In Response to Mr 'L'Eplattenier'

���Henry L���Eplattenier���  (HL) has provoked a lot of reaction. I just thought I would respond to some his points, briefly, myself, for the sake of clarification. My responses are marked ***

 

 

HL writes:���There is a lot to object to in what is being said and written here. The metaphor that the African migrants trying to cross the channel into the UK from Calais are jumping the queue is in my view inaccurate. What queue are they jumping?���

 

****PH writes: they are jumping two main queues, depending on their real position.

1. If they are refugees from persecution, they are free to present themselves, lawfully, with their passports, at any point of entry in the UK . If their fears are well-founded, they can then justly obtain asylum. It should be stated here that asylum is usually granted in the first free and safe country which the persecuted person reaches. Should their claims be false, or should it be the case that they have crossed several other countries which would have given them asylum and they are in fact migrants with a specific desire to enter this country( see below) then they are not merely jumping the queue, but poisoning the wells of public support for a valuable and important custom.

2. If they are economic migrants, they are free to apply for visas and work permits for this country at any British consulate. Their cases will there be judged on their merits.

 

 

HL  ���Rather it seems to me that they are desperate and risking their lives to join the metaphorical queue, not jump it.���

 

***PH replies: The word ���desperate��� is nearly as inflated as the German Mark in the 1920s. Nobody doubts that they strongly desire to enter this country. Nobody blames them for wishing to do so.  . But they have many other options open to them. Their presence at Calais is voluntary ( as Mr ���L���Eplattenier��� rightly points out below) .  They are not , so far as we know, fleeing genocidal mass murder or famine. If they were, then our response would, rightly, be different.

 

 

HL ���The idea that ���they all want to come to the UK��� is a myth that seems to persist despite numerous articles in the press showing that this is blatantly not true.���

 

***PH responds : I tend to agree with Mr ���L���. This is why I have made no such claim. Why then is Mr ���L��� introducing into the argument a claim that I have not made?

 

 

���HL���  France, German and the Scandinavian countries have all accepted more refugees from Africa and the Middle East per capita than the UK, not to mention countries around the Mediterranean such as Italy, Greece, Turkey or Lebanon.

 

****PH replies. This rather destroys the claim by Mr ���L��� that they are ���desperate���. Given the many possible alternatives, it is clear that their decision to attempt to enter Britain illegally via the Channel Tunnel is a rational, considered choice, made despite the existence of other perfectly civilised alternatives.

 

 

HL The use of the expression ���mass immigration���: a little more than 30,000 refugees applying for asylum in the UK in 2014 cannot reasonably be qualified as ���mass immigration���. Obviously a much larger number of people migrate to Britain from EU countries, but that is a completely separate issue and in no way related to the migrants in Calais. It is doubtlessly true that the reduced border controls between countries within the Schengen area of the EU make it easier for immigrants to travel within the EU. Nonetheless, reinstating tougher controls between EU countries (assuming this was possible and in any way desirable) would not change the fundamental issue here, which is large numbers of African migrants desperately trying to reach the safety of the EU.

 

***PH replies. I have dealt with the absurd abuse of the word ���desperate��� above. I indexed the article under ���mass immigration��� because this event is plainly part of two waves of mass immigration -  one into Britain( largely but not wholly from the EU) and the other from Africa and from the Middle East into Europe in general .Actually 30,000 is quite a large number, the population of a medium-sized town,  and I think it wise and reasonable not to describe these people as ���refugees��� until their cases have been examined and they have been found to be so. It seems to me that refugees from persecution should not be so anxious to conceal, by disposing of their passports, their actual countries of origin.

 

 

 

HL : ���The idea that ���lefty liberals��� owe their views on immigration to the fact that they live in the leafy suburbs and are therefore not personally affected by immigration is a ridiculous generalisation, which is not based on any facts. At the last general election the vast majority of constituencies in central London (where the proportion of immigrants is notoriously high) elected Labour or Lib-Dem MPs.

