Cowardly politicians and bizarre EU rules have allowed too many immigrants to enter Britain.
Asian families arriving in Britain from Entebbe, Uganda to escape persecution from Idi Amin in 1972
When does an immigrant stop being an immigrant? How about the lovely guy who runs the shop where I buy my newspapers, a benevolent giant who chats to elderly customers with infinite patience because he knows that this will be their only conversation of the day: is he still an immigrant?
Or what about my friend whose parents are Sri Lankan? Does a quarter of a century fighting breast cancer in this country put the seal on her Britishness? What do you reckon to an elderly aunt’s Zimbabwean carer doing the dirty, low-paid work natives don’t care for? Or the osteopath who fixed the repetitive strain injury that prevented me working – is she still Ugandan Asian or, 40 years after she got off a plane at Heathrow to see snow for the first time, is she now One of Us?
Then there are my children’s mixed-race friends. Count them: half-Malaysian, half-Polish, half-Jamaican, half-Catholic/half-Muslim, half-Japanese. And don’t get me started on Jews. The only thing to be said in favour of Adolf Hitler is that he gave this country some of its smartest, funniest and most productive people.
How do you think all of the above felt this week when they read the results of a poll by Lord Ashcroft that said a clear majority of people in Britain feel that immigration has been bad for the country? Sixty per cent said it brought “more disadvantages than advantages”. Only 17 per cent believed that immigration had been a good thing.
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