Immigrants and Prejudice

My family are immigrants.  I think most people in this country share this.  My father's family came over from Holland in 1689.  My mother came much more recently: from Germany in 1963.  They're "okay" though - nice blond, Northern European types.

They're not the type of immigrants that people generally object to: never mind objectively what skill levels they have, these are the type of people who will quite obviously integrate, get educated, work and contribute.  Why? Well because they're nice, blond, Northern European types.  It just goes with the territory.  It's those dark skinned gypsies from Romania we need to worry about, or all those lazy Slavs filling up the benefits offices and claiming welfare.  They will never fit in or contribute.  If our family continues to follow German customs and speak German at home that's absolutely fine: we're not a threat, it's just part of our heritage!  But if an East European family doesn't fully "fit in" in this country, in every respect, it's time to point the finger and decry them.

Standard Mail image: E/ European Gypsies just have to be criminals

Never mind the facts.  Never mind every study showing that immigrants as a whole are net contributors in the form of taxes, less likely to claim benefits etc.  You can quote and quote the facts, but it seems some people will just never accept it.  And this, of course, is depressingly and deliberately exploited by politicians of all shades who try to get political support by pandering to this prejudice.

An Example from Twitter

Today on Twitter I experienced a really enlightening example of the above.  I chipped in to a conversation with a 22 year old guy who said that he "volunteered in a soup kitchen where the majority of the recipients are Eastern European on some form of benefit".  He then went on to say that "Foreign nationals do contribute especially those from Norway/Sweden etc. What's wrong with wanting them?"

He was portraying himself as reasoned, and reasonable - not an extremist in any way.  My simple, and I think perfectly apt response, to this was:

"Oh I've heard that philosophy before.  The "Nordic races" are superior to the Slavs. Let me just think where... Hmm"  

He said it was "idiotic drivel" for me to say this.  I don't see why: he was saying that only positive contributors to Britain should be allowed in, and had already divided this on racial origin grounds.  Norway/Sweden = good; East Europe = bad.  This is, I suppose, common-place enough, but what then happened was remarkable.  He quoted from an academic paper, three times, which he said showed those people who come from the "EU8" are much less likely to be in receipt of benefit than the EUA14. "Unfortunately the chances [of people being scroungers] are more likely" according to him.  The delightful thing here he was indeed quoting accurately from the report:

His problem was that he hadn't read what was meant by EUA8 and EUA14 countries.  EUA8 countries are the EU accession countries from Central and Eastern Europe that joined in 2004 i.e Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia etc.  EUA14 countries, by contrast, are the countries who were EU members prior to then.  Yep, that includes those lovely blond Nordic nations, Sweden and Denmark, along with the Netherlands, Germany and Austria.

So - you got it - he was quoting from a report that showed that migrants from Poland etc are less likely to claim welfare benefits in the UK than people from pre-2004 EU members, which happen to include Sweden. 

I'm sorry, but this utterly stinks.  It is a perfect example of how someone's prejudice sufficiently blinds them so that he or she interprets a report in exactly the opposite way to its reasoned conclusion.  This is done in order to reinforce what strikes me as a deeply prejudiced view, which he absolutely refused to accept he had.  He did, however, have the good grace to admit he was wrong when it was pointed out to him that he had massively got the wrong end of the stick. 

The "immigration debate" is polluted to the core with thinking like this, conscious and sub-conscious prejudice and misinformation.  It's so depressing and it needs to be countered a lot, lot louder than people are currently doing.