 

***PH replies: I hope I have never used the clich��d phrases ���lefty liberals��� or leafy suburbs���.  I am not sure what this fact establishes. MPs are not elected by unanimous votes, and those who did not vote for them cannot be assumed to be their supporters. Migrants themselves, once they have passed through the lax processes of citizenship, are inclined to vote (quite reasonably) for those parties which they believe support the immigration of their relatives. Those who dislike the effects of mass immigration on neighbourhoods tend to move out of them if they can.

 

HL��� There is no evidence that a high percentage of immigrants in a particular area is correlated with right-wing voting and vice-versa.���

 

***PH replies: Nor did I say that it was (see above). He is once again attacking the expression of views that have not been  expressed, because he wishes that I, like so many ���right-wing��� writers��� conformed with his stereotype. I don���t, and he ought not to cope with this difficulty by pretending that I do. He should cope with it by addressing what I actually do say, hard as that may be for him, since he appears to rely on a series of wearisome left-wing clich��s rather than any personally-developed position. I would add, anecdotally,  that UKIP votes seem to me to be highest in areas close to zones of high immigration where people fear that their district will be next.

 

���HL��� ��� Those who claim ���I did not agree with Blair���s war in Iraq therefore I should not be made to ���suffer��� due to immigration��� are desolidarising themselves from the rest of society. Of course one can disagree with the decisions made by Blair and his government, but they were democratically elected.

 

***PH replies. I am not sure what this is supposed to mean. Democracy, flawed as it is, is not a tyranny of the majority or Leninist ���democratic centralism��� under which the winner takes all and the defeated minority have no voice.

 

HL: ���It is like saying ���I refuse to pay taxes because I disagree with the government���s stance on education and I want my kids to be privately educated���.���

 

***PH writes: No, it is not. Most of us strongly approve of some taxation, are doubtful or indifferent about much of it and actively opposed to others. But as long as it stays within a general consensus, broadly stated in a party manifesto, we accept our legal obligation to pay it for the general good of the country. Indeed, had Mr Blair or Mr cameron stated in their manifestoes that they planned to spend much of their time in office starting foreign wars,  we would all look a bit silly protesting or complaining about it later. But they didn���t. Rather the reverse, in fact, in the case of Mr Blair. Going to war, killing people and bombing cities, especially in defiance of mass public protest, is not the same as providing terrible schools. We are quite entitled to say we did not ask for this and cannot be made responsible for its consequences. 

 

 

HL:  On a side note, I would like to know what ���suffering��� is caused by living side by side with immigrants  

 

**** PH writes: I suppose we must just ask Mr ���L��� (whose aggressive complacency suggests that he lives a sheltered life and doesn���t know it) to imagine himself old and alone, or infirm, in a small house or flat in which he has lived for years, in a neighbourhood familiar to him,  finding over time that this neighbourhood is transformed and is now inhabited by people with whom he has no common language, customs or tastes; or to imagine being the parent of children who must attend a school, in which the overcrowded classes are full of children whose first language is not English; or finding, in general, that the public services on which he must rely are overcrowded, and overloaded to the point where they are quite difficult to use.

 

HL ���and whether those who say they would suffer have reflected on how the suffering endured by the African migrant in Calais compares to their own.

 

***PH writes: I fail to see what the comparison has to do with it. They are quite different. But both are forms of suffering, and we have the power to prevent only one of them. Is Mr  ���L��� suggesting that the suffering of one group is alleviated by making the other group suffer in a different way? How? The claim is absurd. Surely it just increases the total of suffering in the world. If no limit at all is placed on migration, then the prosperous parts of the world will become so overcrowded and so culturally ���diverse���, that is to say, wholly lacking in cohesion, that they will resemble the very places the Calais migrants seek to leave. Who would that help, except sequestered billionaires who enjoy the effects of cheap wages for others?

 

HL��� I am seeing a lot of heads in the sand here. It is easier to complain and protest against change and having to make an effort, rather than face the horrible reality of North Africa and the Middle East and come up with some actual constructive proposals and solutions that reflect the compassion that characterises West European culture. More barbed wire and higher walls around fortress Britain have no part in such solutions in my opinion.���

 

***I am happy to listen to any constructive proposals. But the voluntary self-destruction of Western societies, built up over centuries with great effort, because of a spasm of public false compassion, seems to me to be a solution to absolutely nothing.