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In our democratic society we have representatives who are allegedly educated, but still show astonishing levels of ignorance or arrogance – or perhaps, both – when discussing immigration. UKIP have have been accused of racism on many occasions, and they usually brush it off as merely their opinion. When it comes to the UKIP Immigration attitude if often comes across as a puerile attempt to be inflammatory solely for the sake of an argument.
All too often, it is nothing short of racism.
UKIP Immigration Confusion
John Bickley MP has been retweeting a cartoon that could easily be called offensive, and definitely falls short of being satirical. To claim that Labour is the “party for immigrants” is not only incorrect, it is dangerous when combined with the evident Muslim = Jihadist angle. Immigrants who come to the UK from non-EU countries are Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Pakistani, Filipino, and so on. Despite the clear attack by Trump on predominantly Muslim countries, we also have Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus and many more people – including Christians – joining the UK. Indeed, the increase of Romanian immigrants brings more Roman Catholics into the country. Migrants rarely make a move for religious reasons, so one has to question how many “Muslim Immigrants” there really are.
The UKIP immigration model, however, seems to be based identifying people by their religion first. Haven’t we learnt from history how destructive that can be?
So indeed the Labour party can be open and liberal to immigration: the connection with Islam is secondary. Moreover, Jihadists do not represent Islam, and certainly not on any mass scale. So the concept of Labour promoting mass immigration of Jihadists is nonsensical, since Jihadists are a very tiny minority. That is why the image isn’t controversial; nor is it satirical; it is puerile. It has all the intelligence of a school child pointing at a Sikh man in a turban and shouting “Terrorist,” whilst looking around at his friends to check they are laughing it his hilarious joke.
Free Movement Backlash
There is also the more complex problem in the sense that the immigration that people are complaining about or worried about is primarily the free movement of EU nationals, especially when connecting the issues with Brexit. It is unlikely that rules regarding non-EU immigration will change, so to attack Labour on the basis of immigration, whilst associating it with supporting the Jihadists getting into the UK, is illogical. Predominantly Muslim nations are generally not EU nations, so trying to connect them into a cartoon in that way defies logic. Therefore, it leaves the only assumption that the image is deliberately inflammatory, and nothing more.
At the same we have news stories covering what has been termed the “Brexit Backlash” against our own expats. The argument surrounding this comes from Theresa May moving the goalposts on EU national’s status in the UK post-Brexit. By refusing to offer clarity on this issue, May leaves the UK expats – who are no different to EU nationals in the EU other than terminology – uncertain as to what their status will be. That is 1.2 Million UK nationals left uncertain about their future. After all, why should they assume they get to stay where they are without question, post-Brexit?
Isn’t it about time that we insisted our elected leaders behaved with more maturity and intelligence? By all means, the parties should challenge each others’ policies, but to so flagrantly make attacks on each other whilst missing the important elements of the issue in question.
