonally, and in the cash economy, causing local tensions or moving on to other parts of Europe. This in turn affects Italian attitudes and politics. It also generates conflict between those nationals directly affected, and charities operating rescue boats whose workers are accused of colluding with traffickers. Millions of ordinary British citizens worry about related, visible immigration into the UK and struggle to know whose interpretation of events and which prognosis to believe. Hence, I believe, the close but definitive outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum.

  Obviously there is an alternative to or oppositional interpretation of the narrative of negative mass migration, but I mostly leave that discussion to others. Ample literature exists promoting a pro-black view of history (Dabydeen et al., 2007; Olusoga, 2016); a sympathetic portrait of Muslim Britain (Fergusson, 2017); and the pro-immigration views of Winder (2013) and MacKenzie (2015) stand out for their selection of historical figures contributing to the profile of modern Britain. Carr (2015) too puts a very positive spin on immigration to the UK. Studs Terkel’s (1992) collection of interviews with Americans of various races is an unusually honest presentation of different experiences of and views on race; and Shukla (2016) presents a range of personal narratives in the UK context. Anderson, C. (2017) blames co-ordinated ‘white rage’ for the plight of African Americans. Vast swathes of academic literature attest to the details of the Holocaust (Rees, 2017), transatlantic slavery (Davis, 2004; Heuman & Walvin, 2003), racist ideology (Kendi, 2017), and related topics. The Guardian publishes frequent pieces on the many adversities faced by minorities; regularly disputes immigration statistics, arguing that people are le
aving the UK in droves following the Brexit vote, that immigration from the EU is falling; and tells heartwarming stories about desperate refugees from the Middle East and Africa who have fought against all the odds to become doctors or artists in Britain and who boost tax revenues. The OECD (2015) outlines very fully the challenges of the 2015 migrant crisis. Goodhart (2014) offers one of the best informed and most balanced accounts of the waves of post-war immigration, multiculturalism and associated problems. The TV presenter Ross Kemp (2017) in a 45-minute show condenses the key issues in a very fair way.

  One response to the immigration question is to deny that it exists, or to downplay it. For the anti-racist left, there is no problem except that whipped up by the xenophobic right. Multiculturalism is great, it’s added vibrancy, exciting ethnic cuisine and fashion, the more the merrier, goes one argument. Or it’s a matter of perception, or of regional variations. Among other responses there is the denial that racism is a problem, either compared with what it used to be, or with levels of racism in some other countries. Clarissa Tan (2014), for example, an ethnic-Chinese Malaysian with a great deal of experience in different Asian countries, believes Britain is very tolerant, and its apparent problems are caused by hyperbolic overreactions (from the PC crowd). She notes that in Hong Kong the word for a white person, gwei, means ghost, or less than human, but few get angry about such language. Ethnic Malays are given favourable employment protection. Tan disowns her BAME status in Britain, and is grateful for the warm reception she gets. This is a very long way from the picture painted of Britain as a neo-fascist state. And while some leftists complain that a terrible, Brexit-style ‘fascist creep’ now characterises Britain, some of us are more concerned that Brits have no fight left in them at all, and are passively rolling over, defeated, indifferent to our demise.

  I am a born and bred white Londoner with limited qualifications for writing on this topic. I have not lived in other countries to any great extent but I have met and mixed with a fair few foreign individuals. I have had brief friendly encounters with a Filipino, a South Korean, some British Jews, Indians, Kenyans, American Hispanics, Germans, Scandinavians, Syrians, Poles, Sri Lankans, and I have distant relatives in Canada. People of my father’s generation had the option of emigrating cheaply to Australia but he declined. I am no anthropologist or historian but merely a frequent tourist to many countries in mainland Europe. Conferences have taken me to very short stays in North America, Africa, and Asia. I have some slight passing, vicarious acquaintance with people from Pakistan, Dubai, Russia, and black America, and occasional email connections with a few people in the USA. Long ago I was inspired by the writings of Indian mystics. A kindly Indian bookseller called Susil Gupta once inspired me to read more widely than I might have done. Thin, life-spanning global links. But it’s true to say I have never had to flee from poverty or persecution. I have not abused the rules or people of any country I have visited and enjoyed as a tourist. Nor have I, like the outspoken and hated Tommy Robinson (2015), ever been in the thick of anti-Islamist battle, in prison or under threat. But I suspect my observations lie somewhere between that of the experts and the populists. Collier (2014) and Goodhart (2014) for example, both have extensive expertise and both have declared the immigrant status of their grandparents. The traceable white working-class ancestry on my father’s side goes back to 18th century England according to available records.

  When speaking of the cross-fertilisation of cultures, one common objection needs to be addressed. Like many people, I drink coffee (which was originally from Islamic Ethiopia); I am also a tea drinker (originally from China and taken to India); I enjoy fish and chips (the fried fish introduced into England by Jews in the 17th century, and as a full meal into a London shop by a Jewish refugee in 1860); I often shop at Marks & Spencer (Michael Marks was a Polish-Jewish refugee at the end of the 19th century); I enjoy some jazz, blues and soul music; I enjoy an occasional Guinness; and I like curry. Some of my clothes are made in Bangladesh. I like to travel. Ours is indeed an interconnected world. Trade across tribes and nations goes back for thousands of years. But this does not mean that I must welcome millions of people from every country with which Britain has a historical or commercial link to come and live where I live, just as I would not expect to be welcomed unreservedly if I wanted to go and live elsewhere. I do not like the sight of English pubs in Spain or other vulgar, so-called expat phenomena. Trading of goods is not in the same category as the free movement and entitlement to residency of great numbers of people.

