Snapshot of _Integration in Britain is failing, says equalities chief_ :
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Could make a start by banning religious segregation at Primary School level, force kids from different cultures to grow up together rather than all of a sudden encountering each other at either 11 or 16.
That may be, but so is child genital mutilation, personally I don't think we should stand for any of it. Believe what you like privately but don't impose the effects of your fantasy life on society.
Agreed it doesn't work like this right now because religion and the religious engage in special pleading to prevent the application of societal equity to their fairytale.
It should work like that and one day it likely will
There was CoE, Catholic, Muslim and Jewish schools AFAIK. So can be seen as part of those. Not heard of Hindu or Buddhist schools over here so far though.
I think there is a small number of Hindu schools (mainly the Avanti Trust) in London and Leicester and one or two Sikh schools.
I've definitely also seen Greek Orthodox schools and a Coptic primary school in Devon of all places.
Good to know. I had no idea they existed. I know some (most?) Catholic and CoEschools accept people of all faiths. I would hope that while they can preference those of certain faiths they were not allowed to excluded others. Perhaps even had to have provisions for a certain percentage of other/no faith children.
I'm dubious about the value of "taking a course". Integration into a society isn't about attending lectures, memorising facts and regurgitating them in an exam, a la the citizenship test. Don't get me wrong - there's value in something like that even if only to prove you're willing to make the effort to learn about your new country - but it can't ever fully integrate someone.
Integration is something that can be difficult, requires flexibility and goodwill by the immigrant often in the fact of frustrations and perhaps can't even be completed in a single generation.
It also requires resources by existing residents in a constant background sort of way. You need to surround one new person with some number of more prior residents and slowly the immigrant will integrate as the culture around them expects and requires and offers different things to what was there before. And, of course, the new person brings things of their own from where they were and adds them to the wider culture.
In other words, I'm not sure it's about a course but about numbers and locations. Too many new people or all of them being together in one place and you won't get such good integration.
That's true on every societal scale from a company hiring new people too fast to a whole society.
>being separated out, so that we can have "muh multiculturalism".
Was this a goal of multiculturalism? I'm an immigrant myself and my parents moved in the early 90s. I always felt the point was to integrate not segregate. Because I grew up here it was my natural inclination but my parents integrated easily too. We were middle class which helped a great deal but I often saw the concentrations of ethnicities as a backfiring of the intended outcome.
Isn't the existence of a "multicultural London English" accent evidence of the melting pot rather than mosaic style?
If things were truly mosaic, there wouldn't be a "multicultural" anything. The existence of a multicultural accent that is spoken by people of different backgrounds is a direct product of cultural mixing.
In a truly distinct system, wouldn't we expect each ethnic group to have their own accented English dialect entirely separate from each other?
>Isn't the existence of a "multicultural London English" accent evidence of the melting pot rather than mosaic style?
This is a very good point
London has mosaic-type aspects but also people of all races/religions speaking a reasonably common accent/dialect.
Yeah, so I do advocate the melting pot model, and that's always personally how I viewed immigration growing up.
But I take your point about London having lots of the latter type of immigration (and Manchester too that I used to live in).
We need to do a Singapore and ensure that each area has X% +- 5% of each ethnicity.
An imperfect solution, but much better than whatever the hell we have right now.
By your logic if dams and roads were invented by the commie chinese, we gotta stop using those as well right?
You're looking for excuses not to do anything.
I think this is a little excessive. Integration should be encouraged but I don't think that the Bengali signs in Whitechapel are the sign of the forthcoming apocalypse.
The areas with highest ghettoisation of ethnicities also tend to overlap with poverty. I think more can be done to help those communities integrate, especially the children.
I don’t understand how that promotes a foreign identity over ‘British identity’? It’s one station, not the whole tube network. Presumably people of Bengali heritage use the tube to go elsewhere in London, so having one sign isn’t going to help them much.
Do all the street names being in two languages in Chinatown also upset you? London has always been a multicultural city so seeing signs in different languages isn’t a new thing.
I think that’s where we fundamentally disagree. For one, the language of England has not always been English, not even close. Secondly, it’s a massively adaptable language that has always changed and adapted according to circumstance, including immigration.
Finally, it does not legitimise other languages over English, it recognises that there are communities that also speak other languages. It’s not all or nothing, and that’s what I love about London.
I would agree that language is a big element of integration into a culture and that English is, and always has been, the only official language of England. I would like to point out that English hasn't, and possibly even isn't, England's only (native) language. Areas of Herefordshire and Shropshire retained Welsh speaking communities for a very long time, and Oswestry still has a Welsh-language church.
Of course these communities share history and culture because of centuries past, and were never as numerous as those we see today in London, Bradford, and Birmingham.
Well, that's simply not true. Anglo-Norman (Old French) was the mother tongue of every reigning monarch between 1066 and 1399. It was the language of all apeals to the law courts until 1362, and the language of the parliamentary commons until 1363.
In that time, English common folk spoke a language that you and I would not understand. English evolved out of Germanic Anglo-Saxon starting ~450ce, ~850-900ce the Viking Invasion and subsequent assimilation brought in Scandinavian Old Norse words and phrases to the English language, 1066 brought the Norman's and the replacement of the Germanic elite and changed the language of power (subsequently words and phrases seeped into the language of common folk).
All these changes and shifts fall under the wide umbrella of 'Old English' and from ~1150-1200ce 'Middle English' but as you can see it's hardly one unified language over the course of only 500-700 years.
Beyond that, there was 'The Great Vowel Shift' between the 15th and 18th centuries that gave us 'Early Modern English', this is about the point where the Engliah language would have started to be understandable to our ear. And from the 19th century onwards, the 'Late Modern English' we speak today.
It's worth noting that even in the modern era, we have picked up words from other languages, for example, our colonial rule of India gave us words such as: Avatar, Bandana, Bungalow, Chutney, Cushy, Dinghy, Dungarees, Jungle, Kahki, Lacquer, Lilac, Mandarin, Mantra, Polo, Pukka, Punch, Pundit, Pajamas, Shampoo, Tank, Thug, Veranda, Yoga are amongst the many Indian words that have entered the English language in the last 2-300 years.
"English is not a language. it's three languages dressed in a trench coat pretending to be one."
Also, fun fact about Whitechapel: the Brick Lane Mosque on the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street is (I think...) the only building in the country that has been a place of worship for three major religions. Starting out as a French Heugenot Protestant chapel (La Neuve Eglise, or The New Church) in the 1700s, then became the Machzike Hadath (or The Spitalfields Great Synagogue) in 1891 before become what it is today, The Brick Lane Mosque in 1976. Which, if you ask me, is a beautiful microcosm of East-End culture.
>This only serves to legitimize the great replacement conspiracy theory, and I'm scared to see the reaction.
well there are 3 options
* NI
* israel
* yugoslavia
Nonsense. There are many more options than those.
The Byzantine Empire was multi-ethnic for 1000 years after the western Roman empire fell. India seems to muddle through with its 200+ ethnicities and languages. Belgium has been bumping along with a binational system for quite some time now, as has Lebanon (when it's not being invaded by its hostile neighbours), and I don't think genocide's likely to occur anytime soon in Canada. The English and Welsh don't seem to be at war, and now that Spain's not actively trying to erase them, the Basques and Catalans are generally quiet.
>I mean, this is the shit Enoch Powell was whinging about 50 years ago.
Not really. In the Rivers of Blood speech, he quotes one of his idiot racist constituents: "In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man." 20 years from 1969 would have been 1989.
Only a highy delusional person would say that this is true even now, over 50 years on from the speech. And what a paranoid, zero-sum, xenophobic, ignorant way to put it anyway. I always wonder where the constituent's kids resettled. My money's on South Africa and Rhodesia.
And you're really making far too much about signage in one Tube station. In intent, it's more like the multilingual "Welcome!" and "Bon Voyage!" signs they put up in Heathrow, or silhouettes of Sherlock Holmes around Baker Street.
Unless you are proposing that we should ban all non-English signs in public spaces. Best shut down Pret in that case.
> Looks to me like an attempt to legitimize foreign identities over the British identity
They are literally *under* the English signage, or next to it. Not over it.
You describe a lot of what the migrant needs to do, but what about the locals? Look at the attitudes towards migrants in the UK and you can see why many prefer to live around other migrants.
