A pretty vile set of remarks on immigration by David Davis yesterday.

According to the Shadow Home Secretary, tougher curbs and a ceiling on immigration (including asylum) are needed "before it is too late". Immigration, he argued, was "endangering the values that we in Britain rightly treasure...The Government says that it doesn't know if this level of immigration is too much or too little. Well let me tell them. It is too much. Far too much. And we must do something about it."

Let's be charitable. His claim that immigration endangers British values is a complete misunderstanding of the problem. Damn it, let's not be charitable. Let's say what's really going on: Davis is resorting to cheap, incendiary and ignorant near-demagoguery in a desperate attempt to shore up votes.

It's not immigration which endangers British values but the failure of immigrants to assimilate. This has almost nothing to do with numbers but is a
product of our failure to insist on certain preconditions. (And for those of you who have difficulty reading, let me say that again: almost nothing. Almost nothing does not mean nothing. It means almost nothing. I have to spell that out as I can already predict the comments appearing...)

The US isn't endangered by immigration. It is made by it. Illegal immigration is a problem not because of the numbers per se but because illegal immigrants are not absorbed into the prevailing culture properly. Immigrants buy into the American dream. We, however, stand back and make no real demands.

Immigrants are blamed for many of our ills because they are seen to be alien and to free ride. You know the usual thing: they come here to scrounge off the benfits system. But if we insisted on a genuine measure of assimilation and debarred immigrants from receiving benefits, we would all benefit from the industry and drive of those who can contribute much to society. Asylum seekers should, far from being banned from working, be forced to support themselves. No true asylum seeker would be other than grateful for such an opportunity. And by paying taxes and contributing, so they would earn their right to a place in our country.

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Thoughtful piece on 'white flight' in today's Times by the always worth reading Anthony Browne.

According to Browne:

You are unlikely to hear the phrase “white flight” pass a politician’s lips, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

As the political parties limber up for the local and European elections next month, immigration is near the top of the agenda. There is concern that the openly racist British National Party will make huge gains, particularly by targeting what it describes as the “white flight” zones around Britain’s cities.

...According to the 2001 Census, 20 towns and cities in the UK have neighbourhoods where whites are in a minority. Out of a total of 8,850 electoral wards in England and Wales, whites are a minority in 116, as well as in two whole London boroughs, Newham and Brent.

London, Birmingham, Blackburn and Leicester all have wards where whites make up less than 20 per cent of the population. In Southall Broadway, West London, just 11.9 per cent of the population is white. It is simply implausible that whites would have become such small minorities if they hadn’t either left the area, or avoided moving there in the first place. There appears to be white flight from London as a whole, with the number of ethnic minorities rising from 1.3 million in 1991 to more than two million in 2001, while the white population actually dropped by 390,000 as record numbers moved out.

A study commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and called Development of a Migration Model found that the more ethnic minorities there were in an area, the more likely people were to move out. It concluded: “The higher proportion of out-migration from places with the greater presence of non-white people conforms to the much reported push factor as white flight.”

A recent BBC survey found that 23 per cent of white Britons would not be happy if someone from another race moved next door, while 74 per cent of white Britons said white people avoided living in non-white areas.

I remember when I first became aware of this phenomenon. A classmate at school told us - we must have been about twelve or thirteen - that he was moving house because an Asian family had moved in next door and his parents wanted to leave before the entire neighbourhood was tarnished.

I was shocked, because the boy's family were Jewish and my father had recently told me about a local golf club which had (long ago) been set up by Jews because the other clubs had refused to allow them to join.

It was one of my first political thoughts. I couldn't understand how people who had been discrimated against because of racial prejudice could do the same to others.

UPDATE: One of my commenters points out that the family who moved away didn't discriminate. She's - sort of - right. I didn't express myself very well in that last sentence. It would be better reading thus:

It was one of my first political thoughts. I couldn't understand how people who had been the victims of racial prejudice could be so prejudicial about others.

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Martin Kettle has been writing some outstanding pieces of late (especially this masterly taking apart of the preposterous Rod Liddle, who is - for reasons I cannot begin to fathom - simply everywhere).

Today's, on immigration, is spot on, and all the more worthwhile for being in The Guardian.

Blunkett is more at ease making the case for migration in these economic terms than in terms which celebrate ethnic diversity for its own sake. That will not be good enough for those who want a home secretary who promotes a more upbeat multicultural message. But it is not a message to be sneered at. Blunkett's mantra, that we should welcome those who come to contribute, while rejecting those who come to take advantage, is simple fairness.

I don't doubt he'll get a heavy postbag...

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Most political insults long ago lost any real meaning. But when it comes to immigration, there are few politicians and pundits who do not resort to easy slogans, and today it is more difficult than ever to have a sensible discussion without name-calling.

