The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #111625   Message #2358280
Posted By: Phil Edwards
05-Jun-08 - 11:04 AM
Thread Name: English Folk Degree?
Subject: RE: English Folk Degree?
folks in it are allowed to question immigration - which, hopefully for one last time, is NOT the same as racism.

WAV, I think you might get on better with this debating lark if you actually read some words written by other people. As I've said before, questioning immigration is not necessarily racist; it all depends on what grounds you're questioning it. To repeat my first question to you (which you haven't answered):

you say you want immigration to be limited; you also say that you're not a racist, as "we are dealing with culture here NOT race". How do you propose to limit immigration on cultural and NOT racial grounds? What difference would there be in the identities of the people who were turned away?

Here was your answer: I think the UN should take control of immigration and help genuine assylum seekers to their NEAREST safe country

Look, never mind asylum seekers, never mind the UN. There's a planeload of people in the arrivals lounge, not a UK passport between them, and they all want to come and live in England.

A liberal would say, immigration is fine - let them all in.
A xenophobe would say, we don't want any immigration - they're not English, turn them all away.
A racist would say, we want to limit immigration - let in the ones with the right ethnic background and turn the rest away.
A capitalist would say, we want to limit immigration - let in the ones with a marketable skill and turn the rest away.

You say you want to limit immigration, but on 'cultural' and not racial grounds. What do you do? Who do you turn away?

As for my second question:

you say you don't want any immigrants who are already here to leave. How is this consistent with wanting a mono-cultural England?

You said: you forget about assimilation, which can and has occurred.

So newcomers need to assimilate to English culture rather than maintaining their own. That's going to knock the bottom out of the delicatessen and takeaway food sectors, but never mind. What if it doesn't happen? What if people stubbornly persist in going to the mosque and listening to gospel music and cheering for the wrong side at cricket? If too many of the wrong sort of people come here, and they persist in being the wrong sort of people, the implication can only be that some of them should leave.

I'm just asking you to be honest about your beliefs, and about the implications of your beliefs. It doesn't mean you're a Fascist, or anything to the right of Thatcher-era Tory Party (they had a 'voluntary repatriation' policy, incidentally). It just means you've got views which many people here genuinely, sincerely and rationally disagree with very strongly.