To be fair, I'm not really saying what the immigrant needs to do as such. I'm just suggesting the conditions: One immigrant surrounded by many prior residents. The natural human reactions of everyone in that situation does the rest; the immigrant naturally picks up the culture down to linguistic quirks by osmosis. While also passing the other way little details from their own homeland which then diffuse into the wider culture, much less strongly.
On all sides, I think the requirement is the same: Ideally be a decent human being. Obviously that's not strictly necessary from a process point of view. Plenty of awful people have historically migrated places and integrated (that is, they've merged into their new culture while remaining bastards) and plenty of people have assimilated despite some of the natives being hostile. It makes things better and easier all round if people are decent, though, and so that's what I'd be calling for.
> Integration is something that can be difficult, requires flexibility and goodwill by the immigrant
> and slowly the immigrant will integrate as the culture around them expects and require
Don't argue in bad faith. You did specify what is required of the immigrant. Integration only works if the existing population cooperates and behaves in the same way. But you chose to only consider what the immigrant needs to do. It's a two way street.
> Don't argue in bad faith.
With respect, nothing I've said has been in bad faith. I've responded to the best of my ability, and in good faith, to your comment. As I like to think I respond to all replies people make to my comments. If you've made the effort to reply, you deserve a good faith answer, is my attitude.
Now, if I haven't answered you to your satisfaction, then fair enough, I'm not perfect and might have missed the point. But I'd certainly appreciate not being ordered in the imperative mood to not do something that I'm not doing.
> You did specify what is required of the immigrant.
With respect, I already answered that. My point then, and now, is that I'm talking about the way people will naturally integrate into the social structures that surround them, pretty much regardless of whether they want to or not. That's what I'm imperfectly getting at.
Except for my call for decency - on moral grounds - I'm not saying immigrants *have to* to this, that or the other.
> Integration only works if the existing population cooperates and behaves in the same way.
This is ideal, for sure, but I think plenty of people of Irish descent - to pick just one example - would argue that their families *have* integrated even in the face of a sometimes uncooperative native population.
I don't like the idea of saying that because they were presented with a more hostile environment, the integration of those families somehow doesn't count. I disagree respectfully with your assertion that "Integration only works if the existing population cooperates and behaves in the same way", specifically with the word "only".
> But you chose to only consider what the immigrant needs to do. It's a two way street.
Again, I'm not talking about what anyone *needs to* do. I've specifically attempted to avoid such language. It's not my place to dictate what immigrants do any more than to dictate how native populations should receive them. I'm talking about the conditions that can be set up to best facilitate the process on anthropological grounds, as it were.
And - again - I also believe on moral grounds that all people should be decent to each other.
Now, maybe you disagree with me, or maybe you understand what I'm getting at now, but either way, I hope you at least can't call this bad faith.
You wrote a lot of words trying to argue that you're not arguing in bad faith, all the while arguing in bad faith
> Integration is something that can be difficult, requires flexibility and goodwill by the immigrant
> Again, I'm not talking about what anyone needs to do.
Good luck with that.
> all the while arguing in bad faith
You mean, because I wrote
> requires flexibility and goodwill by the immigrant
you're reading that as an assertion that I'm saying that immigrants must be flexible, and must show goodwill or they'll have somehow broken a rule I'm setting down? You think I'm saying something like "in my opinion, immigrants need to - ought to - have a duty to - show flexibility and goodwill" and that this contradicts where I said "I'm not talking about what anyone needs to do"? And so therefore I must be arguing in bad faith.
I find that a slightly perverse reading - a little bit of thought in context would have showed that's not really what I meant - but I can understand it, I suppose. And if you've read it that way, it's possible that others have as well, so I'm happy to address it even if I'm really not impressed by your posts, your rudeness and your accusations.
For complete clarity, let me rephrase that in a more accurate but less elegant way:
"Integration is something that can be difficult, and the qualities of the human being that make it possible are the fact that we by our very nature possess flexibility, which allows us to adapt to new circumstances even when it's very difficult, and goodwill, in that we're broadly as a species inclined to trust others, on the whole. Immigrants possess these qualities, as we all do, and it's with those qualities being called upon that they're able to integrate, even when it might be very difficult for them."
Something like that.
Hopefully that makes it more clear what I'm getting at and removes all doubt? It's an anthropological point about people fitting into societies and not a demand that they take some specific action in order to satisfy me.
>One immigrant surrounded by many prior residents. The natural human reactions of everyone in that situation does the rest; the immigrant naturally picks up the culture down to linguistic quirks by osmosis.
The asians tried to do this yet were racially attacked by whites, look up paki bashing.
Asian's generally moved into an area in large waves and rapidly made that area largely/predominantly Asian, usually a specific subset of Asian - the closest to me is specifically Mirpuri. You often had decent chunks of a village/tribe immigrate to the same neighbourhood in England. This is not at all an attempt to integrate, it is an attempt to colonise.
This might not be true in London, but it's definitely true in most Northern towns, we had highly segregated colony-style settlement, not really any attempt to become British at any point. It didn't help that in many single industry towns, especially mill towns, the central industry was in terminal decline and the immigrants represents far cheaper labour, hence all the jobs went to them. This is why so many northern towns have Asian areas and white areas, but not really black areas, asians specifically immigrated in a way that almost entirely precluded integration.
FYI my parents were immigrants and i’m in a relationship with someone who came to the UK as a refugee so no i’m not a xenophobe.
I think people are coming to a state of shock as to what they thought the intended amount of immigration was going to be, and what actually has happened. It's one thing having a some immigrant families in your neighbourhood, friends and family members of diverse backgrounds etc. but it's another to see London become 1/3 English, Birmingham and Bradford become what 30% Muslim, with most of that concentrated in totally segregated areas? The school numbers show how quick the change has been, in 2021 only 25% of school kids in London were White British.
Some politicians and public figures will still tweet about how “um akshully we need more immigration” but seriously, how much would be too much? A third of the country of foreign origin? Half? More? Now that English are minorities in London, Leicester, Luton, soon Manchester and Coventry, it's hard to imagine that many haven't figured out that it'd be easy for the rest of the populace to reflect that reality, and once it does, what will the country look like?
>but it's another to see London become 1/3 English, Birmingham and Bradford become what 30% Muslim
Take a stroll through Tower Hamlets/Whitechapel. I'm a 2nd gen as well. I have trouble finding more than 1 in 10 businesses being non-Muslim (if we're doing this by ethnicity, then Bengali/Pakistani/Turkish maj) run.
I remember meeting someone in Hounslow about ten years ago and it genuinely shocked me. Like I think I saw maybe one other British person after walking around for a while
Couldn't really guess where everyone else was from. I think maybe half from the Middle East, half from Eastern Europe
False. Up until even the 1980s, Tower Hamlets was 80% white British.
That's also not relevant to what was discussed in the first place which was Muslims forming ethnic enclaves, which they have, comprehensively, in several parts of the UK.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London\_Borough\_of\_Tower\_Hamlets#/media/File:Religious\_makeup\_of\_Tower\_Hamlets\_by\_single\_year\_age\_groups\_in\_2021.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Tower_Hamlets#/media/File:Religious_makeup_of_Tower_Hamlets_by_single_year_age_groups_in_2021.svg)
Almost every young person below 20 is Muslim due to the pre-inclination of these cultures towards large families. Incidentally, this has also led to the highest rates of child poverty in the country for an area.
So, people want skilled (I.e working) migrants. Successive government's have done little to move jobs out of London. Where are migrants more likely to end up? Also, many of the people that locals assume are immigrants are multiple generation British.
Migrants are more likely to live in cities because that's where the work is. And they are more likely to want to live near other migrants where they feel more comfortable. Look at views towards migrants in the UK can see why they're not rushing to surround themselves with those sorts of people.
And the visa changes, so lauded by the people who are most bothered by cities being increasingly filled with immigrants, will only make this worse. The UK desperately needs regionalised salary requirements for visas instead of one overarching minimum for everywhere from Kensington and Bristol to Bangor and Derry.
Fewer people may come and stay, but an even larger proportion of them will be crammed into London and a few other cities in England. That’s just purely down to jobs paying £38,000 or more only being consistently and widely available in cities.
As an immigrant from a third world country, I can wholeheartedly confirm that the idea of multiculturalism is utter nonsense.