So when the Dutch Parliament voted on Tuesday to toughen up its measures against failed asylum-seekers, and agreed to kick out 26,000 of them, the decision was compared by some with that of the countries which, in the 1930s, refused to give sanctuary to Jews persecuted by Nazis.

Leave aside, for a moment, the grotesque distortion - the Dutch have not decided to deport all asylum seekers, only those who have been through the appeals procedures and been found to be making up their stories of persecution.

The real point is that it is now almost impossible to suggest that there might be problems with unfettered immigration, or that asylum should have a precise meaning, without standing accused of racism and xenophobia.

The truth, however, is that it is those who are the first to scream ?racism? who pose the real threat to racial harmony. And those willing to confront the reality of the situation who are often the most concerned about the welfare of immigrants.

Countries known for their liberal approach to life such as the Netherlands and Denmark - which yesterday announced plans to restrict entry to its shores by radical Muslim clerics - are able to debate these issues with an openness which puts our politicians to shame.

Given the utter shambles, misery and chaos caused by immigration in this country, it is surely time that we, too, went back to first principles and asked what it is it we expect of immigrants, when we should welcome them, why we might reject them, and most importantly how we can integrate them.

The longer we leave it, the more intractable, unfair and dangerous the situation becomes in this country.

On Tuesday this week, the London-based radical Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal lost his appeal against a nine-year jail sentence for urging his followers to kill non-believers, Jews, Hindus and Americans. It was a refreshing moment in our otherwise desperately tentative approach.

For he is far from alone in espousing such evil, and while those who share his beliefs are able to carry on peddling their foul views - often whilst living on benefits, at the taxpayer's expense - it is mainstream, law abiding Muslims who suffer, as they are contaminated in others' eyes by association.

The truly liberal policy - as opposed to that of the name-callers who refuse even to countenance debate on this matter - is not to ignore such preaching in the name of multi-culturalism but to treat it with the severity it demands. To make clear by our actions that such people have no place in a society which depends on toleration and respect for the law.

Important though it is to crack down on them, however, radical Muslims are but a small part of the problem with immigration. The real problem is that we still confuse - or ignore - two types of immigrant: the productive, and the unproductive.

By far the most corrosive cause of bad race relations is the immigrant who lives off the state. The British are, by their nature, a tolerant people. We have a proud tradition of giving a welcome to those who want to better their lot.

My own ancestors arrived here to do just that at the turn of the last century. They, too, came from Eastern Europe - the same Eastern Europe as that which many experts on immigration predict will give rise to unprecedented numbers of migrants to Britain when its countries join the EU in May.

My family came here to escape the pogroms and to work, and were fiercely proud that, having arrived with nothing, they built themselves good lives through their own efforts.

That is the British tradition. And to those immigrants who are similarly committed to a new life and who want to better themselves through hard work, we should say: welcome. We will all benefit from their industry and enterprise. That, of course, has been the engine which has driven the US to its astonishing wealth and prosperity.

But there is a fundamental contradiction between that approach and the benefits culture which has taken hold, and it means that unproductive immigrants who come here and live off the state have poisoned the well even for those whom we should welcome.

Take the decision of the government in 1993, when many Hong Kong Chinese were looking for somewhere else to live in the run-up to the Chinese communist takeover of their home.

Fearing a backlash from an electorate which was by then all too used to paying taxes to fund the benefits of unworthy immigrants, the Conservatives ignored a clear economic interest in offering them a home here, and refused to allow them in.

Who suffered? Not the Hong Kong Chinese, whose industry and entrepreneurship went instead to Vancouver, which welcomed them and reaped the economic rewards. We were the ones who suffered, denied their contribution.

What a mess: we have arrived at the situation where migrants we should welcome go elsewhere, while those who plan to live off the state and contribute nothing are welcomed.

There is, though, an answer which is both tough and economically sensible, and which would work to promote tolerance rather than undermine it, as the current, despised system does. It?s a solution which was promoted by the Danish centre-right party during their general election campaign in 2001, and which swept the party to power.

We must be explicit that productive immigrants are good, and that unproductive immigrants are bad. We must be much tougher on those who come for benefits and to abuse the asylum rules. But we must welcome the industrious. And structure the benefits system so that it recognises the distinction.

For their first seven years in this country, immigrants should receive no state benefits of any kind, other than schooling for their children and emergency health care. That way they will have no choice but to support themselves.

Indeed, once it becomes clear that Britain is no longer a soft touch, those who don?t want to work won?t come. There will be no point. The only immigrants will be those who do want to work, to contribute to the economy, and to pay taxes.

The benefits if these people do come will be far greater than merely economic. If immigrants can only prosper by their own efforts, and clearly so, then the main cause of resentment will have disappeared. Integration will be that much easier.

Existing immigration policy, with its chaotic application and benefit dependency, makes immigrants a permanent and growing target for criticism and attacks. A tough policy, which turns on its head the main concern of electors, that immigrants are somehow a leech on the state, is the very opposite of racist - it is actually the most liberal option of all.

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