After Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” due to immigration, I once again felt deeply upset at this country’s inability to understand its own history and responsibilities.
Net immigration to the UK increased significantly in recent years for three reasons: people coming to work (particularly in healthcare), study (because international students’ fees are essential to keep them afloat), and for humanitarian considerations.
Humanitarian migration spiked due to the Ukraine war and the introduction of the Hong Kong BN(O) visa in response to the imposition of the National Security Law in 2020.
Not everyone offered a safe route chose to settle in the UK, but since 2020 over 150,000 Hongkongers and 200,000 Ukrainians did.
350,000 people is not a majority of the net migration to the UK, but it is a substantial chunk. Moreover, it is temporary. These two facts are rarely repeated in discourse about immigration, though, which favours a story of “strangers” inundating the country.
No doubt I will be told that Hongkongers and Ukrainians are “the good ones”. It’s something I’ve heard all my life whenever immigration rears its head in the news and I bring up my own experience as the child of two immigrants from Hong Kong. Like some other immigrants, I could easily take on this identity and say we should raise the drawbridge.
But being among “the good ones” is not something permanent. I grew up near Liverpool, a city with a long history of Chinese residents, the first of whom arrived in the 1860s due in part to British colonialism. Liverpool prides itself on being welcoming, but after Chinese seamen were instrument to Britain in WW2, thousands were forcibly repatriated following a wave of racism fuelled by the media. Families were torn apart and left in the dark because the Home Office was sworn to secrecy.
Britain benefitted immeasurably from its centuries of imperialism and colonialism. Many are deeply proud of this era and the resulting Commonwealth, but the moment they are asked to take responsibility, they look away. When white British people complain about cities being taken over by immigrants, do they mean we should bulldoze Chinatowns and curry miles? How many foreign restaurants in a row will they permit?
Cutting immigration will cost the country dearly. And if the UK is indeed an island of strangers, it sure as shit ain’t because of immigrants, unless I missed the memo that all white Brits are dear friends.
mssv 