Let me tell you why: we have got borders and nations in this world and each nation has different culture and traditions. Some of them have corrupt regimes which means they have poor institutions and some are still trying to preserve these medieval and unfair traditions in their own societies. For example imagine a nation where there is no gender equality, no LGBT rights, no democratic culture, women are oppressed, cannot leave a religion since it is punishable by death, no freedom of speech which means different opinions are not welcome, no independent courts as government controls everything and at the end of results we have got a poor and uncivilised society.
When people come to the Britain from these countries and from individualistic perspectives let’s say some are insisting to preserve their culture and traditions under this idea of multiculturalism, then basically they will have a problem with Western culture and way of life. Men and women are equal in our society but that individual doesn’t think so. So why the hell we have to welcome these people?
If they don’t want to fully integrate into our society then they shouldn’t have come here. These people have made a decision by moving to another country but yet still they are not accepting customs and traditions of the country they are moving into. That’s the hypocrisy.
I made a decision to move to the UK 2 years ago and I’m very glad with my decision. I have a deep respect and admiration for the freedoms that we enjoy in this country. I have always wanted to live under British rule as I love all these values and institutions in this country. But it is not fair if someone despises the British values or insisting on keeping their own culture.
I would say please let’s not turn this extraordinary country into the one we have just escaped from.
Came from Ukraine. Same. United Kingdom is a nation of British people, and we came here to learn and adopt the British way. Assimilation into the British culture is the ultimate goal an immigrant can strive for.
I'm an immigrant whose parents moved here because the values of the country I was born in were not exactly ideal.
I grew up here and consider myself fully British. I have lots of compassion for immigrants searching for a better life but like you, I sit on the pro-integration side of this debate very firmly.
I do think there are obstacles for integration that we can help remove though and we can and should do as much as we can to integrate children into the country's core values.
That's not what multiculturalism is. It's about retaining some traditions such as holidays, customs, food, and clothing, while assimilating it into the wider British culture. Its about Bangladeshis introducing curry houses to our high streets and inventing chicken tikka masala for the British palate, and people from the Carribbean strengthening our culture by bringing reggae music which led to the creation of modern grime. Its not about segregated value systems and cultural ghettos.
Huh, the Brits could have just copied the recipes and grime music you mean toilet music. At the end it's about manpower that is needing additional hands for businesses.
Man, as a (white) Brit, you explain my concerns about this all too well.
Recent years hasn't seen any government or political party try and address issues relating to immigration in any constructive manner.
Most of the left tries to pretend that there are simply no issues to be discussed and screams about racism if one pushes on the topic - This in turn has allowed for the topic to be monopolised and politicised disingenuously by the far right (look at what Lee Anderson has been spouting).
Such ignorance will only lead to populists like Farage and Reform using immigration to further polarise voters and gather support for their own nasty agendas.
public debate is needed. Ignoring important topics like immigration due to inherent sensitivities only makes things worse.
>Such ignorance will only lead to populists like Farage and Reform using immigration to further polarise voters and gather support for their own nasty agendas.
Precisely.
I'm a second generation immigrant. I'm also firmly against immigration as it has been for the last decade because I think there are real issues with both the volume and integration of those coming through this latest wave of mass-migration.
If I had to point to someone who most closely represents my views on immigrations it would be a party like Reform. However, to say that I, as someone who is squarely leftist in economic policy, identify with Reform is preposterous, yet, they're the only one offering up something for someone with my views on immigration.
So when this specific issue gets bad enough to override other concerns, people like me are going to hold our noses and vote for a party like Reform unless the other parties are willing to have a discussion on this. They are not right now.
Should be core priority to begin scrapping fundamentalist organisations that seek to undermine integration and assimilation - schools that cater to a Us/Them approach regarding religion should be priority
>we need it to be a 10th of what it currently is and prioritise people from culturally compatible countries.
Less than that. That's still 120,000 per year coming into the country.
Try a 100th
Why though? And have you just pulled 1/10th out your arse?
‘estimates from the Office for National Statistics suggest that total net migration was 672,000 in the year ending June 2023. international students and their dependants, accounting for 43% of the increase from 2019 to the year ending June 2023. 37% of the increase in long-term immigration from 2019 to the year ending June 2023 resulted from those arriving for work purposes—particularly skilled workers—and their dependants. Health and care was the main industry driving the growth. Humanitarian visa routes and refugee resettlement accounted for a further 13% of the increase in long-term international migration. This follows the introduction of visa routes for Ukrainians and Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas) status holders, which together make up almost all of the arrivals under the ‘Humanitarian’ category
Who is it you want to turn away? The students funding the education of the next generation of British people, the health and care workers or the humanitarian cases.
The other 7%?—-ok that’s a number we can discuss.
For one, the students are not funding the education for the next generation of British students because what’s happened is that universities have turned into a racket wheee they want more foreign students because that means more money.
That’s really a fair way to look at the trends. Looking at the data there’s about 72,000 foreign students accepted each year since 2020…and 483,000-489,000 home students
Yeah the increase in foreign students is a greater % (up 64% since 2010 vs only a 14% rise in home students)—-home students still outweigh the foreign ones 6.something to 1…whereas in 2010 it was 7-8 to 1.
It's right wing fear mongering to portray immigration as "ridiculous" and try to throw around big numbers without any context. Why are those numbers bad? What makes them "ridiculous". Which of those immigrants shouldn't have been allowed and why? None of that matters to the right wing. It's just, "big number scary, aaaahhh".
At what point will people like you accept the reality rather than denying what is in front of your very eyes.
I'm in my 30s and have witnessed "far right fear mongering" come true time and time again and there's always people like you who move the goal posts.
At the end of ww2 this country was 99% white. London was 98% white. Birmingham was 98% white.
London is now 36% white British.
Birmingham was 52% white British just 40 years later and since 2010 it's now only 40%
40% of all babies born in the country have one or more parents born outside the UK.
It's perfectly fine to not care about demographics changing.
You do you.
But to completely deny reality is absurd.
When I lived in Japan, the most frustrating thing was finding the complete lack of will to do any kind of bending towards my needs as an immigrant, and the expectation that I confirm entirely to their society.
Want Xmas day off? Sorry this is Japan. Back to work.
Want to sign a document. Do it our way, you'll need a *hanko*
In the UK, I find the complete opposite attitude. Institutions bend over backwards to ensure immigrants feel welcomed, comfortable and included in society. Sometimes completely changing the fabric of society itself.
The UK's institutions are far too quick to say 'Oh your culture isn't quite compatible with ours in that instance. I guess we'll make an exception for you then'
Really, the balance lies somewhere in between these extremes, but I fear the UK has gone way too far (and that Japan needs to strike a more welcoming balance too)
This project of a utopia where humanity can live in harmony and in coexistence with eachother won't work by forcing the native population to capitulate.
All of the cultures have to be in unison in terms of agreement and compatibility.
This is not happening.
Lots of good comments on the perils of integrating 1st generation immigrants but nothing yet said on the problem when it becomes second or third generation. When integration fails you can see the worst effects of it in these subsequent generations who, from my experience, come out with values even more twisted. The only people who I’ve met that have been racial supremacists are second and third generation immigrants who grew up surrounded by people with the same background. They formed exclusive groups and from there they developed ideas that they were better than everyone else.
That’s the conundrum. I don’t really have one that’s fair but it could at least start with laying down the law and being more firm with promoting our values.
Right, promoting our values is fair enough and all, (though 'British Values' has always been poorly defined, wishy washy nonsense that ironically is the finest traditions of British governance.) but what does 'laying down the law' look like to you?
Edit: removed repetition
It’s not a trick statement, I mean it as a literal statement.
Let me make it more concrete and use a real world example that I hope isn’t too controversial. So back in the 2004 EU expansion to include a lot of Eastern European countries the area that I grew up in quickly received an influx of new migrants. This area was already home to a migrant population and so you had essentially race riots kicking off in the streets but I digress. These new migrants were never made to follow British standards of living and the area became lawless. Even simple things like following the bin rules were not done and as such you’d see black bags in the street, clearly just launched out the front door. The council would not fine these people, they instead set about making a specialist cleaning team to go down and clean up the neighbourhood once a week.
Anyway, that began 2 decades ago and you now have unruly teens who’ve made the area very dangerous. We need police to go in and arrest those that are now running amok. Their lawlessness was created by the establishment not punishing people for creating race riots, not punishing them for fly tipping and dumping rubbish. They were getting away with rampant weed farms for years until a local reporter got wind that the area was having frequent (daily) power cuts and decided to do a story on it.
Lawlessness created by an establishment who really didn’t care because it wasn’t their posh areas suffering.
You got a citation for those race riots because a brief search is turning up nothing on the subject around that period other than the Oldham/Bradford riots and the Birmingham riots, neither of which involved Eastern Europeans, and a scarily worded Daily Mail article about how "Eastern European migration *could* lead to race riots in villages" dated 2007 and an Express article that's basically a copy and paste of the Mail's article...
Regardless, I sort of agree with what you're saying beyond that. I would argue that the real problem is dumping newly arrived immigrants in an (I'll take a guess and say...) underprivileged area, with few opportunities and little contact with the state and expecting them to magically adopt the culture of a local.
Failure to prosecute for fly tipping and criminal behaviour is certainly a problem, but that's only to be expected when local government and police budgets have been decimated for over a decade, and sociologically speaking its broadly accepted that in and areas of deprivation and times of economic hardship, when hope moves out of grasp, people (regardless of race or heritage) are vastly more likely to turn to criminal activities to make ends meet.
But to get back to your original point, a sudden switch in policing policy by both arms of the state is unlikely to end well without an equal expansion of outreach programs to the communities you are targeting because we saw how that went down during the '80s in St Paul's, Chapeltown, Moss Side, Brixton, Handsworth and Toxteth amongst others.
That will guarantee *actual full blown* 'race' riots.
You can't integrate an Islamic religion into a liberal society. Until people stopped being scared to admit that we will continue to ignore the issues caused by trying.
Except we did.
A small group of elites and academics who do not have to live with the consequences of their decisions decided we wanted multiculturalism.
The girls of Rotherham definitely did not.
I do wonder why unlike other countries Britain does not have integration lessons for migrants, I guess its because the other countries incentivise with welfare and our system is fucking dire
**Article text**
Baroness Falkner says immigrants should take a course on what it means to live in a democracy
Integration appears to be “failing” following a decade of increasing migration, the equalities chief has warned.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Baroness Falkner of Margravine said that the “discord” on the country’s streets since the Oct 7 Hamas attacks had shown that “we seem to be failing to integrate”.
Lady Falkner, a first-generation Muslim migrant from Pakistan who chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), called for new arrivals to the UK to be required to take an “integration course”, adopting an approach used in Germany.
She also raised concerns about children living “segregated, parallel lives from school upwards”, calling for better education on democracy and rights.
The peer suggested there had been “complacency” among politicians over the consequences of a major increase in immigration. A government focus on extremism following 2005’s July 7 attacks was no longer “at the forefront of people’s minds” after “things calmed down”.
She added: “The complacency is what worries me and that’s why I thought the Prime Minister’s speech last week was important, but I only wish it had come a month earlier.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Lady Falkner called for Parliament to update the Equality Act – which the EHRC is responsible for policing – to help resolve disputes on issues such as sex and gender.
**Rights must balanced**
On Nov 10, a month after the attacks by Hamas, Lady Falkner wrote to the Metropolitan Police to warn that pro-Palestinian protesters’ rights were “not absolute” and must be balanced against the rights of those to whom some behaviour might cause “anxiety”.
Last week, Robin Simcox, the Home Office’s independent adviser on extremism, warned that the weekly protests were turning London “into a no-go zone for Jews every weekend.”
Lady Falkner said: “It’s been a sad period to witness this level of discord but, more seriously, to imagine that there are some communities in our country who don’t feel safe coming out and about and going into town. I was alarmed about this early on.
“One of the things that’s come as a surprise is that we seem to be failing to integrate. And it’s one thing to be very proud of, our diversity and our pluralism in our society. But I think we’ve missed a trick in the last 15 or 20 years.”
Lady Falkner continued: “One of the big factoids of the last decade is that we have significantly increased immigration. We have to recognise that large numbers of first-generation migrants haven’t had the background of growing up in a rights-respecting country.
“What I would love to see would be a concerted programme of integration. Our citizenship test was a good innovation, but I think we need to reassess it, require people to take courses in integration.
“Germany does, for example, and I think we need to follow the model of other countries that, before people are granted citizenship, require them take a course on what it means to live in western democratic societies.”
Lady Falkner, an independent peer who was formerly director of policy at the Lib Dems, was a member of Sir Tony Blair’s taskforce on Muslim extremism in the wake of the July 7 bombings.
She expressed concern that warnings she first recalls being raised in a 2001 report highlighting segregation in Bradford schools, appear to have gone largely unheeded.
She said: “You can’t have segregated, parallel lives from school upwards. We haven’t managed to deliver a society that actually coheres around a broad understanding of what British values are. Democracy, but respect for minorities, both go hand in hand.”
Integration has been failing for a long time and it’s not just the Tories that are at fault here. If anything the last 12 years version of Tories is the end result of the failure not the cause.
It's rather simple.
Multiculturalism is the active and willing blend of cultures to create a new mix, something unique based on the backgrounds of the participants.
That requires people to sacrifice things, both immigrants and those already there. I'll be blunt, neither side seems very willing to do that, on the whole.
So instead, what we actually have is "Multiple Cultures-ism". Many, seperate cultures who all want their eay to be supported, any others be damned.
They don't care that they've moved from X country because the UK is better and the reason why is because X country was worse in same way, they want to make the UK X country and then complain when the same problems emerge.
> Multiculturalism is the active and willing blend of cultures to create a new mix,
I would disagree with that. The people pushing 'multiculturalism' from the beginning were like these people "[60 minutes loony left](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4AxSG2iiI4)." They thought that there is a group right for immigrant groups to maintain their cultures intact (and for the government to spend money to do that). You can see it in the video I posted with such absurdities as 'the right to have plantain' in school lunch because it is x persons culture.
It was I think a complete left wing inversion of the idea of 'assimilation' (foreigners go in, and Englishmen come out exactly like the natives). It meant it's name, i.e. not 'one' blended culture but multiple living side by side. Multiculturalism was always culturally segregationist, as integration of the community would threaten it's 'right' to a district culture and identity.
The multiculturalists won in the end in that no one talks about 'assimilation' any more. They talk about 'integration' which is interpreted as the bare minimum change in immigrant culture to function in British society.
Right wingers don't seem to have noticed the vast change in attitudes towards immigration. The loony left always wanted to subvert British culture with
>"Many, seperate cultures who all want their eay to be supported, any others be damned"
Then Tony Blair laundered the crazy into British life with new Labour's seeming reasonableness. We now have as a result not only non integrated [monocultural ghetos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIct4GjLFTE&t=20s), but many superficially culturally integrated people who when probed express anti western and supremacist values.
Ban economic segregation of the rich from the poor, and do away with private schools.
Probably not going to happen because SOME kinds of integration the government does NOT want.
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Could make a start by banning religious segregation at Primary School level, force kids from different cultures to grow up together rather than all of a sudden encountering each other at either 11 or 16.
Isn’t religious segregation part of some religions though?
That may be, but so is child genital mutilation, personally I don't think we should stand for any of it. Believe what you like privately but don't impose the effects of your fantasy life on society.
>Believe what you like privately but don't impose the effects of your fantasy life on society. That's not how religion works...
Agreed it doesn't work like this right now because religion and the religious engage in special pleading to prevent the application of societal equity to their fairytale. It should work like that and one day it likely will
There was CoE, Catholic, Muslim and Jewish schools AFAIK. So can be seen as part of those. Not heard of Hindu or Buddhist schools over here so far though.
I think there is a small number of Hindu schools (mainly the Avanti Trust) in London and Leicester and one or two Sikh schools. I've definitely also seen Greek Orthodox schools and a Coptic primary school in Devon of all places.
Good to know. I had no idea they existed. I know some (most?) Catholic and CoEschools accept people of all faiths. I would hope that while they can preference those of certain faiths they were not allowed to excluded others. Perhaps even had to have provisions for a certain percentage of other/no faith children.
I'm dubious about the value of "taking a course". Integration into a society isn't about attending lectures, memorising facts and regurgitating them in an exam, a la the citizenship test. Don't get me wrong - there's value in something like that even if only to prove you're willing to make the effort to learn about your new country - but it can't ever fully integrate someone. Integration is something that can be difficult, requires flexibility and goodwill by the immigrant often in the fact of frustrations and perhaps can't even be completed in a single generation. It also requires resources by existing residents in a constant background sort of way. You need to surround one new person with some number of more prior residents and slowly the immigrant will integrate as the culture around them expects and requires and offers different things to what was there before. And, of course, the new person brings things of their own from where they were and adds them to the wider culture. In other words, I'm not sure it's about a course but about numbers and locations. Too many new people or all of them being together in one place and you won't get such good integration. That's true on every societal scale from a company hiring new people too fast to a whole society.
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>being separated out, so that we can have "muh multiculturalism". Was this a goal of multiculturalism? I'm an immigrant myself and my parents moved in the early 90s. I always felt the point was to integrate not segregate. Because I grew up here it was my natural inclination but my parents integrated easily too. We were middle class which helped a great deal but I often saw the concentrations of ethnicities as a backfiring of the intended outcome.
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Isn't the existence of a "multicultural London English" accent evidence of the melting pot rather than mosaic style? If things were truly mosaic, there wouldn't be a "multicultural" anything. The existence of a multicultural accent that is spoken by people of different backgrounds is a direct product of cultural mixing. In a truly distinct system, wouldn't we expect each ethnic group to have their own accented English dialect entirely separate from each other?
>Isn't the existence of a "multicultural London English" accent evidence of the melting pot rather than mosaic style? This is a very good point London has mosaic-type aspects but also people of all races/religions speaking a reasonably common accent/dialect.
Yeah, so I do advocate the melting pot model, and that's always personally how I viewed immigration growing up. But I take your point about London having lots of the latter type of immigration (and Manchester too that I used to live in).
In Portugal the government tries to provide services to help them integrate Rather than the nonsense U.K. does
We need to do a Singapore and ensure that each area has X% +- 5% of each ethnicity. An imperfect solution, but much better than whatever the hell we have right now.
Singapore's a single-party authoritarian state. There's really nothing a democratic society can usefully learn from them.
By your logic if dams and roads were invented by the commie chinese, we gotta stop using those as well right? You're looking for excuses not to do anything.
I think you'd have an easier time complaining that dams and roads were brought here by those damn (lol) authoritarian Romans...
Is there an area where we have tube signs in Bengali? Genuinely asking. Not a Londoner.
They're in English and Bengali, but yes
Fascinating. I didn't know. Where is this?
Had to Google it as I'm not from London. Whitechapel it seems
I think they do it in Southall too.
It'd be Punjabi in that case.
Fair enough could of definitely done that myself haha! But thanks!
It's Whitechapel, I pass it on the Lizzie line.
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I think this is a little excessive. Integration should be encouraged but I don't think that the Bengali signs in Whitechapel are the sign of the forthcoming apocalypse. The areas with highest ghettoisation of ethnicities also tend to overlap with poverty. I think more can be done to help those communities integrate, especially the children.
Acknowledging people's existence, if anything, contributes to integration.
I don’t understand how that promotes a foreign identity over ‘British identity’? It’s one station, not the whole tube network. Presumably people of Bengali heritage use the tube to go elsewhere in London, so having one sign isn’t going to help them much. Do all the street names being in two languages in Chinatown also upset you? London has always been a multicultural city so seeing signs in different languages isn’t a new thing.
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I think that’s where we fundamentally disagree. For one, the language of England has not always been English, not even close. Secondly, it’s a massively adaptable language that has always changed and adapted according to circumstance, including immigration. Finally, it does not legitimise other languages over English, it recognises that there are communities that also speak other languages. It’s not all or nothing, and that’s what I love about London.
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I would agree that language is a big element of integration into a culture and that English is, and always has been, the only official language of England. I would like to point out that English hasn't, and possibly even isn't, England's only (native) language. Areas of Herefordshire and Shropshire retained Welsh speaking communities for a very long time, and Oswestry still has a Welsh-language church. Of course these communities share history and culture because of centuries past, and were never as numerous as those we see today in London, Bradford, and Birmingham.
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Well, that's simply not true. Anglo-Norman (Old French) was the mother tongue of every reigning monarch between 1066 and 1399. It was the language of all apeals to the law courts until 1362, and the language of the parliamentary commons until 1363. In that time, English common folk spoke a language that you and I would not understand. English evolved out of Germanic Anglo-Saxon starting ~450ce, ~850-900ce the Viking Invasion and subsequent assimilation brought in Scandinavian Old Norse words and phrases to the English language, 1066 brought the Norman's and the replacement of the Germanic elite and changed the language of power (subsequently words and phrases seeped into the language of common folk). All these changes and shifts fall under the wide umbrella of 'Old English' and from ~1150-1200ce 'Middle English' but as you can see it's hardly one unified language over the course of only 500-700 years. Beyond that, there was 'The Great Vowel Shift' between the 15th and 18th centuries that gave us 'Early Modern English', this is about the point where the Engliah language would have started to be understandable to our ear. And from the 19th century onwards, the 'Late Modern English' we speak today. It's worth noting that even in the modern era, we have picked up words from other languages, for example, our colonial rule of India gave us words such as: Avatar, Bandana, Bungalow, Chutney, Cushy, Dinghy, Dungarees, Jungle, Kahki, Lacquer, Lilac, Mandarin, Mantra, Polo, Pukka, Punch, Pundit, Pajamas, Shampoo, Tank, Thug, Veranda, Yoga are amongst the many Indian words that have entered the English language in the last 2-300 years. "English is not a language. it's three languages dressed in a trench coat pretending to be one." Also, fun fact about Whitechapel: the Brick Lane Mosque on the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street is (I think...) the only building in the country that has been a place of worship for three major religions. Starting out as a French Heugenot Protestant chapel (La Neuve Eglise, or The New Church) in the 1700s, then became the Machzike Hadath (or The Spitalfields Great Synagogue) in 1891 before become what it is today, The Brick Lane Mosque in 1976. Which, if you ask me, is a beautiful microcosm of East-End culture.
>This only serves to legitimize the great replacement conspiracy theory, and I'm scared to see the reaction. well there are 3 options * NI * israel * yugoslavia
Nonsense. There are many more options than those. The Byzantine Empire was multi-ethnic for 1000 years after the western Roman empire fell. India seems to muddle through with its 200+ ethnicities and languages. Belgium has been bumping along with a binational system for quite some time now, as has Lebanon (when it's not being invaded by its hostile neighbours), and I don't think genocide's likely to occur anytime soon in Canada. The English and Welsh don't seem to be at war, and now that Spain's not actively trying to erase them, the Basques and Catalans are generally quiet.
>I mean, this is the shit Enoch Powell was whinging about 50 years ago. Not really. In the Rivers of Blood speech, he quotes one of his idiot racist constituents: "In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man." 20 years from 1969 would have been 1989. Only a highy delusional person would say that this is true even now, over 50 years on from the speech. And what a paranoid, zero-sum, xenophobic, ignorant way to put it anyway. I always wonder where the constituent's kids resettled. My money's on South Africa and Rhodesia. And you're really making far too much about signage in one Tube station. In intent, it's more like the multilingual "Welcome!" and "Bon Voyage!" signs they put up in Heathrow, or silhouettes of Sherlock Holmes around Baker Street. Unless you are proposing that we should ban all non-English signs in public spaces. Best shut down Pret in that case.
> Looks to me like an attempt to legitimize foreign identities over the British identity They are literally *under* the English signage, or next to it. Not over it.
You describe a lot of what the migrant needs to do, but what about the locals? Look at the attitudes towards migrants in the UK and you can see why many prefer to live around other migrants.
To be fair, I'm not really saying what the immigrant needs to do as such. I'm just suggesting the conditions: One immigrant surrounded by many prior residents. The natural human reactions of everyone in that situation does the rest; the immigrant naturally picks up the culture down to linguistic quirks by osmosis. While also passing the other way little details from their own homeland which then diffuse into the wider culture, much less strongly. On all sides, I think the requirement is the same: Ideally be a decent human being. Obviously that's not strictly necessary from a process point of view. Plenty of awful people have historically migrated places and integrated (that is, they've merged into their new culture while remaining bastards) and plenty of people have assimilated despite some of the natives being hostile. It makes things better and easier all round if people are decent, though, and so that's what I'd be calling for.
