The problem with talking about the general tone of media and the people you interact with is it’s very hard to provide references and evidence and all that sort of thing I generally like to do. However I shall for go such matters on this occasion so that I have a hope of remaining topical, and because I’m hugely amused about the sudden desire from the like of “hope not hate” and many people on social media to have a “serious conversation about migrants”. I’m amused by this because in the past that’s been the very last thing they’ve wanted, any attempt to discuss how we might want to control immigration, put any sort of restrictions on it or even just discuss if all migration is an unequivocal good have been shut down with cries of “racist”, “bigot”, “xenophone”, “islamaphobe” and so forth. I suspect the conversation they want to have now isn’t a serious one, nor even an honest one so much as a declaration that all immigration is good. However what prompted this was people sharing this video from those defenders of free speech and tolerance “Hope not Hate”
There’s an awful lot of appeals to emotion and generalizations which dimply don’t wrong true but it does open with “Everyone knows we need a proper conversation about immigration”, which is odd given the efforts “Hope not Hate” and their supporters have gone to to shut down such debates in the past. In shutting down attempts to have a proper conversation in the past they’ve killed the chance for such a thing and for moderate views, after all if you get called “racist” for asking for such a conversation just as much as for suggesting all foreigners should be shot it doesn’t leave much room for debate. Anyway lets look at some of the claims made in this jolly little video and see how they stack up for a proper conversation.
The initial lot of claims are quite uncontentious until the claim that EU migrants support our universities with massive tuition fees which are exactly the same as UK residents as the EU doesn’t allow you to charge EU members differently. I think the claim that we’re be dead without them is a tad hyperbolic, and the claim that they keep our laws and speak our language really does need to be qualified somewhat. In the main undoubtedly true, but there is enough of an appearance that at least some groups of migrants aren’t quite so good on these points that it should really form part of a proper conversation. A bit further on he says “migrants actually want to embrace being British”, well again mainly they probably do but lets talk about the ones that don’t as well so that we can have a proper conversation. There’s then a lot of quite reasonable stuff before suggesting that the alternative position to welcoming migrants is to sling them all out, a proper conversation you’d have thought would allow for options between these extremes.
Now of course that video was all about Eu migrants, which are I suspect a far simpler case than the question of migrants as a whole. I’m quite in favour of migration it’s generally a good thing when done correctly, and that of course is the issue. For most people the conversation to be had is about migrants generally not just EU migrants and that is for years where the problem has been, a continual bait and switch when it comes to talking about migration. If you try to discuss the issues that some migrants cause you get accused of being against all migrants, any suggestion that migration might want to be controlled differently is rapidly accused of being an attack on hard working doctors and nurses and so forth. If we want to have a proper conversation about migrants then we need to talk about the bad as well as the good, and to follow Presidents trump advice let’s consider what’s going on in Sweden. Here’s another video, this time from Sweden to do just that:
