For more than a year, Government ministers have been claiming that only ‘the brightest and the best’ of immigrants will be admitted to the UK in future. We shall see. Most of us dumb Anglo-Saxons probably thought that we were operating on that principle anyway.
Why not pick and choose when demand is so high, particularly from the Indian sub-continent? But that isn’t how it works at all.
Most non-EU immigrants come from the poorer areas of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In the latter case, it is reckoned that 95 per cent come from the Sylhet area, which makes up six per cent of the Bangladeshi population. It hardly ranks as a centre for the brightest and best.
Of course, Britain would not be so cruel as to separate breadwinners from those dependant on them, so those immigrants already here brought in their sisters, their cousins, their uncles and their auntsIn the case of India, according to figures unearthed by the publication Eurofacts, some 60 per cent are reckoned to come from the Punjab, specifically the Jullundur area, which again hardly provides the brightest and the best.
Of course, we are using statistics with a strong backward bias, since we have a census only once a decade. Some academic studies are useful, but they cannot by definition provide today’s absolute figures. Still, it provides some intriguing trends and comparisons.
It's not as if this crisis could not have been foreseen a mile off. Cameron's failure to do anything about it suggests to the public not just a lack of means, but a lack of willSuppose that 60-75 per cent of British emigrants to the U.S. or Australia proved to have been born in Middlesbrough, which contains 0.2 per cent of the UK population — about the same proportion as Jullundur bears to the whole of India or Mirpur, a centre of emigration, bears to the whole of Pakistan.It would need explanation and we can find it in the immigration legislation since 1962, supposed to curb any large inflows. The BBC, improbably, carried out a survey in 2005 which found that 55 per cent of British Pakistanis were married to their first cousins!
More from Andrew Alexander... Foreign wars and a chilling legacy of hate 28/05/13 Afghan exit - or is it a very long goodbye? 14/05/13 Why the Eton crew could sink Cameron 07/05/13 Vive la change between us and the French 30/04/13 The expense! Mrs T wouldn't have approved 16/04/13 Of course she split Britain - she HAD to 09/04/13 If this is the last euro crisis, I'm a Dutchman... 26/03/13 Don't break the bonds of Britishness 05/03/13 VIEW FULL ARCHIVEIt all started in the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 that was supposed to clamp down on uncontrolled immigration. Of course, Britain would not be so cruel as to separate breadwinners from those dependant on them.
So those immigrants already here brought in their sisters, their cousins, their uncles and their aunts.
Then there was the great marriage racket. Immigrants already here dashed off to their old countries to find spouses (and dowries, of course). The next generation can repeat the process.
It is all very well for David Cameron to dress up our new immigration policy as providing an inflow of brains and talents.
But while our visa offices puzzle over whether so-and-so really is a promising astrophysicist, in another office some British Pakistani will be insisting that his new bride (and near or distant cousin) has an automatic right to UK residency. Many of us dumb Anglo-Saxons will guess that the second case will go through fastest.
No such niceties about visas or brightness clutter up the arguments about the Romanians and Bulgarians whom we shall have to welcome next January.
It’s not as if this crisis could not have been foreseen a mile off. Cameron’s failure to do anything about it suggests to the public not just a lack of means, but a lack of will.
Surely Britain can decide such crucial matters on its own? Only if we leave the EU, replies UKIP.
The simplest answers are often the best.
Hostile orators with real classAnyone interested in the art of Parliamentary oratory should study two Commons speeches delivered in the wake of Mrs Thatcher’s funeral, both alas, hostile to her and furious that the Commons timetable was being adjusted to allow MPs to attend St Paul’s.
First we had George Galloway, the ‘Respect’ MP for Bradford West, trying to reason with the House, amid guffaws from the Tories, that Cameron was trying to dodge the column on Prime Minister’s Question Time, as he had done before.
As well as talent, Gorgeous George had two of the essentials of a great speech — a real grievance to argue and a general unpopularity which meant that he had to work uphill.
Then there was Dennis Skinner, the so-called Beast of Bolsover. He was brilliant — noteless, passionate, unstoppable. How he hates the Tories, almost as much as he does the backsliders on socialism. His theme was mainly ‘class’. There seemed no end to the rage he let loose on the House.
The trouble with Dennis, who is not an unintelligent man, is that he is hopelessly conservative. He stopped learning about politics somewhere around his student age — not that he ever demeaned himself with higher education (which is sometimes a wise course, looking at today’s universities).
Little if anything has been absorbed by him over the intervening years, only interpreted as yet another proof of his adolescent instincts.
Still, it was a brilliant speech. The old dockside manner, as it used to be called, is not dead yet.
What a pity the Tories find this fire so hard to match.
But at least they have grievances, mainly about Cameron. Perhaps we shall see some healthy explosions yet.