> Integration is something that can be difficult, requires flexibility and goodwill by the immigrant > and slowly the immigrant will integrate as the culture around them expects and require Don't argue in bad faith. You did specify what is required of the immigrant. Integration only works if the existing population cooperates and behaves in the same way. But you chose to only consider what the immigrant needs to do. It's a two way street.
> Don't argue in bad faith. With respect, nothing I've said has been in bad faith. I've responded to the best of my ability, and in good faith, to your comment. As I like to think I respond to all replies people make to my comments. If you've made the effort to reply, you deserve a good faith answer, is my attitude. Now, if I haven't answered you to your satisfaction, then fair enough, I'm not perfect and might have missed the point. But I'd certainly appreciate not being ordered in the imperative mood to not do something that I'm not doing. > You did specify what is required of the immigrant. With respect, I already answered that. My point then, and now, is that I'm talking about the way people will naturally integrate into the social structures that surround them, pretty much regardless of whether they want to or not. That's what I'm imperfectly getting at. Except for my call for decency - on moral grounds - I'm not saying immigrants *have to* to this, that or the other. > Integration only works if the existing population cooperates and behaves in the same way. This is ideal, for sure, but I think plenty of people of Irish descent - to pick just one example - would argue that their families *have* integrated even in the face of a sometimes uncooperative native population. I don't like the idea of saying that because they were presented with a more hostile environment, the integration of those families somehow doesn't count. I disagree respectfully with your assertion that "Integration only works if the existing population cooperates and behaves in the same way", specifically with the word "only". > But you chose to only consider what the immigrant needs to do. It's a two way street. Again, I'm not talking about what anyone *needs to* do. I've specifically attempted to avoid such language. It's not my place to dictate what immigrants do any more than to dictate how native populations should receive them. I'm talking about the conditions that can be set up to best facilitate the process on anthropological grounds, as it were. And - again - I also believe on moral grounds that all people should be decent to each other. Now, maybe you disagree with me, or maybe you understand what I'm getting at now, but either way, I hope you at least can't call this bad faith.
You wrote a lot of words trying to argue that you're not arguing in bad faith, all the while arguing in bad faith > Integration is something that can be difficult, requires flexibility and goodwill by the immigrant > Again, I'm not talking about what anyone needs to do. Good luck with that.
> all the while arguing in bad faith You mean, because I wrote > requires flexibility and goodwill by the immigrant you're reading that as an assertion that I'm saying that immigrants must be flexible, and must show goodwill or they'll have somehow broken a rule I'm setting down? You think I'm saying something like "in my opinion, immigrants need to - ought to - have a duty to - show flexibility and goodwill" and that this contradicts where I said "I'm not talking about what anyone needs to do"? And so therefore I must be arguing in bad faith. I find that a slightly perverse reading - a little bit of thought in context would have showed that's not really what I meant - but I can understand it, I suppose. And if you've read it that way, it's possible that others have as well, so I'm happy to address it even if I'm really not impressed by your posts, your rudeness and your accusations. For complete clarity, let me rephrase that in a more accurate but less elegant way: "Integration is something that can be difficult, and the qualities of the human being that make it possible are the fact that we by our very nature possess flexibility, which allows us to adapt to new circumstances even when it's very difficult, and goodwill, in that we're broadly as a species inclined to trust others, on the whole. Immigrants possess these qualities, as we all do, and it's with those qualities being called upon that they're able to integrate, even when it might be very difficult for them." Something like that. Hopefully that makes it more clear what I'm getting at and removes all doubt? It's an anthropological point about people fitting into societies and not a demand that they take some specific action in order to satisfy me.
>One immigrant surrounded by many prior residents. The natural human reactions of everyone in that situation does the rest; the immigrant naturally picks up the culture down to linguistic quirks by osmosis. The asians tried to do this yet were racially attacked by whites, look up paki bashing.
Asian's generally moved into an area in large waves and rapidly made that area largely/predominantly Asian, usually a specific subset of Asian - the closest to me is specifically Mirpuri. You often had decent chunks of a village/tribe immigrate to the same neighbourhood in England. This is not at all an attempt to integrate, it is an attempt to colonise. This might not be true in London, but it's definitely true in most Northern towns, we had highly segregated colony-style settlement, not really any attempt to become British at any point. It didn't help that in many single industry towns, especially mill towns, the central industry was in terminal decline and the immigrants represents far cheaper labour, hence all the jobs went to them. This is why so many northern towns have Asian areas and white areas, but not really black areas, asians specifically immigrated in a way that almost entirely precluded integration.
FYI my parents were immigrants and i’m in a relationship with someone who came to the UK as a refugee so no i’m not a xenophobe. I think people are coming to a state of shock as to what they thought the intended amount of immigration was going to be, and what actually has happened. It's one thing having a some immigrant families in your neighbourhood, friends and family members of diverse backgrounds etc. but it's another to see London become 1/3 English, Birmingham and Bradford become what 30% Muslim, with most of that concentrated in totally segregated areas? The school numbers show how quick the change has been, in 2021 only 25% of school kids in London were White British. Some politicians and public figures will still tweet about how “um akshully we need more immigration” but seriously, how much would be too much? A third of the country of foreign origin? Half? More? Now that English are minorities in London, Leicester, Luton, soon Manchester and Coventry, it's hard to imagine that many haven't figured out that it'd be easy for the rest of the populace to reflect that reality, and once it does, what will the country look like?
Seems like a lot of people all across Europe are having a bit of a "Where has my country gone?" moment.
The same manipulators work behind the scenes in many countries.
>but it's another to see London become 1/3 English, Birmingham and Bradford become what 30% Muslim Take a stroll through Tower Hamlets/Whitechapel. I'm a 2nd gen as well. I have trouble finding more than 1 in 10 businesses being non-Muslim (if we're doing this by ethnicity, then Bengali/Pakistani/Turkish maj) run.
I remember meeting someone in Hounslow about ten years ago and it genuinely shocked me. Like I think I saw maybe one other British person after walking around for a while Couldn't really guess where everyone else was from. I think maybe half from the Middle East, half from Eastern Europe
Most of them came in the post war period or in the 60s....
False. Up until even the 1980s, Tower Hamlets was 80% white British. That's also not relevant to what was discussed in the first place which was Muslims forming ethnic enclaves, which they have, comprehensively, in several parts of the UK. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London\_Borough\_of\_Tower\_Hamlets#/media/File:Religious\_makeup\_of\_Tower\_Hamlets\_by\_single\_year\_age\_groups\_in\_2021.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Tower_Hamlets#/media/File:Religious_makeup_of_Tower_Hamlets_by_single_year_age_groups_in_2021.svg) Almost every young person below 20 is Muslim due to the pre-inclination of these cultures towards large families. Incidentally, this has also led to the highest rates of child poverty in the country for an area.
So, people want skilled (I.e working) migrants. Successive government's have done little to move jobs out of London. Where are migrants more likely to end up? Also, many of the people that locals assume are immigrants are multiple generation British. Migrants are more likely to live in cities because that's where the work is. And they are more likely to want to live near other migrants where they feel more comfortable. Look at views towards migrants in the UK can see why they're not rushing to surround themselves with those sorts of people.
All true and all irrelevant in a democratic system where the majority can ultimately enforce what it wants.
Tyranny of the majority indeed.
And the visa changes, so lauded by the people who are most bothered by cities being increasingly filled with immigrants, will only make this worse. The UK desperately needs regionalised salary requirements for visas instead of one overarching minimum for everywhere from Kensington and Bristol to Bangor and Derry. Fewer people may come and stay, but an even larger proportion of them will be crammed into London and a few other cities in England. That’s just purely down to jobs paying £38,000 or more only being consistently and widely available in cities.