  As in Beware of the Underdog (Banks, 2017), I use some personal anecdotes, some academic sources, some logic and some commonsense. The theme is obviously contentious, often polarised and also extremely complex. When we think about these issues, we are informed by some mixture of academic sources, media inputs, personal observations and prejudices and, perhaps, self-questioning. Many interest groups, government and social science departments, think tanks and propaganda machines pump out relevant information. Each of us has to make sense of competing, mediated knowledge claims and usually polarised views on immigration and associated topics. Rarely, we may ourselves participate in some sort of disciplined intercultural dialogue (Cilliers, 2004) or anthropological research (Atran, 2011). I am fairly sure that some will find the present text flawed, and either blatantly racist or on the other hand not sufficiently confrontational of the problems involved. As the leftist, multiculturalism-embracing community increasingly finds its voice(s), oppositional voices are too often confined to unhelpful far-right groups.

  My intention here is to highlight issues that are often suppressed or are voiced only in hysterical terms. My own position has shifted over the years from youthful uncritical-liberal (indeed theoretical anarchist) to sceptical, and finally to ‘enough is enough’ exasperation, as in the French concept of seuil de tolérance. I believe that well motivated readers will see both justified reason and concern here, and my own prejudices. I am after all an old white atheist Englishman, and all of us see the world from our own perspective, often driven and distorted by emotion and habit. According to a study of attitudes to immigration by Card et al. (2005), which takes a rather condescending and pathologising view, I now fit the anti-immigration bill very well, except that I am not under-educated. What is at stake is not mere differences of opinion but grave social and cultural matters. I do not expect to have much impact on the wider debate but simply to add my pennyworth. I am no flag-waving, nostalgic, uncritical nationalist but I am concerned about Britain’s cultural direction. This is my snapshot of aspects of British culture in 2017–18, a mixture of polemical opposition to continuing immigration, some despair, awareness of fair and unfair counter-critiques, and partial acceptance that all life is constantly in flux.

  Part of this discussion is inevitably about the new ethnic and cultural mix created by mass immigration, weighing up the wisdom or problematic nature of this mix, and dealing with the fierce passions aroused in this process. The assertion that ‘all men are created equal’ comes from the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence and is still considered by many to be an ‘immortal declaration’. But in addition to being perverse in its own time (slavery was not abolished in the USA until 1865), it is clearly outdated. Today some would strongly prefer to say that ‘all human beings are created equal’. However, the biological revolution kick-started in 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origins of the Species by Means of Natural Selection is arguably far more significant than the American Revolutionary War. Darwin’s work not only ushered in the era of serious doubt about the existence of God and validity of creationism but established the scientific principle that distinct species have evolved, among which Homo sapiens and its subgroups too have evolved. We are not created, we have evolved; we have not only evolved but continue to evolve. And although angry debates continue as to the reality or otherwise of human races, we cannot deny physical and cultural distinctions between groups of human beings.

  I believe we are clearl
y not equal (although very similar) but different in many ways. Certainly it can be argued that all human beings deserve to be treated with equal respect, and this statement is the foundation of human rights, but it is a moral not a scientific statement and has not gone unchallenged (Hunt, 2007). It is not contentious to argue that we differ individually and also at a group level. But suggestions that a hierarchy of evolved humanity exists, that some are superior in many ways to others, that groups of human beings differ in terms of intelligence and other characteristics that are not readily changed, and that some of these are valued more highly than others — such statements attract angry protests today. We are not equal, and although changes do happen, and some can be socially engineered, arguably we will never be equal: everyone can be paid due respect but some will be valued more highly than others (Scheidel, 2017). Geography and biology are unfair.

  Fundamentalist interpretations of the Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — continue to insist that a God exists who created humanity and are thus at odds with the scientific facts of evolution. Contemporary liberal dogma supported by a backdrop of Marxism has it that we are all fundamentally equal but that cultural and economic circumstances distort this equality: a politics of liberal progressivism will restore equality to all. These two theories are at odds with each other, since the patriarchal foundations of the religions contradict at least some of the aims of the latter political camp, for example the assertion of equality between men and women, and between heterosexuals and homosexuals. Evolutionary theory is at odds with both these, based as it is on the principle that godless millions of years of gradual adaptations have caused differentiations that explain how we come to be as we are, why we are tribal, why we compete and co-operate, and so on. Although the evolutionary account is not wholly deterministic, it does suggest that we have strong inclinations towards certain behaviours: we can attempt to build fairer societies but we will probably always be constrained by powerful genetic, geographical and cultural factors. The above three views cannot be reconciled. In 2017 the teaching of evolution was banned from Turkish (Muslim) schools. Evolution has likewise been opposed by many American Christians, yet Islam and Christianity remain deeply at odds with each other. It is not possible to entertain all such positions as equal, however hard we may pretend they are. Religious faith, political ideology and empirical science are ultimately irreconcilable cultures.