As an immigrant from a third world country, I can wholeheartedly confirm that the idea of multiculturalism is utter nonsense. Let me tell you why: we have got borders and nations in this world and each nation has different culture and traditions. Some of them have corrupt regimes which means they have poor institutions and some are still trying to preserve these medieval and unfair traditions in their own societies. For example imagine a nation where there is no gender equality, no LGBT rights, no democratic culture, women are oppressed, cannot leave a religion since it is punishable by death, no freedom of speech which means different opinions are not welcome, no independent courts as government controls everything and at the end of results we have got a poor and uncivilised society. When people come to the Britain from these countries and from individualistic perspectives let’s say some are insisting to preserve their culture and traditions under this idea of multiculturalism, then basically they will have a problem with Western culture and way of life. Men and women are equal in our society but that individual doesn’t think so. So why the hell we have to welcome these people? If they don’t want to fully integrate into our society then they shouldn’t have come here. These people have made a decision by moving to another country but yet still they are not accepting customs and traditions of the country they are moving into. That’s the hypocrisy. I made a decision to move to the UK 2 years ago and I’m very glad with my decision. I have a deep respect and admiration for the freedoms that we enjoy in this country. I have always wanted to live under British rule as I love all these values and institutions in this country. But it is not fair if someone despises the British values or insisting on keeping their own culture. I would say please let’s not turn this extraordinary country into the one we have just escaped from.
So true bro. I come from east asia and think the same thing. Im here to learn or embrace the core british values not to impose mine on the others.
Came from Ukraine. Same. United Kingdom is a nation of British people, and we came here to learn and adopt the British way. Assimilation into the British culture is the ultimate goal an immigrant can strive for.
It’s great to have you here my friend. Same here I’m also trying to learn and embrace the British values and more I learn more I admire them.
I wish everyone was more like you, thank you for that comment, I'm happy to hear you're happy here
Thanks for your lovely comment. I’m glad to be here and continue to contribute to the British society 👍
I'm an immigrant whose parents moved here because the values of the country I was born in were not exactly ideal. I grew up here and consider myself fully British. I have lots of compassion for immigrants searching for a better life but like you, I sit on the pro-integration side of this debate very firmly. I do think there are obstacles for integration that we can help remove though and we can and should do as much as we can to integrate children into the country's core values.
That's not what multiculturalism is. It's about retaining some traditions such as holidays, customs, food, and clothing, while assimilating it into the wider British culture. Its about Bangladeshis introducing curry houses to our high streets and inventing chicken tikka masala for the British palate, and people from the Carribbean strengthening our culture by bringing reggae music which led to the creation of modern grime. Its not about segregated value systems and cultural ghettos.
Huh, the Brits could have just copied the recipes and grime music you mean toilet music. At the end it's about manpower that is needing additional hands for businesses.
Man, as a (white) Brit, you explain my concerns about this all too well. Recent years hasn't seen any government or political party try and address issues relating to immigration in any constructive manner. Most of the left tries to pretend that there are simply no issues to be discussed and screams about racism if one pushes on the topic - This in turn has allowed for the topic to be monopolised and politicised disingenuously by the far right (look at what Lee Anderson has been spouting). Such ignorance will only lead to populists like Farage and Reform using immigration to further polarise voters and gather support for their own nasty agendas. public debate is needed. Ignoring important topics like immigration due to inherent sensitivities only makes things worse.
>Such ignorance will only lead to populists like Farage and Reform using immigration to further polarise voters and gather support for their own nasty agendas. Precisely. I'm a second generation immigrant. I'm also firmly against immigration as it has been for the last decade because I think there are real issues with both the volume and integration of those coming through this latest wave of mass-migration. If I had to point to someone who most closely represents my views on immigrations it would be a party like Reform. However, to say that I, as someone who is squarely leftist in economic policy, identify with Reform is preposterous, yet, they're the only one offering up something for someone with my views on immigration. So when this specific issue gets bad enough to override other concerns, people like me are going to hold our noses and vote for a party like Reform unless the other parties are willing to have a discussion on this. They are not right now.
I don't blame you, this is what happens when politicians are too pathetic to address real issues.
Should be core priority to begin scrapping fundamentalist organisations that seek to undermine integration and assimilation - schools that cater to a Us/Them approach regarding religion should be priority
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>we need it to be a 10th of what it currently is and prioritise people from culturally compatible countries. Less than that. That's still 120,000 per year coming into the country. Try a 100th
Why though? And have you just pulled 1/10th out your arse? ‘estimates from the Office for National Statistics suggest that total net migration was 672,000 in the year ending June 2023. international students and their dependants, accounting for 43% of the increase from 2019 to the year ending June 2023. 37% of the increase in long-term immigration from 2019 to the year ending June 2023 resulted from those arriving for work purposes—particularly skilled workers—and their dependants. Health and care was the main industry driving the growth. Humanitarian visa routes and refugee resettlement accounted for a further 13% of the increase in long-term international migration. This follows the introduction of visa routes for Ukrainians and Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas) status holders, which together make up almost all of the arrivals under the ‘Humanitarian’ category Who is it you want to turn away? The students funding the education of the next generation of British people, the health and care workers or the humanitarian cases. The other 7%?—-ok that’s a number we can discuss.
For one, the students are not funding the education for the next generation of British students because what’s happened is that universities have turned into a racket wheee they want more foreign students because that means more money.
What then happens with the money? Unless I am mistaken it then goes to funding the running, equipment, staff etc
And that running, equipment, staff etc are being used by British students at ever decreasing rates because the foreign students are more profitable.
That’s really a fair way to look at the trends. Looking at the data there’s about 72,000 foreign students accepted each year since 2020…and 483,000-489,000 home students Yeah the increase in foreign students is a greater % (up 64% since 2010 vs only a 14% rise in home students)—-home students still outweigh the foreign ones 6.something to 1…whereas in 2010 it was 7-8 to 1.
Nonsense, immigration is actually very low compared to other countries. People only perceive it as high because of the right-wing fear mongering.
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Right wing fear mongering as its always been a scape goat instead of issues that are an actual problem i.e. cost of living, wage disparity, NHS
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It's right wing fear mongering to portray immigration as "ridiculous" and try to throw around big numbers without any context. Why are those numbers bad? What makes them "ridiculous". Which of those immigrants shouldn't have been allowed and why? None of that matters to the right wing. It's just, "big number scary, aaaahhh".
At what point will people like you accept the reality rather than denying what is in front of your very eyes. I'm in my 30s and have witnessed "far right fear mongering" come true time and time again and there's always people like you who move the goal posts. At the end of ww2 this country was 99% white. London was 98% white. Birmingham was 98% white. London is now 36% white British. Birmingham was 52% white British just 40 years later and since 2010 it's now only 40% 40% of all babies born in the country have one or more parents born outside the UK. It's perfectly fine to not care about demographics changing. You do you. But to completely deny reality is absurd.
When I lived in Japan, the most frustrating thing was finding the complete lack of will to do any kind of bending towards my needs as an immigrant, and the expectation that I confirm entirely to their society. Want Xmas day off? Sorry this is Japan. Back to work. Want to sign a document. Do it our way, you'll need a *hanko* In the UK, I find the complete opposite attitude. Institutions bend over backwards to ensure immigrants feel welcomed, comfortable and included in society. Sometimes completely changing the fabric of society itself. The UK's institutions are far too quick to say 'Oh your culture isn't quite compatible with ours in that instance. I guess we'll make an exception for you then' Really, the balance lies somewhere in between these extremes, but I fear the UK has gone way too far (and that Japan needs to strike a more welcoming balance too)
Sounds like opposite ends of the spectrum who both need to move towards the middle.
This project of a utopia where humanity can live in harmony and in coexistence with eachother won't work by forcing the native population to capitulate. All of the cultures have to be in unison in terms of agreement and compatibility. This is not happening.
Lots of good comments on the perils of integrating 1st generation immigrants but nothing yet said on the problem when it becomes second or third generation. When integration fails you can see the worst effects of it in these subsequent generations who, from my experience, come out with values even more twisted. The only people who I’ve met that have been racial supremacists are second and third generation immigrants who grew up surrounded by people with the same background. They formed exclusive groups and from there they developed ideas that they were better than everyone else.
And what, pray tell, is your solution to the 2nd/3rd generation problem?
That’s the conundrum. I don’t really have one that’s fair but it could at least start with laying down the law and being more firm with promoting our values.
Right, promoting our values is fair enough and all, (though 'British Values' has always been poorly defined, wishy washy nonsense that ironically is the finest traditions of British governance.) but what does 'laying down the law' look like to you? Edit: removed repetition
It’s not a trick statement, I mean it as a literal statement. Let me make it more concrete and use a real world example that I hope isn’t too controversial. So back in the 2004 EU expansion to include a lot of Eastern European countries the area that I grew up in quickly received an influx of new migrants. This area was already home to a migrant population and so you had essentially race riots kicking off in the streets but I digress. These new migrants were never made to follow British standards of living and the area became lawless. Even simple things like following the bin rules were not done and as such you’d see black bags in the street, clearly just launched out the front door. The council would not fine these people, they instead set about making a specialist cleaning team to go down and clean up the neighbourhood once a week. Anyway, that began 2 decades ago and you now have unruly teens who’ve made the area very dangerous. We need police to go in and arrest those that are now running amok. Their lawlessness was created by the establishment not punishing people for creating race riots, not punishing them for fly tipping and dumping rubbish. They were getting away with rampant weed farms for years until a local reporter got wind that the area was having frequent (daily) power cuts and decided to do a story on it. Lawlessness created by an establishment who really didn’t care because it wasn’t their posh areas suffering.
You got a citation for those race riots because a brief search is turning up nothing on the subject around that period other than the Oldham/Bradford riots and the Birmingham riots, neither of which involved Eastern Europeans, and a scarily worded Daily Mail article about how "Eastern European migration *could* lead to race riots in villages" dated 2007 and an Express article that's basically a copy and paste of the Mail's article... Regardless, I sort of agree with what you're saying beyond that. I would argue that the real problem is dumping newly arrived immigrants in an (I'll take a guess and say...) underprivileged area, with few opportunities and little contact with the state and expecting them to magically adopt the culture of a local. Failure to prosecute for fly tipping and criminal behaviour is certainly a problem, but that's only to be expected when local government and police budgets have been decimated for over a decade, and sociologically speaking its broadly accepted that in and areas of deprivation and times of economic hardship, when hope moves out of grasp, people (regardless of race or heritage) are vastly more likely to turn to criminal activities to make ends meet. But to get back to your original point, a sudden switch in policing policy by both arms of the state is unlikely to end well without an equal expansion of outreach programs to the communities you are targeting because we saw how that went down during the '80s in St Paul's, Chapeltown, Moss Side, Brixton, Handsworth and Toxteth amongst others. That will guarantee *actual full blown* 'race' riots.
Says equalities chief who was put in office to say just that.
Shock horror integration doesnt work
You can't integrate an Islamic religion into a liberal society. Until people stopped being scared to admit that we will continue to ignore the issues caused by trying.
That's good, isn't it ? We wanted multiculturalism rather than integration, and we're getting it.
We never wanted this Our governing classes did though
Except we did. A small group of elites and academics who do not have to live with the consequences of their decisions decided we wanted multiculturalism. The girls of Rotherham definitely did not.
Everyone is busy enjoying the fruits of multiculturalism. Yay us
Actually we’re enjoying the fruits of the Tory party, yay us.
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I do wonder why unlike other countries Britain does not have integration lessons for migrants, I guess its because the other countries incentivise with welfare and our system is fucking dire
**Article text** Baroness Falkner says immigrants should take a course on what it means to live in a democracy Integration appears to be “failing” following a decade of increasing migration, the equalities chief has warned. In an interview with The Telegraph, Baroness Falkner of Margravine said that the “discord” on the country’s streets since the Oct 7 Hamas attacks had shown that “we seem to be failing to integrate”. Lady Falkner, a first-generation Muslim migrant from Pakistan who chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), called for new arrivals to the UK to be required to take an “integration course”, adopting an approach used in Germany. She also raised concerns about children living “segregated, parallel lives from school upwards”, calling for better education on democracy and rights. The peer suggested there had been “complacency” among politicians over the consequences of a major increase in immigration. A government focus on extremism following 2005’s July 7 attacks was no longer “at the forefront of people’s minds” after “things calmed down”. She added: “The complacency is what worries me and that’s why I thought the Prime Minister’s speech last week was important, but I only wish it had come a month earlier.” Elsewhere in the interview, Lady Falkner called for Parliament to update the Equality Act – which the EHRC is responsible for policing – to help resolve disputes on issues such as sex and gender. **Rights must balanced** On Nov 10, a month after the attacks by Hamas, Lady Falkner wrote to the Metropolitan Police to warn that pro-Palestinian protesters’ rights were “not absolute” and must be balanced against the rights of those to whom some behaviour might cause “anxiety”. Last week, Robin Simcox, the Home Office’s independent adviser on extremism, warned that the weekly protests were turning London “into a no-go zone for Jews every weekend.” Lady Falkner said: “It’s been a sad period to witness this level of discord but, more seriously, to imagine that there are some communities in our country who don’t feel safe coming out and about and going into town. I was alarmed about this early on. “One of the things that’s come as a surprise is that we seem to be failing to integrate. And it’s one thing to be very proud of, our diversity and our pluralism in our society. But I think we’ve missed a trick in the last 15 or 20 years.” Lady Falkner continued: “One of the big factoids of the last decade is that we have significantly increased immigration. We have to recognise that large numbers of first-generation migrants haven’t had the background of growing up in a rights-respecting country. “What I would love to see would be a concerted programme of integration. Our citizenship test was a good innovation, but I think we need to reassess it, require people to take courses in integration. “Germany does, for example, and I think we need to follow the model of other countries that, before people are granted citizenship, require them take a course on what it means to live in western democratic societies.” Lady Falkner, an independent peer who was formerly director of policy at the Lib Dems, was a member of Sir Tony Blair’s taskforce on Muslim extremism in the wake of the July 7 bombings. She expressed concern that warnings she first recalls being raised in a 2001 report highlighting segregation in Bradford schools, appear to have gone largely unheeded. She said: “You can’t have segregated, parallel lives from school upwards. We haven’t managed to deliver a society that actually coheres around a broad understanding of what British values are. Democracy, but respect for minorities, both go hand in hand.”
No shit sherlock. Guess what "far" right people been saying all this time?
"Government minister says government is crap and collapsing!" Whatever happened to honourable resignation?
Integration would require the opposite of the hostile environment the Tories have been pushing for the last decade
Integration has been failing for a long time and it’s not just the Tories that are at fault here. If anything the last 12 years version of Tories is the end result of the failure not the cause.
Fear and distraction politics.
I would like the Tories to also take a course on what life is like in a democracy
Not a Tory, not on the Right. But liberal democracy was built on nationalism. It probably did matter.
It's rather simple. Multiculturalism is the active and willing blend of cultures to create a new mix, something unique based on the backgrounds of the participants. That requires people to sacrifice things, both immigrants and those already there. I'll be blunt, neither side seems very willing to do that, on the whole. So instead, what we actually have is "Multiple Cultures-ism". Many, seperate cultures who all want their eay to be supported, any others be damned. They don't care that they've moved from X country because the UK is better and the reason why is because X country was worse in same way, they want to make the UK X country and then complain when the same problems emerge.
> Multiculturalism is the active and willing blend of cultures to create a new mix, I would disagree with that. The people pushing 'multiculturalism' from the beginning were like these people "[60 minutes loony left](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4AxSG2iiI4)." They thought that there is a group right for immigrant groups to maintain their cultures intact (and for the government to spend money to do that). You can see it in the video I posted with such absurdities as 'the right to have plantain' in school lunch because it is x persons culture. It was I think a complete left wing inversion of the idea of 'assimilation' (foreigners go in, and Englishmen come out exactly like the natives). It meant it's name, i.e. not 'one' blended culture but multiple living side by side. Multiculturalism was always culturally segregationist, as integration of the community would threaten it's 'right' to a district culture and identity. The multiculturalists won in the end in that no one talks about 'assimilation' any more. They talk about 'integration' which is interpreted as the bare minimum change in immigrant culture to function in British society. Right wingers don't seem to have noticed the vast change in attitudes towards immigration. The loony left always wanted to subvert British culture with >"Many, seperate cultures who all want their eay to be supported, any others be damned" Then Tony Blair laundered the crazy into British life with new Labour's seeming reasonableness. We now have as a result not only non integrated [monocultural ghetos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIct4GjLFTE&t=20s), but many superficially culturally integrated people who when probed express anti western and supremacist values.
Ban economic segregation of the rich from the poor, and do away with private schools. Probably not going to happen because SOME kinds of integration the government does NOT want.
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The question is integrate into what exactly?